When “Dolls” Come Out to Play

South Florida resident Robert Deis, with whom I worked on last year’s The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens, alerts me to this month’s release of its sequel, The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 2: Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls, co-edited by Deis, Bill Cunningham, and Daniel Zimmer. I haven’t yet laid my hands on a copy, but here’s Amazon’s skinny on its intents and contents:

In the late 1950s, while studying with the legendary art teacher Frank J. Reilly at the Art Students League in New York City, Ron Lesser embarked on a long career as one of America’s top illustration artists. Over the next four decades, his artwork was used for thousands of paperback book covers, movie posters, magazines, and advertisements. Many great artists once made a good living doing such illustration artwork and Ron Lesser is among the greatest. He’s also one of the few who are still alive and still painting.

Like a number of other top 20th-century illustrators, Lesser went on to do paintings for galleries as the market for illustration art faded away in the 1990s. His gallery artwork includes Civil War and Western scenes, sports, celebrity portraits, and new versions of the types of subjects he once did for paperback covers. The Art of Ron Lesser Vol. 1 is the first in the series covering Ron's paperback, movie and advertising art. The Art of Ron Lesser Vol. 2 covers Ron's transition out of paperback illustration and into advertising, movie, and gallery illustration which he continues to this day.

In his Men’s Pulp Mags blog, Deis explains that Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls “showcases scores of the paintings of sexy women Lesser has done in recent decades for galleries. Some are modern versions of the ‘dangerous dame’-style cover art he did for paperbacks in the 1960s and 1970s. Others are paintings of sexy celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page, Brigitte Bardot, and Pam Anderson, and pop-culture characters like Vampirella, Red Sonja, and Harley Quinn.”

Like its predecessor, this book is said to include “commentary by Ron about his artwork and career.”

It sounds like a beautiful, fun follow-up to our previous work!

A Surprise Christmas Gift

I’ve dutifully collected and publicized “best books of the year” lists for a long time now, but never before has a work bearing my byline featured on such a roll of honor.

This last weekend—on Christmas Eve, in fact—prolific American novelist James Reasoner finally announced his own 10 favorite books of the year. Among those choices were Lawrence Block’s The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder (LB Productions), Lee Goldberg’s Malibu Burning (Thomas & Mercer), and Manning Lee Stokes’ The Grave’s in the Meadow (1961). Touted, too, was The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens. That gorgeous work was edited principally by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, but includes an extensive interview I did with artist/illustrator Lesser.

I couldn’t be happier with this turn of events.

After publishing half a dozen non-fiction (mostly history) books during the 1990s and early 2000s, I decided to try penning fiction, instead. That switch hasn’t proved to be nearly as successful as I’d hoped, and I had pretty much resigned myself to never again seeing my name appear on a book front. But then Deis asked to incorporate my Lesser exchange into a study of that artist’s lengthy career. I would have been an idiot to say no, so I didn’t. Only upon the book’s publication last May, however, did I realize my byline was on its cover.

That recognition has now been amplified by the book being selected as one of Reasoner’s top picks of 2023. Thank you to Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham for making all of this possible!

Digitizing Dames

Robert Deis, one of the principal editors responsible for getting The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens before the reading public this last summer, tells me that a “Digital Replica Edition” of that beautiful book is now available.

I was privileged to have a long interview I did with renowned paperback-cover art Lesser featured among the work’s contents.

“A Digital Replica Edition like this is not a standard e-book,” Deis explains. “It’s a high-resolution electronic copy that looks great on an iPad or computer screen.” The Kindle version can be purchased from Amazon for $12.99, but it’s apparently free to Kindle Unlimited members. That makes it the least expensive version to be had of Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens; the original, hardcover edition goes for $49.99, with the paperback priced at $39.95.

Still More Love for “Deadly Dames”

This morning brings a very fine review, by Australian novelist/pop culture critic Andrew Nette, of The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens, a book to which I contributed an extensive interview with the artist; it was published this last May. Of that gorgeously illustrated tribute, principally edited by Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, Nette writes:

The Art of Ron Lesser Vol 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens looks at the career of one of the giants of postwar pulp illustration and a man who is still alive and painting. The paperback covers he did for the Gold Medal editions of John D MacDonald’s novels and Dell’s Johnny Liddell series, are probably his best known work. But he contributed many other paperback covers, as well as movie posters and magazines. The Art of Ron Lesser Vol 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens not only beatifically showcases some of Lesser’s stunning artwork, it executes a deep dive into the mechanics of his career and the economic and cultural forces that influenced it. There is a detailed interview with Lesser conducted by Pierce. The book also sheds some much welcome light ... on the people who were vital to the appeal of pulp paperback cover art but who have until recently been erased from its history, the cover models, including Lesser’s wife, Claudia Lesser, and Elaine Reynolds and Lisa Karen.

