Seeing Doubles

The Rap Sheet has been exposing the phenomenon of copycat book covers for more than two years. During that time, other bloggers have occasionally contributed their own observations on this notorious subject (see here and here). Yet publishers, ever determined it seems to save a buck or two, continue to fall back on buying stock-agency art, rather than commissioning original photography, presuming that most people won’t notice. Hah! Not if we have anything to say about it.

It’s been a few months since I last showcased duplicate crime-fiction covers--long enough to have collected a good number of additional examples. (Click on any cover to view an enlargement.)

This first one’s pretty obvious. Check out the noirish art featured on 2007’s highly regarded The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps (Vintage Crime), edited by Otto Penzler. It’s credited to “Rafael Desoto, Courtesy the Advertising Archives.” Now compare that to the jacket of editor Maxim Jakubowski’s Pulp Fiction, an anthology of hard-boiled crime writing, originally published in Britain in 1996 under the title The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction, but reissued in the States in 2002 (by Book Sales Inc.). Same subject, same Desoto illustration, but different editors. And come to think of it, a chunk from that very same piece of art is part of the standing head atop Bruce Grossman’s weekly Bookgasm column, “Bullets, Broads, Blackmail & Bombs” (which, coincidently, highlighted Jakubowski’s anthology not so long ago). Admittedly, this is excellent, tough-edged artwork; but must it be employed quite so often?

Our next two comparisons are no less blatant. To begin with, observe the covers from Tim Maleeny’s first private investigator Cape Weathers novel, Stealing the Dragon (Midnight Ink, 2007), and the 2005 non-fiction book Ink: The Not-Just-Skin-Deep Guide to Getting a Tattoo (NAL Trade), by Terisa Green, Ph.D. Hey, I like the curve of a beautiful woman’s back just as much as the next schmuck, and I have learned to appreciate tattoos on fragrant female flesh. But even I would have been happier not to see double in this case. (A big hat tip to Brian Lindenmuth.)

Consider, in turn, the respective jackets from editor Mike Ashley’s The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries (Running Press, 2006) and Derek Haas’ debut cinematic thriller, The Silver Bear (Hodder & Stoughton UK, 2008). Could that be the same shadowy but evidently armed man, standing in the same doorway? Methinks, yes.

Less easily recognized as duplicates are these next two covers. Jacket design for Stray Dog Winter (MacAdam/Cage), the November-released novel from Los Angeles author David Francis, is credited to Dorothy Carico Smith. But the cover photograph was apparently taken by one Adri Berger, and is now available for multiple sales from the stock photo agency Getty Images. Which is presumably where Elsa Chiao, who created the front for Jon Fasman’s second novel, The Unpossessed City (released in October by Penguin Press), acquired the shot as well. The only differences between these two images are that the one on Fasman’s book has been cropped slightly, flopped (notice that the figure walking with a bag through Moscow’s Red Square is on the left, rather than on the right), and is used on an angle, rather than straight on. Both work well, I think, but they’re still too obviously related to be truly creative.

A particularly sharp-eyed Rap Sheet reader, Patrick Lee, pointed out the relationship between this fifth pair of fronts. The one on the left comes from the University of Chicago Press’ recent paperback reprint of The Hunter, the 1962 novel by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake) that introduced professional thief and series character Parker. The second comes from Film Noir Reader 2, a 2004 non-fiction release written by Alain Silver and James Ursini, and published by Limelight Editions. Look at the man and woman in shadow. While the woman changes (she’s much more noticeably curvaceous on the Hunter jacket), the man is the same--same hat, same posture. One presumes that might be part of the charm these women see in him: he’s Mr. Steady.

