“He Knew How to Tell a Story”

Novelist Bill Crider insists that he’s done posting collections of wonderfully lurid and generally forgotten paperback covers. “It was a lot of fun, but it takes too much time,” he explains in his blog.

However, Crider just had to put up one more set of jackets, these from the works of Harry Whittington, a prolific American pulp writer of the 20th century (not to be confused with Harry Whittington, the elderly lawyer and “Republican fixer” who Dick Cheney peppered with birdshot during a quail-hunting expedition in Texas earlier this year). Author Whittington reportedly saw more than 200 of his novels published during his career, including such eye-catchers as Don’t Speak to Strange Girls, Desire in the Dust, and A Woman Possessed. Many of his books were written under pseudonyms, and not all were crime or mystery stories; he also penned westerns, including Valley of Savage Men (1965), which Crider, writing in January Magazine, said showed that “Whittington wasn’t a great stylist, but he knew how to tell a story.”

The Whittington collection is the third of Crider’s recent paperback galleries. The previous two focused on men’s action series books and the novels of John D. MacDonald. All are worth browsing, if only to see the contrast between the tantalizing cover art of yesteryear and the tame book fronts of today.

READ MORE: “Harry Whittington at Stark House Press,” by Ed Gorman (Mystery*File).