All Alone, with Trouble in Mind

Book titles containing the word “widow” suddenly seem to be everywhere on my radar. March brought the publication of Alma Katsu’s “gripping, authentic spy procedural,” Red Widow (Putnam), and earlier this month saw the re-release (by Cutting Edge Books) of Louis Lorraine’s 1961 sleaze classic, Commuter Widow. Soon after I downloaded the inarguably not-safe-for-work front cover of that new Commuter Widow edition, I had cause to search for it again in my computer files … and came up with a slew of attractive vintage novels also featuring “widow” in their names.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t know the name of the artist whose remarkable work fronts the 1958 Crest printing of Richard Wormser’s The Widow Wore Red, shown above. But I can identify the painters of most of the paperback covers below, from Bill George (Black Widow, 1954) and Harry Barton (both the undated Exciting Widow and the yarn from which it swiped its art, 1963’s That Kind of Widow) to Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka (Self-Made Widow, 1958, and 1963’s The Torrid Widow), Bob Hilbert (1953’s Night at the Mocking Widow), and Robert McGinnis (the undated Suddenly a Widow, by George Harmon Coxe, and 1966’s No Tears from the Widow, by Carter Brown).

Charles Copeland gave us the cover for Rick Holmes’ New Widow (1963), while Weekend Widows (1966) boasts a front painted by Al Rossi, and Paul Rader is credited with creating the image for Wayward Widow (1962). You’re looking at Clark Hulings’ work on 1957’s The Golden Widow, James Meese’s artistry decorating 1957 Pocket release of Ursula Curtiss’ The Widow’s Web, and the talents of Mort Engel showcased on the 1965 Ace version of that same Curtiss tale. Finally, Griffith Foxley was responsible for the painting that introduces the 1954 Dell release of Dolores Hitchens’ Widows Won’t Wait (a singularly Erle Stanley Gardner-ish title); Mitchell Hooks was behind the 1955 Bantam cover of The Widow and the Web, by Robert Martin; and the great Walter Popp imagined the candelabra-wielding redhead on Evelyn Bond’s Widow in White (1973).

Click on any of the images here for an enlargement.

READ MORE: “Review: The Widow,” by Steven J. McDermott (Mostly Old Books and Rust).

Better Red

Redheaded Sinners, by Jonathan Craig (Lancer, 1952). Sadly, the artist responsible for this work is not identified.

The recent release of Max Allan Collins’ Better Dead—the 16th novel in his award-winning series starring private eye Nathan “Nate” Heller, set primarily in 1953—reminds us of a popular Cold War slogan. “Better dead than red” and its philosophical opposite, “better red than dead,” were once frequently heard and published, back in the days when the United States’ World War II alliance of necessity with the Soviet Union (the “reds”) had collapsed, and Western fears of Communism were rampant. Although “better dead than red” apparently persists as “a schoolyard taunt aimed at redhaired children,” it has otherwise fallen out of currency. Except in stories, such as Better Dead, that take place during the Eisenhower era.

But let us resurrect the phrase, if only for a moment, in order to exhibit a gallery of vintage paperback fronts that reference redheaded figures. There have been, of course, myriad covers released over the years featuring beautiful scarlet-tressed women (including this one and this one, as well as this one and this beauty). In putting together the collection below, though, I have restricted my choices to works on which the word “redhead” (or some version of that) appears either in the title or the main teaser line. Represented among these selections are such artists as Robert McGinnis (A Redhead for Mike Shayne, Operation Fireball, Killer Mine, Wanted: Danny Fontaine), Ron Lesser (Fatal Undertaking), Harry Schaare (5 Who Vanished, How Sharp the Point), Robert Maguire (The Case of the Radioactive Redhead, To Keep or Kill), Clark Hulings (Never Victorious, Never Defeated), William George (The Frightened Fingers), Barye Phillips (Until You Are Dead), and Harry Barton (The Squeeze and 1961’s Squeeze Play—with an image that latter appeared on 1964’s The Swimming Pool Set). I venture to say that no sane individual would rather be dead than have the opportunity to appreciate these tributes to redheads.

Click on any of the covers here to open an enlargement.

READ MORE: “The Case of the Restless Redhead (1954), by Erle Stanley Gardner,” by Kate Jackson (Cross-Examining Crime).