Macdonald’s Changing Faces

I’ve had reason recently to investigate the covers on various paperback editions of Ross Macdonald’s novels. In the course of doing so, I’ve posted some of those classic fronts in my Killer Covers blog. If you have missed noticing, click here to see the only cover Robert McGinnis painted for a Macdonald work. Click here to gaze in appreciation at Mitchell Hooks’ 1970s fronts for the Lew Archer series. And click here to compare those latter covers with Hooks’ illustrations for a pair of 1955 Macdonald releases.

12 Months, 12 Fronts

Yesterday marked the official 10th birthday of our sister blog, Killer Coves. However, the celebration will continue for the next week and a half, as Killer Covers goes about posting “a year’s worth of books bearing titles that include the names of months—our own ‘calendar of crime,’ if you will.” Click here to keep up with the whole series.

Dame Nation

Today brings a conclusion to Killer Covers’ latest iteration of its “Twelve Dames of Christmas” celebration, tied to the annual Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25-January 5). It’s been more than a bit of fun rolling out all dozen distinctive book fronts. You can catch up on any you missed simply by clicking here.

Hello, Dolls!

Sorry for the recent shortage of fresh posts on this page. Between planning for the holidays, helping to open a new independent bookstore in Seattle, and working on various editorial assignments, I’ve had little free time lately. But I did launch, on Monday, a second “Twelve Dames of Christmas” series in my book-design blog, Killer Covers. Through January 5, I shall be expanding a selection of vintage novels—all boasting the word “dame” in their titles—that I introduced two years ago on the same page. You can follow the series here.

Lesser Is More

Have I got a treat in store for you! Later this morning, The Rap Sheet’s companion blog, Killer Covers, will carry a lengthy interview with American artist Ron Lesser. Anyone who’s been reading Killer Covers for a while should know that Lesser, who is now in his 70s, was one of the people most responsible for giving mid- to late-20th century paperback covers their handsome and memorable appearance.

As I’ve done previously with Harry Bennett, Robert Stanley, Paul Rader, and Robert McGinnis (the last of whose work is often confused with Lesser’s—which is certainly a compliment), I shall devote the next full month to posting book fronts and other artwork by Lesser in Killer Covers. Expect at least one new series installment every day.

So I ask: Are you ready to join the celebration?

Signing Off on Stanley

The Groom Lay Dead, by George Harmon Coxe (Dell, 1951).
Cover illustration by Robert Stanley.

Amid a veritable landslide of book scans, the blog Killer Covers this morning brought to a conclusion its 10-day salute to American paperback artist Robert Stanley (1918-1996).

The site explains this venture was conceived a full year ago, but was ultimately brought to fruition in a mad rush at the end of March. It commenced with the roll-out of “[Randal S.] Brandt’s excellent summation of the artist’s career; slid from there into a series of posts showcasing the range of Stanley’s attractive and frequently innovative book-façade illustrations; and led to a selection of the painter’s Western-fiction fronts and a remembrance of his work for men’s adventure magazines.” Today’s final display of Stanley’s efforts should cement in readers’ minds the fact that Stanley created some of the most recognizable paperback fronts of the mid-20th century.

If you weren’t keeping up with Killer Covers’ series, you can go back now and discover what the fuss was all about. Simply click here.

Stanley Steams Ahead

Today in my Killer Covers blog, I launched what will be a heavily illustrated tribute to prolific paperback cover artist Robert C. Stanley (1918-1996). As I note in an introduction to that series, Stanley’s “realistic artistry graced more than 200 covers of paperback releases from Dell Books during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, giving that line an immediately familiar style.”

Killer Covers’ Stanley salute will continue through next Friday, April 6, with new postings every day. I kick things off with California librarian Randal S. Brandt’s introduction to this artist’s life and labors.

You should be able to keep track of the whole series here.

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.

Get an Eyeful of More Peeping Toms

Anyone who’s worked with me knows my perfectionist tendencies. I generally hold myself to standards just shy of unreasonable, whether in my news reporting, my interviewing, my book criticism, or my blog designing. When laboring on behalf of print publications, my habitual desire to tinker with my work is restricted by deadlines and the fact that once a magazine or newspaper article (or a book, for that matter) goes to press, I can no longer polish sentences, sharpen my analysis of a subject, or correct errors I failed to spot originally. However, such limitations don’t necessarily exist in the world of Web publishing. Even after a piece is presented in The Rap Sheet or Killer Covers, I can return to it hours, days, weeks, months, or years later to make improvements or additions. And I often do.

