It’s What’s Up Front That Counts

Every year since 2007 (which seems like a rather long time ago just now), The Rap Sheet has hosted an annual “Best Crime Fiction Covers” competition. We’ve gotten in the habit of keeping track each year of book jackets that we think stand out from the crowd of egregious copycats, trendy duplicates (this year’s overused theme being shadowy running men), and downright lame fronts that substitute ominous imagery for honest reflections of the stories contained within. By the end of each twelvemonth, we usually have a file of 25 to 30 distinctive jackets. Then we trim that down to a mere dozen covers we think are the best of the breed.

So, what elements are the members of our judging panel concentrating on at that penultimate, winnowing-down stage? Author, January Magazine editor, and Rap Sheet contributor Linda L. Richards provides this brief explanation:

The covers were looked at in their entirely while the selections were made. Not just the central image was considered, but also the use of type, the color selections, and the final balance of the whole. Most important, given the genesis of this particular dance, the panel was looking for originality above all other things.

In the end, this is what we figure: though you might not agree with our choices, it’s unlikely you’ll have seen anything quite like them anywhere else.

Glancing over our final dozen choices--displayed below, in alphabetical order by title--I am surprised to discover that only two are British covers. And only one is centered around a photograph; the remainder feature illustrations, tend to be moody in their presentations, and employ typography in a number of intriguing fashions. A few are brilliant in their simplicity. A pair of the fronts on our shortlist pay homage to classic crime-fiction imagery, whether the pulpish paperback fronts of the mid-20th century or the noirish films produced earlier in the 1900s. The cover of Denis Johnson’s Nobody Move is actually two covers, an apparently bullet-riddled dust jacket encasing illustrations of the principal characters in his novel. And some of our selections, including the jacket of Andrew Pyper’s The Killing Circle and Jedediah Berry’s The Manual of Detection, are definitely more striking when you hold them in your hands than when you study them on a computer screen.

Having made our top 12 picks, we now turn the final vote over to you, The Rap Sheet’s discriminating readers. Once you’ve had a chance to study the nominated book covers closely (click on each one for an enlargement), just scroll down to the end of this post and vote for your favorites. You can choose as many jackets as you wish. We will leave this cover contest open until midnight on Monday, December 28. Then we’ll report the results.

Oh, and if you think we have missed including a 2009 crime novel cover that was especially noteworthy, feel free to mention and discuss it in the Comments section at the end of this post. Just be sure to include a URL with your suggestion, so readers can see the alternative jacket for themselves.