PaperBack: “Footsteps in the Night”

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.



Footsteps in the Night, by Dolores Hitchens (Permabooks, 1962). Cover illustration by Harry Bennett.

A Return to “Bennett’s Beauties”

You may remember that from early December of last year through the first week of 2018, my other blog, Killer Covers, ran a 43-post tribute to American artist and paperback illustrator Harry Bennett. Prior to the series’ completion, I began an e-mail interview with Bennett’s youngest son, Tom. Unfortunately, the series concluded before our exchange was finished. Only now am I finally able to present the results of that conversation, which covers everything from Harry Bennett’s personal history and education to his ultimate retirement and declining health in old age. You can now read the interview here.

And over the next couple of days, Killer Covers will carry two galleries of Bennett’s remarkable book fronts. Keep a watch for them.

A Bumper Crop of Bennetts

Killer Covers’ month-long tribute to Connecticut artist-illustrator Harry Bennett concluded yesterday. Although the series ran for 31 days—from December 4 through January 3—the blog managed to present 70 of Bennett’s book fronts in total. If you weren’t keeping up with the posts as they appeared, you can click here to find them all.

Gifts for December: Bounteous Bennetts

Beware the Curves (Pocket, 1960), by A.A. Fair, aka Erle Stanley Gardner; and The Savage, by Noel Clad (Permabooks, 1959). Artwork on both novels created by Harry Bennett.

American artist-illustrator Harry Bennett (1919-2012), who created some of the most recognizable paperback fronts of the 20th century, is being honored in my book design-oriented blog, Killer Covers, with a month-long succession of posts showcasing some of his best work. As I explain in the introduction to that series,

The paintings he produced for U.S. publishers ranging from Permabooks and Pocket to Gold Medal and Berkley could be seductive or shocking, ominous or humorous, but they were rarely less than outstanding. During a more than three-decades-long freelance career, Bennett—who passed away just over five years ago, at age 93—created the anterior imagery for everything from detective novels and Gothic romances to Hitchcockian thrillers and tales about amorous young nurses. “Literally millions of people have seen hundreds of paintings by Harry Bennett, but few would know his name,” writes a blogger who calls himself NatureGeezer and lives in Ridgefield, the historic western Connecticut town where Bennett also resided for most of his life. Along with artists such as Robert McGinnis, Mitchell Hooks, Paul Rader, Harry Schaare, Ernest Chiriacka, and Victor Kalin, Bennett made 20th-century paperbacks worth collecting simply for their covers.

Today, Killer Covers celebrates the fourth day of its Bennett tribute by posting a scan of the 1963 Pocket Books edition of Erle Stanley Gardner’s This Is Murder, a book the prolific Gardner originally published in 1935 under the pseudonym Charles J. Kenney. You can keep up with the full series by clicking here.