This flexibility has served me well in regard to themed galleries of vintage book fronts I’ve assembled for Killer Covers. Over the last couple of years, I have gone back to several early collections of paperback covers—including those having to do with suburban sleaze, summertime sex and scandals, captivating blondes, and showcased legs—and improved their look, beefed up their diversity, or both. This week I finally found the opportunity to enhance and expand a feature I put together a full eight years ago, about Peeping Tom covers.

I haven’t done much to that post in terms of its text, but I have greatly expanded its visual presentation. When the Peeping Tom gallery first went up in October 2009, it comprised a modest 33 book covers; now, with my having spent a few extra years collecting specimens of this breed, it has almost quadrupled in size, boasting 121 fine façades—a new Killer Covers record. There are likely other handsome examples out there waiting to be discovered. For the present, though, I declare this set pretty darn perfect.

Click here to see if you agree.

Right This Way to the Exhibits

With a new academic year now starting up in the United States, this seems like an ideal time to revisit Killer Covers’ gallery of more than 80 school-related book fronts—including a couple of new ones I just added to that mix. You’ll find them all right here.

While we’re on the subject of such artistic collections … As you know, last Friday I added to this page a post showcasing 106 covers “on which women bare or prepare to bare their assets to men (and occasionally other women), either voluntarily or not, and with varying responses.” That provoked one reader to ask what other themed compilations might be found in the archives of this site.

Some of the galleries listed below (in order of publication) are larger than others, but I hope they never cease to entertain:

• Suburban Sleaze (May 12, 2009)
• Summertime Sex and Scandals
(June 18, 2009)
• Peeping Tom Covers (October 4, 2009)
• Horizontal Paperback Fronts
(October 31, 2009)
• Covers Starring Women’s (and Sometimes Men’s) Legs (March 7, 2020)
• A Treasury of Blondes (June 12, 2010)
• Books with “Kiss” in Their Title (February 14, 2012)
• Deadly Beds (April 19, 2014)
• Nymphs and Nymphos Aplenty (May 19, 2014)
• Bodies in Bathtubs (May 11, 2015)
• Wantons on the Loose (June 8, 2015)
• French Fronts for Bastille Day (July 14, 2015)
• Vixens! Yes, Vixens! (December 23, 2015)
• Brass Beds (May 3, 2016)
• Red-Headed Sinners (May 12, 2016)
• Swamp Treats (January 25, 2017)
• Books with “Business” in Their Title (June 21, 2017)

In a perfect world, I would put together many more of these colorful collections for my Killer Covers blog. I have no shortage of ideas, believe me, but not enough spare time to do the work. I guess we’ll just all have to be patient, and wait.

This Should Turn a Few Heads

What may be the biggest themed paperback gallery I’ve ever posted went up today in my Killer Coves blog. It offers 106 book fronts “on which women bare or prepare to bare their assets to men (and occasionally other women), either voluntarily or not, and with varying responses.” You can enjoy the whole set here.

In All Their Felonious Finery

Today wrapped up Killer Covers’ “The 12 Dames of Christmas" series, that blog’s celebration of dangerous damsels and brassy bombshells. If, for some reason beyond human understanding, you haven’t been keeping up with the day-by-day roll-out of these handsome, vintage covers, you can catch up with them all by clicking here.

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

I admit, this front from the 1959 Signet edition of The Dame, by Carter Brown (with artwork by Robert McGinnis), doesn’t look particularly festive. However, it’s promoting a celebratory series that begins today in my other blog, Killer Covers. As I explain there,

… I got to thinking about how often the word “dame” appears in the titles of those classic paperbacks I’ve come to treasure over the years. Could I find enough such books to fill a tribute to the dozen days of Twelvetide? As it turns out, there are many more than 12 available, especially if you include covers with “dame” in their teaser lines. So beginning today and running through January 5, Killer Covers is celebrating “The Twelve Dames of Christmas.”

