The Twelve Dames of Christmas, 2018: #10

Celebrating this festive season with brassy bombshells.



Two Smart Dames, by Gene Ross (Leisure Library, 1952). From the Vintage Paperback & Book Covers page on Facebook: “Gene Ross was but one of a few pseudonyms used by British hard-boiled writer William Simpson Newton. You may remember him in Spike Morelli mode. He, like a few others of note, hopped on the postwar paperback band wagon loaded with all things noir, American, and tough as nails.” Illustration by Reginald Heade.

The Twelve Dames of Christmas, 2018: #2

Celebrating this festive season with brassy bombshells.



When Dames Get Tough: With Scarred Faces & Other Rarities, by “Hank Janson,” aka Stephen Daniel Frances (Telos, 2017). This volume collects three novellas starring a Chicago-based newspaperman-cum-detective who was also named Hank Janson. Illustration by Reginald Heade.

Janson (the pseudonym under which the prolific Frances, as well as several subsequent writers, published) seemed to be very fond of using the term “dame” in book titles. When Dames Get Tough was originally released in 1946 by British publisher Ward & Hitchon. It was followed by This Dame Dies Soon (1951), Hell of a Dame (1960—shown below, with uncredited artwork), and Destination Dames (1961).

Tow-Headed Teases and Troublemakers

The Black-Eyed Blonde, 1944. Illustration by Reginald Heade.

My recent post on this page about the 1963 paperback edition of Atomic Blonde, by Monte Steele, reminded me that I have long thought to update a piece I put together back in 2010, focusing on assorted book fronts featuring blondes—particularly of the more nefarious female sort. When I originally assembled that gallery, I had 38 covers in my files to showcase, but since then, I have come across many more, painted by such familiar talents as Robert Bonfils, Ernest Chiriacka (aka Darcy), Robert Maguire, Denis McLoughlin, Mort Engel, Reginald Heade, Barye Phillips, Victor Kalin, Robert Stanley, Paul Rader, Robert K. Abbett, and Rudy Nappi.

Over the last few years, I’ve gone back to enlarge this blog’s collections of “kiss covers” and “leggy covers,” as well as those highlighting summer, suburban sin, and nymphs. It’s been a real treat to revisit themes from Killer Covers’ past, and to bring the formatting of older posts into accordance with my present preferences. Today, I am rolling out a much-expanded selection of books that include the word “blonde” in their titles. From the 38 such façades I called attention to in 2010, I have now boosted the offerings to 90 works, all of which you can enjoy by clicking here.

The Twelve Dames of Christmas, #9

Celebrating this festive season with brassy bombshells.



Dame in My Bed, by Michael Storme (Archer, 1950; Kaywin, 1951). Illustration by Reginald Heade.

The Twelve Dames of Christmas, #2

Celebrating this festive season with brassy bombshells.



Hot Dames on Cold Slabs, by Michael Storme (Leisure Library, 1952). Illustration by Reginald Heade.

Playing the Links

Yeah, yeah, I know: Things have been pretty darn quiet on this page ever since Christmas Day. But hey, I was exhausted after putting together year-end wrap-ups for The Rap Sheet (see here, here, and here) as well as Kirkus Reviews (here and here), and I needed a break. I am back on the beat now, though, bringing you first some links to design-related stories elsewhere on the Web.

• I’ve written infrequently in the past about 1950s British “girlie” paperback cover artist Reginald Heade, both in The Rap Sheet and in Killer Covers. Those efforts pale in comparison, though, to the gallery Rob Baker has assembled for the blog Flashbak. As he explains,

Heade’s lurid covers adorned pulp paperbacks of authors such as Hank Janson, Roland Vane, Michael Storme, Paul Renin, Gene Ross and Spike Morelli. The artwork often pushed to the absolute limits of what was legally allowed for the time. Heade also worked in comics and drew “The Saga of the Red”, “The Captain from Castille”, “Sexton Blake versus the Astounding John Plague” and “Robin Hood” in Knock-Out (1949), and “The Sky Explorers” in Comet (1952-53).

After [World War II] Heade had moved to Barons Court in Westminster and this was where he died in 1957 aged just 56. There were no obituaries in the press and to this day not much is known about the English pulp-fiction cover artist.