We have to take a long trip down memory lane to find these next copycat contenders. The first cover comes from a paperback release of Angel! (1962), a novel by the prolific Australian author Carter Brown (né Alan G. Yates) and features his best-known detective, police lieutenant Al Wheeler. The illustration of a nude woman’s backside was executed by Robert McGinnis, one of the best-known paperback artists of the 1960s and ’70s, and more recently rediscovered by Hard Case Crime. There seems little question that it is the same fetching female (described as having “a body built for treason”) who decorates the front of Operation Octopus (Signet), a 1968 oceanic thriller--part of the Mark Hood spy series--by James Dark (aka Aussie James Edmund MacDonnell). It wasn’t uncommon during the mid-20th century for paperback publishers to borrow artwork from each other, and this certainly seems an instance of that.

However, if you think that’s as shameless as the “borrowing” gets, take an eyeful of these next four jackets.

I mentioned two of these in a previous post. The covers from Andrew Taylor’s Bleeding Heart Square (Michael Joseph, 2008) and Canadian novelist Maureen Jennings’ Vices of My Blood (McClelland & Stewart, 2006) quite obviously employ the same photograph, that of an overcoat-wearing man striding along a fence. Sure, the image has been flopped, but there can be no question that it’s the same shot, taken by Cindy Reichle and again available through Getty Images. Usually, when I spot a copycat cover, the illustration used doesn’t appear on more than two books, though there have been exceptions, and this is another one of those.

Not long ago, I finished reading the late John Gardner’s final novel, Moriarty, his third book to feature Sherlock Holmes’ legendary nemesis. And when I went to do some additional research on the book, I discovered that its British jacket (from Quercus Publishing) bears a striking resemblance to those of Taylor’s and Jennings’ books. In this instance, a top hat has been cut-and-pasted onto the walking man’s noggin, and a backdrop suggestive of some European city has been slipped behind him. A piece of the fence has also been duplicated, flopped, and positioned to his right. But Reichle’s photo is again obviously the basis for this cover art. I added the Moriarty front to my copycat collection, thinking to write about it at some future date. And then, not three weeks later, I happened across this post from British blogger Uriah Robinson (better known at home as Norman Price). He’d discovered still a fourth example of Reichle’s photograph fronting a crime novel, this time Barbara Nadel’s Last Rights (Headline Publishing, 2005). Again, the background has been modified--there’s now some Gothic-looking tower in the distance--but the original image is easily distinguished.

To borrow from comedian-author Bill Maher: “New rule--publishers cannot get away with using the same photograph on four different covers without readers thinking them all unimaginative. Invest in something original, why don’t you, you cheapskates.”

Maybe it’s for the best that John Gardner isn’t around any longer to see what’s been made of his fine work, because this isn’t the only case of Moriarty being given a copycat cover. Its U.S. publisher, Harcourt, hired designer Kelly Eismann to create an appropriately 19th-century-looking front for its edition of the novel. Eismann, in turn, purchased a Corbis stock photograph that shows a couple of guys in hats standing before a metal fence, looking out at a fountain on what appears to be a foggy evening. It’s a nice, if not particularly memorable, book jacket. However, Eismann just happens to have chosen the identical shot that a second graphic designer, David Baldeosingh Roststein, selected to front another new American book, Without Conscience (St. Martin’s Minotaur/Thomas Dunne), by David Stuart Davies. This second story takes place in London during World War II and stars detective Johnny Hawke (introduced in Forests of the Night, 2005). Whoops! Perhaps Harcourt should have gone ahead with the Moriarty cover that originally made the Web rounds.

Have you spotted additional copycat covers? If so, please send them my way. I’ll post more examples as they become available.

UPDATE: Will the madness never end? Since I first wrote this post, I’ve discovered two more examples of that photograph of an overcoat-wearing man passing a fence being used on the covers of books. The first comes from the 2007 Viking hardcover edition of Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics, by Gino Segrè, a non-fiction work for scientific minds far superior to my own. The second example of this photo’s application can be seen on the front of Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and released this last January, in association with the famous author’s 200th birthday. I think the Poe cover is particularly striking, but that doesn’t excuse its use of an image that has now overstayed its welcome.

READ MORE: “The Most Popular Fence in Literature,” by J.R.S. Morrison (Caustic Cover Critic).