Also critiqued in Nette’s piece are a couple of other 2023 releases: The Trials of Hank Janson, by Steve Holland and Adam Rowe’s “simply sumptuous Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s.

Click here to enjoy all of Nette’s observations.

READ MORE: “The Lovely Ladies of Lesser’s Life,” by J. Kingston Pierce (Killer Covers).

Bullet Points: Agatha in Bronze Edition

• There are a couple of interesting items contained in author Max Allan Collins’ latest blog post. First off, he says he’s “setting out to do a podcast series based on the Nathan Heller novels. Each multi-episode podcast would take on a single book. I will write these adaptations myself.” Expect to see the announcement of a crowd-funding campaign to get the initial podcast in that series going. Second, despite what Collins has previously termed a “disappointing lack of any support from Greenlight Iowa” to produce a film based on his A Christmas Carol-inspired short story, “Blue Christmas,” the author did succeed in raising $6,375 through an Indiegogo effort (perhaps $13,000+ short of what he says will ultimately be needed), and is in the process of “serious pre-production now.” He reports that actor Gary Sandy, with whom he has worked before, is his top pick to assume the lead role of Jake Marley, and “we are having auditions this week for the rest of the Blue Christmas cast … [T]he shoot is toward the end of October.” Oh, and that same blog post features a quite enjoyable video interview Titan Books’ Andrew Sumner did with Collins about the new Mike Hammer yarn, Dig Two Graves, the 14th Hammer novel he’s penned using material left behind by Spillane, after he died in 2006.

• In time for holiday gift buying: When The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens was first published several months ago, it existed only in hardcover. But now that book on which I worked with Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham boasts a paperback edition, as well. It’s equally beautiful, but $17 less expensive!

• First, some good TV news (from In Reference to Murder): “Masterpiece on PBS has announced the premiere date and released first look images for the upcoming season of Miss Scarlet and the Duke, which returns on January 7, 2024, for its fourth season. In the new season, Eliza (Kate Phillips) has taken over the business of detective agency Nash & Sons, and things are not going entirely smoothly, although help comes from some familiar sources. Outside of work, her relationship with William Wellington, a gruff Scottish detective inspector of Scotland Yard (the ‘Duke,’ played by Stuart Martin) builds towards a looming decision that will shape both their lives.” I’ve much enjoyed this historical mystery series.

• Now the bad news: “The premiere of HBO’s anticipated True Detective: Night Country has been pushed back and is now listed as January of 2024 (the exact day is unknown). In Night Country, when the long winter night falls in Ennis, Alaska, the eight men who operate the Tsalal Arctic Research Station vanish without a trace. To solve the case, detectives Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) must confront their pasts and the dark truths lying underneath the Arctic ice. John Hawkes, Christopher Eccleston, Fiona Shaw, Finn Bennett, Anna Lambe, Aka Niviâna, Isabella Star Lablanc, and Joel D. Montgrand also star.”

• For what it’s worth, Amazon appears to have updated its list of the “best mysteries and thrillers of 2023 so far.” It’s already crowning S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed (Flatiron) as this year’s top choice, but also applauds Dennis Lehane’s Small Mercies (Harper), Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Berkley), Thomas Perry’s Murder Book (‎Mysterious Press), Jacqueline Winspear’s The White Lady (Harper), Charlie Donlea’s Those Empty Eyes (Kensington), T.J. Newman’s Drowning (‎Avid Reader Press), and 13 other works—only a few of which I’ve yet read.

• With the Bloody Scotland crime-writing festival set to begin just two days from now in the central Scottish town of Stirling, take a moment to check out the Nordic Noir blog’s choices of the best events on the festival’s program. Meanwhile, Live and Deadly highlights the ways Bloody Scotland supports writers new to this genre.

• As might have been predicted, opinions are divided on the artistic results here: “A life-sized bronze statue of Agatha Christie has been unveiled in the Oxfordshire town of Wallingford, near where the detective novelist resided for more than 40 years,” The Guardian reports. “The statue depicts the writer holding a book and seated on a bench overlooking the Kinecroft, an area of open grassland. Sculptor Ben Twiston-Davies—who also designed the Agatha Christie memorial in London—said in a YouTube video about the statue that it shows her ‘looking out as if she’s seen a clue for one of her stories.’”

• Southern California author-screenwriter Lee Goldberg is always an entertaining guest speaker, as I was reminded during the recent Bouchercon in San Diego. He demonstrates his humor again in two recent interviews on the subject of his brand-new thriller novel, Malibu Burning (Thomas & Mercer): this one with Murder by the Book’s Sara DiVello, and this other one with Story Blender’s Steven James.

