PaperBack: “TV Tramps”

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



TV Tramps, by Walter Dyer (Midwood, 1962). As observed on the Vintage Paperback & Book Covers Facebook page, not much is known about author Dyer (if that was even his real name). However, I should mention that Joy Vay, a vocalist and guitarist with TV Tramps, a “female-fronted punk band” from Asbury Park, New Jersey,” got the name for her group from this fictional exposé. Cover illustration by Robert Maguire.

PaperBack: “The Bowstring Murders”

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



The Bowstring Murders, by “Carter Dickson,” aka John Dickson Carr (Berkley, 1959). This is apparently the only one of Dickson’s many books to have been published originally (in 1933) as by “Carr Dickson.” Wikipedia adds that it is also “his only novel with the alcoholic detective John Gaunt.” “The Bowstring Murders,” observes the Golden Age of Detection Wiki,” is a bone of contention between fans of Carr’s writings. Some condemn the book; others … quite like it. Although certainly not one of Carr’s best, there is a great deal of detective interest to be found in this tale of walking suits of armour and strangling by bowstring in a haunted medieval castle which boasts the finest private collection of medieval arms and armour in Britain (Dorothy L Sayers says he got his facts wrong).” Cover art by Robert Maguire.

PaperBack: “The Dead Darling”

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



The Dead Darling, by “Jonathan Craig,” aka Frank E. Smith (Belmont Tower, 1973). This novel, originally published in 1955, was the first entry in a 10-book police procedural series. Centered on New York City’s Sixth Precinct, the series starred homicide detectives Pete Selby and his partner, Stan Rayder.
Cover illustration by Robert Maguire.

READ MORE: “Pete Selby and the Sixth Precinct: A Paperback Warrior Primer,” by Tom Simon (Paperback Warrior).

PaperBack: “The Color of Murder”

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



The Color of Murder, by Julian Symons (Dell, 1959).
Cover illustration by Robert Maguire.

PaperBack: “She Wouldn’t Surrender”

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

She Wouldn’t Surrender, by “James Kendricks,” aka Gardner Fox (Monarch, 1960). The star of this novel, Isabella Maria “Belle” Boyd, was a real-life Confederate spy during America’s bloody Civil War. Cover illustration by Robert Maguire.

PaperBack: “To Keep or Kill”

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



To Keep or Kill, by Wilson Tucker (Lion Library, 1956). As the fantasy lit blog Black Gate observes: “Wilson Tucker is a fascinating author. Although he wrote several acclaimed SF novels, including the Hugo and Nebula nominee The Year of the Quiet Sun (1970), and was even inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2003, he’s remembered today chiefly for his tireless contributions to fandom. Well, that and his habit of putting his friends into his novels—so much so that the literary term for this practice now bears his name: tuckerization.”
Cover illustration by Robert Maguire.

PaperBack: “The Last Kill”

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


The Last Kill, by Charlie Wells (Signet, 1955).
Cover illustration by Robert Maguire.

Usted Hace un Buen Trabajo, Señor

Well, this is a first. Last week, a Spanish translator and designer named Óscar Palmer e-mailed me to ask whether he could translate part of an interview I did last year with Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai for use in his own blog, Cultura Impopular. I gave my blessing to the project, and that Spanish adaptation is now available here. Since my proficiency in Spanish comes and goes, I’m not sure how precisely the piece was converted, but I assume everything’s fine.

What’s also interesting about all of this, though, is that Palmer has launched his own small publishing house, Es Pop Ediciones, which this week introduces a Spanish version of Christa Faust’s debut Hard Case Crime release, 2007’s Money Shot, “to be followed after summer,” he says, “by Peter Blauner’s Casino Moon, I hope.” He sent along a JPEG of the Spanish cover of Money Shot (A la cara), which carries very different artwork from the Glen Orbik painting seen on its American front. “I love Glen Orbik’s work,” explains Palmer, “but since I don’t know for how long I’ll be able to sustain myself as a publisher, I had to have at least one Robert Maguire cover if I intend to die a happy man, so I purchased the rights for the well-known The Brass Halo cover from his daughter. Sadly, Maguire is a great unknown too here in Spain.” The Brass Halo was a Jack Webb novel first published in 1957.

We wish Palmer all the best in making pulp crime fiction required reading in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and elsewhere in Iberia.

Beauty Is Only Page Deep

Anybody who reads this blog on a regular basis knows what a big fan I am of vintage crime-fiction book covers. So allow me to enthuse just a bit over Dames, Dolls, and Gun Molls: The Art of Robert A. Maguire (Dark Horse, $24.95), by Jim Silke. American Maguire, who died in 2005, was one of the foremost paperback illustrators of the mid-20th century. “His classic period ...,” explains the artist’s official Web site, “grew out of his skilled female images, some of the best and most memorable of the period. Maguire’s mastery of the ‘femme fatale’ created a vintage paperback icon: his women are passionate yet somehow down to earth, approachable, though sometimes at your own risk. These images compel one to wonder what led up to that instant in time and where it will lead next, the very stuff of timeless art.”

Writer and artist Jim Silke, who created the memorable Rascals in Paradise series for Dark Horse Comics in the 1990s, and more recently gave us Pinup: The Illegitimate Art (2005), loads the 96 pages of Dames, Dolls, and Gun Molls with large-scale reproductions of Maguire’s arresting artwork, as well as essays about his life and his illustrating process, some of the sketches he later turned into book jackets, and a few photos he used to capture reality on the tip of his pen. If you’d like to see some of the results, check out the flip-book sampler here.

This book might be an ideal companion to Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks, 1900-1972. But it would also be well paired with the forthcoming (in July) Dames, Dolls, and Delinquents: A Collector’s Guide to Sexy Pulp Fiction Paperbacks, by Gary Lovisi. What riches for the eyes as well as the imagination!

Oh, and if you’re wondering where you’ve seen the cover illustration of Dames, Dolls, and Gun Molls before, it’s comes from 1956’s The Bad Blonde, a Father Shanley mystery by Jack Webb.