Click here to enjoy the first entry. The Rap Sheet will be on hiatus for a few days (a little end-of-the-year breather), but you can delight in many more “dames” by visiting Killer Covers!

The Gallery Is Now Open

Four weeks after launching its tribute to 20th-century paperback cover artist Paul Rader—timed to the 110th anniversary of his birth—Killer Covers today ends its exploration of his life and work. But it does so in rather splashy fashion, posting not just a main Rader book front (as striking and Halloween-appropriate as that is), but 41 additional examples of his distinctive artistry—a gallery likely to have readers searching diligently through AbeBooks and other used-books sites for their own copies of the vintage novels being showcased.

Click here to delight in the whole set.

Relishing Rader

Kill Me with Kindness, featuring a cover illustration by Paul Rader, was published by Ace Books in 1959. Though credited to “J. Harvey Bond,” this novel was actually written by Russell Winterbotham, who penned crime fiction as well as science fiction and Westerns. Kill Me with Kindness was packaged as a double-novel with Mike Brett’s The Guilty Bystander.

Today begins the final week of Killer Covers’ month-long tribute to renowned paperback cover artist Paul Rader (1906-1986).

This series began with an introduction to Rader’s career and influences, followed that up with an interview with Rader’s daughter, and has continued ever since with daily displays of some of my favorite works from the painter’s oeuvre. Still to come are more beautiful softcover fronts, plus a feature focusing on Rader’s second wife, Edith, whose likeness appeared enough times in his illustrations that she became known as “The Rader Girl.”

You can keep up with the whole series by clicking here.

Rader on Our Radar

Find My Killer, by Manly Wellman (Signet, 1957), with a cover illustration by Paul Rader.

Several months ago, I realized that the 110th anniversary of Brooklyn-born paperback artist Paul Rader’s birth was approaching. I didn’t know what the exact date was, and I couldn’t seem to find that information online, so I submitted the question to a closed Facebook group of which I’m a member, and which focuses on vintage book and magazine illustrations. Nobody there seemed to know the date of Rader’s birth, either … but one member did know how I could contact the painter’s only daughter, Elaine, who is now a jewelry maker in her early 60s. Needless to say, I wrote Elaine Rader as soon as possible, and have been corresponding with her off and on ever since.

Well, as it turns out, Paul Rader was born 110 years ago today—on October 5, 1906. In recognition of that fact, I have just launched a new series of posts, in my Killer Covers blog, celebrating his life and “virtuosic” creativity. From now until Halloween, I’ll be installing on Killer Covers at least one of my favorite Rader paperback fronts each day. Most of those will likely be drawn from his wealth of sexier cover artistry (for which he may be best known), but others demonstrate his equal skill at crafting jacket art for crime novels and romantic tales. I guarantee, none of the examples to be shown will be boring!

So make it a habit to check Killer Covers every day in October.

Happy Hundredth, John D.!

A Deadly Shade of Gold, by John D. MacDonald (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1975). Illustration by Robert McGinnis.

If you’ve checked in recently on my other blog, Killer Covers, you know that I’ve been running a two-week-long series of posts there showcasing the vintage fronts from John D. MacDonald novels. That series ends today—but in a big way. With this being the 100th anniversary of MacDonald’s birth, I have put together a gallery of 76 book covers, taken not only from his 21 Travis McGee novels, but also from the twice as many standalones he penned over his almost 40-year career. Artists represented in this collection range from Robert McGinnis and Ron Lesser to Mitchell Hooks, Victor Kalin, and Owen Kampen. Click here to see the full display.

READ MORE: “John D. MacDonald’s 100th Birthday Celebration” and “John D. and Me: John Jakes—the Finale” (Sarasota Herald-Tribune); “Born 100 Years Ago, Mystery Writer John D. Macdonald Foresaw the Risks Facing Florida’s Beauty,” by Craig Pittman (Tampa Bay Times); “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Century of John D.  MacDonald,” by Bob Byrne (Black Gate).

Happy Birthday, Robert McGinnis!