• Another writer who has been receiving widespread attention is UK mystery-maker/TV show host Richard Osman, whose fourth and latest entry in his Thursday Murder Club series, The Last Devil to Die, should be out this week from Viking. The Guardian’s Charlotte Edwardes profiles him here, while The New York Times’ Sarah Weinman composed this story about him for Esquire magazine.

• If you didn’t snag a copy of William Link’s The Columbo Collection 13 years ago, when it debuted, you now have another chance. Publisher Crippen & Landru has announced that the book, which contains 12 original stories featuring television detective Lieutenant Columbo—all written by his co-creator—is back in stock after a long absence. And still available at the 2010 paperback price of $18.

• Finally, a sad note: Eighty-year-old writing teacher/coach, former U.S. Navy cryptographer, and fictionist Les Edgerton died in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on August 31 after “a short battle with COVID 19,” according to his funeral home obituary. With more than 20 books to his credit, including the novels Adrenaline Junkie and The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping, as well as the 2007 writer's resource Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go, Edgerton had been nominated for a wide variety of prizes, from the O. Henry Award to the Edgar Award for Best Short Story. Not long before his passing, he had won the Killer Nashville convention’s Claymore Award with the opening 50 pages of an unpublished manuscript, Francois Roberge—The Fixer.

Cementing Lesser’s Legacy

Left: Pleasant Places, by Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr. (Fawcett Crest, 1978). Right: Bombshell, by G.G. Fickling (Pyramid, 1964).

Well, it took me a somewhat longer time than I had expected to complete, but I have finally posted—in my Killer Covers blog—a broad interview I did recently with Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham, the brains behind the beauteous new book, The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens (Pulp 2.0).

Now a spry 81 years old, New York resident Ron Lesser is “one of the last of the top mid-20th-century illustration artists who is not only still alive but still painting,” notes Deis. At the height of his career, Lesser’s creations graced magazines, movie posters, and music album jackets, as well as myriad paperback books. Like fellow artist Robert McGinnis (who is also still around and working, at age 97), Lesser specialized in portraying young, curvaceous, and seemingly biddable women. His works graced inexpensive releases by John D. MacDonald, Carter Brown, Edward S. Aarons, Craig Rice, Robert Dietrich (aka E. Howard Hunt), G.G. Fickling, Frank Kane, Harold Q. Masur, Erle Stanley Gardner, Thomas B. Dewey, Robert Kyle, Henry Kane, Richard S. Prather, and other crime-fiction authors who were once popular but have since been all but forgotten. He also created covers for romance novels, westerns, horror yarns, and espionage thrillers. “He did a bit of everything,” Cunningham observes, “and has been doing it well for a very, very long time. That is something to be celebrated.”

(Left) Strange Friends, by Agnete Holk (Pyramid, 1963).

Indeed, Deadly Dames celebrates Lesser’s talent in grand fashion. As I explain in my introduction to the interview, it is “not only … handsomely illustrated with Lesser’s finished pieces, original art, and some of the model photographs to which he referred when creating his canvasses, but it also features comments from Lesser about his artistic techniques and spreads that highlight a selection of his favorite female models, including his wife of four decades, Claudia.” The book goes a long way toward cementing Lesser’s legacy as one of the great commercial illustrators of the last 60 years.

So numerous were the examples of Lesser’s artistry collected by Deis and Cunningham, that they’re already planning sequels (notice that the subhead of this release reads “Volume 1”). I am pleased to have had an interview I did with Lesser included in this book’s mix. I can’t expect to have an influence on the follow-ups, but it can be guaranteed that I’ll pick them up when they go on sale.

You’ll find my conversation with Deadly Dames’ developers here.

Lessons in Lesser

It has actually happened! The beautiful, long-promised book, The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens, has finally been published. It should be explained here that I had a modest hand in making this possible, as a healthy chunk of the material contained in said work draws from my Killer Covers series about Lesser and his six decades of artistic accomplishment. Therefore, I may be more enthusiastic about this release than the typical reader.

Most of the credit for this 145-page tribute belongs to Bob Deis, an expert in the art of vintage men’s adventure magazines (and the editor of a blog on that very subject), and Bill Cunningham, the head of Pulp 2.0 Press, who, with Deis, now publishes Men’s Adventure Quarterly magazine. Deis contacted me last fall, asking whether I would be willing to let my lengthy 2018 interview with Ron Lesser be reused (and slightly re-edited) in a print release, and I quickly agreed. Since then, I’ve been sent various proofs from the volume, which is not only elegant but eye-catching as hell, thanks both to Cunningham’s design expertise and Lesser’s distinctive talents.