Flashbak’s entertaining array of Heade works includes the fronts from such intriguingly titled books as White Slaves of New Orleans, Dame in My Bed, Plaything of Passion, and Me and My Goul.

• Fragments of Noir offers collections of covers by artist Lou Marchett (about whom you can learn more here) and those taken from the novels of James Ellroy.

• In his blog, Illustrated 007, Peter Lorenz showcases a new set of James Bond audiobook fronts from Audible UK (more on those here). He also presents a new interview with Brian Bysouth, who, he explains, “has created adverts, storyboards, covers and hundreds of iconic film posters in his 40-year career,” though “007 collectors probably know him best for his work on the posters for For Your Eyes Only, A View to Kill, and The Living Daylights.”

• If you’re interested in the history of paperbacks, check out this splendid piece by Louis Menand in a recent edition of The New Yorker, looking back at the history of those cheaper editions and how they “transformed the culture of reading.”

• Finally, the Classic Film and TV Café’s Rick29 has dug up some of the much-prized comic-book tie-ins to vintage American television programs, including The Wild Wild West and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. You can enjoy those right here.

Oops, I Thought that Read Santa’s Sister

Merry Christmas, everyone, from Killer Covers!



Satan’s Sister, by Tony Angelo (Archer Press UK, 1951).
Cover art by Reginald Heade.

Heades We Do

OK, so I admit I’ve been a bit lax about updating this blog of late. I have been concentrating my energies on The Rap Sheet instead, but that’s only because so much has been happening in the crime-fiction field of late. Despite what rumors you may have heard, I am only one person, with so few hours in each day to work. Fortunately, my delinquency in contributing to this page does not mean I haven’t been paying attention to the book-art world, and especially to recent postings about older, interesting imagery.

• One thing well worth checking out is this collection, in the French blog Les Rétro-Galeries de Mr. Gutsy, of classic illustrations by “girlie” paperback cover artist Reginald Heade. I’ve written about Heade in The Rap Sheet before, but several of his pieces that “Mr. Gutsy” offers up are new to me, including the one topping this post, taken from the 1950 Archer Press edition of Dames Are No Dice, by an author named Slim Vincent (who also penned the deliciously titled but long-forgotten Floosie on the Run).

• Meanwhile, Retrospace has assembled another in its popular series of “paperback sleaze” posts, this one featuring the fronts from such justly lost literary “gems” as Sexual Strike Force, Sinful Cowboy, and Lustin’ and Teasin’, She Needs Some Pleasin’.

• Portland, Oregon, blogger and author Evan Lewis introduces me to a new pulp artist, H.J. (Henry Joseph) Ward, in his selection of Private Detective Stories covers from 1937.

• The blog Kinoimages highlights the most beautiful poster I’ve ever seen promoting actor Steve McQueen’s 1968 detective thriller, Bullitt. The artist is identified only in a small signature as “Rey,” but we know the piece comes from Belgium.

• And I’ve unfortunately never read the 1968 James Bond novel Colonel Sun, written by Kingsley Amis under the pseudonym “Robert Markham.” However, Robert K. Abbett’s super-sexy illustration--embedded below--created to accompany an excerpt from that book in the May 1960 edition of Cavalier magazine, certainly makes me think there are elements of the tale that would appeal to me. The artwork suggests such a brutal scene--poor 007!--yet the almost topless torturer classes it up nicely with her string of pearls.



READ MORE: “The Curious Case of Colonel Sun: Kingsley Amis’s Missing Bond Novel,” by Aug Stone (The Quietus).

Four Fun Finds

Every now and then, I just want to write a short post, calling attention to beautiful old book and magazine covers I’ve happened across on the Web. So what’s stopping me? Well, nothing.

Click here to see artist Barye Phillips’ 1961 front for Road Show, a novel by German author John Haase. I love William Strohmer’s art-decoish illustration for the 1949 tale, The Body Missed the Boat, by Jack Iams. Reginald Heade’s paintings for the mid-20th century paperbacks of people such as Spike Morelli were quite sexy and certainly eye-catching--a prime example being 1952’s This Way for Hell. And this is definitely one of the best covers I’ve seen from the 1949-1951 bimonthly mag F.B.I Detective Stories.