Today brings the 90th birthday of acclaimed American artist Robert McGinnis, who for decades now has been producing eye-catching, frequently sexy paperback cover illustrations—often for works of crime and mystery fiction—as well as iconic film posters. To celebrate, our sister blog Killer Covers will present nine of McGinnis’ most appealing book fronts, one per hour, in recognition of his first nine decades of life. You’ll find the completed set of those offerings here.

(The artwork topping this post comes from the 1972 Signet edition of Carter Brown’s The Aseptic Murders, one of many Brown paperbacks graced by McGinnis’ paintings over the years.)

Bullet Points: Friday Sweep-Up Edition

• Earlier this month, Agatha Christie’s estate declared the results of an online survey that asked readers to choose their favorite works from among the English mystery writer’s oeuvre. The top vote-getter, it turned out, was And Then There Were None (1939). That didn’t settle the matter, however. Other critics subsequently listed their own top Christie whodunits, all by way of celebrating the author’s 125th birthday on September 15. Now, blogger-editor Curtis J. Evans (Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961) has sifted through 31 “best of” compilations to see which novels won the majority of endorsements. Again--as you can see here--And Then There Were None walks away with the top honors, while the second and third spots belong to Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, respectively. The runners-up are here.

• When I read in The New York Times that best-selling author Jackie Collins had died of breast cancer at age 77, I figured the news was well outside my reportorial bailiwick. The Gumshoe Site reminds me, though, that in addition to producing “sex-filled, escapist, utterly unpretentious” works such as The Bitch and Hollywood Wives, Collins “wrote a number of crime novels, including Lovehead (Allen, 1974; retitled The Love Killers, Warner 1975), and [the] Santangelo (Crime) Family series, which started with Chances (Warner, 1981). Her last novel was The Santangelos (St. Martin’s, 2015).”

• Not every Rap Sheet reader is also a Facebook user, I’m sure. But for those of you who are, and would like to see what the office of author James Lee Burke (House of the Rising Sun) offers, click here for thoroughly delightful tour of his writing space, during which he “talks about a few of his favorite things in the office.”

• I confess, I haven’t yet begun watching the new, fourth season of the Western-detective series Longmire on Netflix, which began streaming on September 10. However, Edward A. Grainger (aka David Cranmer) has almost finished reviewing all of its 10 episodes for Criminal Element. Click here to read his fine critiques.

• It’s hard to believe that NBC-TV’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is currently in its 17th year of broadcasting. I was never a fan, having found the program too consistently grim for my tastes. But blogger “Ben” at Dead End Follies has recently begun exploring the show’s numerous seasons, and he has a few interesting things to say about it at this particular link.

• Oh, to spend October in Britain’s capital … Double O Section reports that “Lucky Londoners will be able to enjoy the event of a lifetime next month when Dame Diana Rigg herself does an on-stage Q&A following a screening of the classic Avengers episode ‘The House That Jack Built.’ It’s one of a pair of absolute classic Emma Peel episodes screening on October 25 at BFI Southbank.”

• Holy obscure holidays! Saturday is Batman Day.

• Meanwhile, Keith DeCandido at Tor.com has announced that “Starting next Friday, I will be doing The Bat-Rewatch! I’ll be looking back at the Batman TV series developed by William Dozier for ABC, and which ran from 1966 to 1968. Between seasons one and two, we’ll also take a gander at the Batman feature film that was released in the summer of 1966.” Follow DeCandido’s series here.

• L.A. Weekly celebrates TV shows, especially Michael Connelly’s Bosch, that make good use of their Los Angeles settings.

• Did you know that American composer Henry Mancini’s famous theme for the 1958-1961 private-eye TV series Peter Gunn has lyrics? Yeah, neither did I--and in fact, they were added after the show’s demise. You can listen to jazz songstress Sarah Vaughn belt out those lyrics below, and follow along with a printed version here.



• When I finished watching the very dramatic third season of Ripper Street earlier this year, I presumed that that historical crime series was over and done. The concluding episode of Season 3 certainly suggested as much. But I must have missed the news, reported in The Guardian, that “Amazon Prime … has recommissioned the Victorian detective drama for a fourth and fifth season.” Hurrah!

• English singer-songwriter Sam Smith’s title song for the forthcoming, 24th James Bond flick, Spectre, was released this morning. And despite former Bond actor Roger Moore declaring that it’s “very haunting and wonderfully orchestrated,” other critical opinions are mixed, at best. Read more here and here.

