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.