Early responses to this book have been altogether flattering. Leif Peng, author of The Art of the REAL Tom Sawyer and creator of the Today’s Inspiration Group on Facebook, wrote:

The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 1 isn’t just a beautifully designed collection of Lesser’s exceptional artwork, we also learn about his career—and the mid-20th-century illustration business in general—as described by artist himself. For fans of popular culture, genre fiction, and lovers of the best in illustration art of the period, this book is a must-have!

Meanwhile, Australian novelist and pop culture critic Andrew Nette (who also edited my contribution to 2019’s Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980) had this to say:

Messrs. Deis, Cunningham and Pierce have cemented themselves as among the foremost fan scholars of pulp. They have put together a book that not only beautifically showcases some of Lesser's stunning artwork. It executes a deep dive into the mechanics of his work and the economic and cultural forces that influenced it, over a range of mediums—paperbacks, magazines and film posters. It also sheds much needed light on the people who were vital to the lurid appeal of pulp paperback cover art but who have for the most part been erased from its history, the cover models.

This is not only a must-have for fans of mid-century pulp artwork, but an essential resource for those interested in changing visual and illustration styles more generally.

And author Max Allan Collins’ remarks were laudatory enough to earn them a spot on the book’s rear cover:

This astonishing book—perhaps the best ever assembled about a key artist of paperback book covers—is a mind-boggling feast for the eyes. What surprised me most was how many books I have purchased over the last fifty years, how many movies I have attended, that were due to Ron Lesser luring me in. Nothing ‘lesser’ about Ron—he is one of the handful of masters, right next to [Robert] McGinnis and [Robert] Maguire.

While the focus of this first volume of Lesser’s work explores his creative turnout between 1959 and 1979, Deis and Cunningham promise that future sequels “will cover different periods and aspects of the artist and his artwork.” I’m very pleased to have been a part of this production, and am planning more coverage of its print appearance in my Killer Covers blog. Stay tuned.

PaperBack: “The Last Place God Made”

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



The Last Place God Made, by “Jack Higgins,” aka Henry “Harry” Patterson (Fawcett Crest, 1973). Cover art by Ron Lesser.

This month marks a full five years since we incorporated the “PaperBack” feature into The Rap Sheet’s regular contents. It was created for Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine, but immediately prior to Crider’s demise in February 2018, we adopted it into this blog as an homage to that author’s longtime blogging efforts. “PaperBack” premiered in The Rap Sheet on February 10, 2018.

It’s been a pleasure to host this feature over the last half-decade. We hope readers have found as much delight in discovering vintage softcover fronts and their authors as we have.

PaperBack: “South of the Bordello”

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



South of the Bordello, by “Rod Gray,” aka Gardner F. Fox
(Belmont Tower, 1973). Originally published in 1969, this novel was one of 18 featuring “sexpionage” agent Eve Drum, known as the “Lady from L.U.S.T.” (League of Undercover Spies and Terrorists). Paul Rader painted a number of covers for the first series of these paperbacks, but the artist behind the front displayed above is Ron Lesser. “The model,” he tells me, “was Lisa Karan. She was the least self-conscious of any model I ever used. Loved to pose naked. I photographed her in a clutch with [male model] Steve Holland; I thought she was going to swallow him. Bob [McGinnis] used her a lot also. Very sexy and a very nice lady.”

A later, Australian edition of South of the Bordello is here.

PaperBack: “Two to Tangle”

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



Two to Tangle, by Frank Kane (Dell, 1965), one of the last books in the Johnny Liddell private-eye series. Cover art by Ron Lesser.

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?

Double Take

Like many other readers, it seems, I’m looking forward to Hard Case Crime’s release in October of a never-before-published novel, Honey in His Mouth, by once super-productive Doc Savage creator Lester Dent. But ever since I saw the cover of that forthcoming paperback, featuring an illustration by Ron Lesser, I’ve thought it looked ... well, familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why.

Then this morning, while shuffling through some vintage jacket illustrations for future mention in The Rap Sheet’s new Killer Covers blog, I came across the front of a 1972 paperback edition of The Decoy. That novel, published originally in 1951, was at one time credited to “Edward Ronns,” a pseudonym of Edward S. Aarons, best known for writing more than 40 novels about international spy Sam Durell (Assignment: Mara Tirana, Assignment: Burma Girl, etc.).

Imagine my surprise at seeing these two covers side by side. If artist Lesser wasn’t influenced by the Decoy front, I’d be more than a little astonished. The captivating brunette in a dance hall outfit on the Aarons front has become a still more lightly clad lovely on the jacket of Honey in His Mouth. The hair is different, and they’re facing opposite directions, but the cocked hips on both long-legged women are identical, as are their facial expressions and casually held cigarettes.

Is this what’s meant by that familiar old saying, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”?