• Otto Penzler, editor and proprietor of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop, submits his list of the “5 Most Underappreciated Crime Writers.” I certainly agree with him about Daniel Woodrell.

• This may be the most ludicrous idea yet for turning a once-popular TV series into a big-screen picture. From In Reference to Murder: “NBC has put in development a new take on the 1979 ABC mystery Hart to Hart, which starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a husband-and-wife sleuthing duo. The reboot hails from producer Carol Mendelsohn and Sony TV and will center on a gay couple. The new Hart to Hart is described as ‘a modern and sexy retelling of the classic series that focuses on by-the-book attorney Jonathan Hart and free-spirited investigator Dan Hartman, who must balance the two sides of their life: action-packed crime-solving in the midst of newly found domesticity.’” Why in the hell can’t Hollywood seem to come up with fresh movie-making concepts anymore?

• The captivating Amanda Seyfried has landed a supposedly pivotal but still under-wraps role in Showtime TV’s on-again, off-again, then on-again limited series revival of Twin Peaks. TV Line reports that “Seyfried will appear in multiple episodes, making it her biggest TV gig since Big Love ended in 2011.” Showtime plans to introduce its new Twin Peaks sometime next year.

• Artist Charles McVicar’s name came up in a Killer Covers post I wrote back in June having to do with his painting for the front of The Search for Tabatha Carr (1964). I’m reminded of him once more, thanks to the excellent TV history Web site Television Obscurities, which this week has been rolling out write-ups about small-screen publicity posters from 37 years ago. “To promote its Fall 1978 line-up,” the site explains, “ABC commissioned a series of seven posters--one for each night of the week--depicting characters from its new and returning shows.” McVicar appears to have executed the artwork for all six of the posters showcased thus far: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Check Television Obscurities tomorrow for the final entry in this set. UPDATE: ABC-TV’s Saturday publicity poster can now be found at this link.

• If you’ve never seen the 1972 NBC-TV pilot The Judge and Jake Wyler, starring Bette Davis as a hypochondriac former jurist who employs an ex-con (played by Doug McClure) as her investigative partner, you can now watch it on YouTube, in seven parts. Click here to find Part I as well as links to the succeeding installments. And if you didn’t know this already, The Judge and Jake Wyler was produced by Columbo creators Richard Levinson and William Link.

• Crime Fiction Lover continues it’s “Classics in September” series with this look back at Australian “Queen of Crime” June Wright. Catch up with all the “Classics in September” posts here.

• In the pages of The New Yorker, Michelle Dean recalls “The Secrets of Vera Caspary, the Woman Who Wrote Laura.”

• The blog Longreads provides this reprint of David Lehman’s excellent essay, “The Radical Pessimism of Dashiell Hammett,” which appeared originally in The American Scholar.

• Interviews worth finding: Attica Locke talks with fellow novelist Alafair Burke for The Life Sentence; Scottish writer Paul Johnston (who I also chatted with recently) goes one-on-one with Sandra Dick of the Edinburgh News in an exchange during which Johnston says, “I witter about plagues of boils and the odd book”; basketball star-turned-fictionist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar supplies some background to his brand-new novel, Mycroft Holmes; again for The Life Sentence, editor Lisa Levy quizzes David Lagercrantz about his fourth entry in Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web; Warren Ellis answers some questions about his new James Bond comic book; and recent National Medal of Arts recipient Stephen King asks Lee Child about his 20th Jack Reacher thriller, Make Me.

• The BBC’s Radio 4 gears up for Halloween.

• Congratulations to Jason Pinter, the editor and publisher of Polis Books, who has been named by Publishers Weekly as one of its inaugural Star Watch honorees, a commendation that “recognizes young publishing professionals who have distinguished themselves as future leaders of the industry.”

• Finally, if you haven’t been keeping up with my Killer Covers blog, note that in just the last week I have posted there a collection of classic school-related paperbacks, a “Two-fer Tuesday” entry focusing on tales about black attire, a significant update and expansion of my 2010 gallery of novel fronts by Ernest Chiriacka, aka Darcy, and today’s post about the eye-catching 1949 edition of Bitter Ending.