Albert’s Foray Into MacLean Territory

Over in my Killer Covers blog, I have just posted a longish and abundantly illustrated piece about a quartet of Alistair MacLeanesque paperback thrillers published in the 1970s and penned by American crime novelist Marvin H. Albert. Perhaps most widely remembered for having created the character of Miami private eye Tony Rome (portrayed by Frank Sinatra in a couple of films), Albert was a versatile and prolific author who, over a 40-year career, turned out myriad series and standalones behind a surfeit of aliases.

Among those pseudonyms was “Ian MacAlister,” under which he produced four international action-adventure novels, including 1973’s Driscoll’s Diamonds and 1975’s Valley of the Assassins. “Like MacLean’s best-sellers,” I explain in the article, “Albert’s skinnier MacAlister novels were action-packed one-offs, each boasting a different but ever-resourceful protagonist, ‘exotic and inhospitable settings,’ do-or-die missions, stunning young women, and bad guys of the plainly reprehensible and minacious sort.” Far from being ignominious additions to the author’s portfolio, those books were—to quote one modern reviewer—“popcorn fiction done right,” with hand-painted covers that “did much to promote them as compelling nail-biters worth their retail price of 75 cents to $1.50.”

To learn more, clickety-clack right here.

Killer Covers Hosts Juvies and Jailbat

The Rap Sheet’s younger sister blog, Killer Covers, celebrates its 14th birthday today, placing it firmly in adolescence. To celebrate, I’ve created a gallery of 50-odd paperback fronts with a juvenile-delinquent theme—very popular among authors and publishers of the mid-20th century, who seemed to think the worst about teenagers.

Click here to enjoy the full assortment of images.

Let Us Sing the Praises of Bama

Killer Covers is now four days into a fornight-long (at least) salute to American paperback-cover artist James Bama, who died on April 24 at age 95. Bama may be most familiar for his contributions to Bantam Books’ extensive Doc Savage series, but he also created the distinctive fronts for numerous crime, western, and science-fiction novels, as well as works of mainstream fiction. You can catch up with all of Killer Covers’ Bama posts by clicking here.

Take Covers

This week brought the 12th anniversary of my having launched The Rap Sheet’s sister blog, Killer Covers. To mark the occasion, I began posting—one per day—a dozen “classic book fronts that have attracted my attention over this last pandemic-seared year, and that I would like to share with readers.” Catch up with the whole series here.

Fishing for Hooks

From now through the end of March, my book-design blog, Killer Covers, will salute the artistry of Detroit-born painter and illustrator Mitchell Hooks, who died seven years ago today at age 89. At least one new book cover, film poster, or piece of magazine art credited to Hooks will be posted each day, the first of those being his work on the 1956 Dell release While the City Sleeps. Enjoy it here.

Adams Raises the Dead

Today begins the second and final full week of Killer Covers’ tribute to Anglo-Scots painter and book-cover artist Tom Adams, who passed away on December 17, at age 93. Click here to see his illustration for the 1979 British edition of Peter Straub’s novel Ghost Story. And you can catch up with the whole series here.

Adams’ Worth

Renowned Anglo-Scots painter and paperback cover artist Tom Adams died on December 17, at age 93, and today the Killer Covers blog begins a tribute to his abundant work, slated to run through the end of 2019. At least one new Adams-illustrated book front will be posted there every day, beginning with this afternoon’s offering: Death in the Clouds, by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1976)

Macdonald’s Changing Faces

I’ve had reason recently to investigate the covers on various paperback editions of Ross Macdonald’s novels. In the course of doing so, I’ve posted some of those classic fronts in my Killer Covers blog. If you have missed noticing, click here to see the only cover Robert McGinnis painted for a Macdonald work. Click here to gaze in appreciation at Mitchell Hooks’ 1970s fronts for the Lew Archer series. And click here to compare those latter covers with Hooks’ illustrations for a pair of 1955 Macdonald releases.

12 Months, 12 Fronts

Yesterday marked the official 10th birthday of our sister blog, Killer Coves. However, the celebration will continue for the next week and a half, as Killer Covers goes about posting “a year’s worth of books bearing titles that include the names of months—our own ‘calendar of crime,’ if you will.” Click here to keep up with the whole series.

Dame Nation

Today brings a conclusion to Killer Covers’ latest iteration of its “Twelve Dames of Christmas” celebration, tied to the annual Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25-January 5). It’s been more than a bit of fun rolling out all dozen distinctive book fronts. You can catch up on any you missed simply by clicking here.

Hello, Dolls!

Sorry for the recent shortage of fresh posts on this page. Between planning for the holidays, helping to open a new independent bookstore in Seattle, and working on various editorial assignments, I’ve had little free time lately. But I did launch, on Monday, a second “Twelve Dames of Christmas” series in my book-design blog, Killer Covers. Through January 5, I shall be expanding a selection of vintage novels—all boasting the word “dame” in their titles—that I introduced two years ago on the same page. You can follow the series here.

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?

Signing Off on Stanley

The Groom Lay Dead, by George Harmon Coxe (Dell, 1951).
Cover illustration by Robert Stanley.

Amid a veritable landslide of book scans, the blog Killer Covers this morning brought to a conclusion its 10-day salute to American paperback artist Robert Stanley (1918-1996).

The site explains this venture was conceived a full year ago, but was ultimately brought to fruition in a mad rush at the end of March. It commenced with the roll-out of “[Randal S.] Brandt’s excellent summation of the artist’s career; slid from there into a series of posts showcasing the range of Stanley’s attractive and frequently innovative book-façade illustrations; and led to a selection of the painter’s Western-fiction fronts and a remembrance of his work for men’s adventure magazines.” Today’s final display of Stanley’s efforts should cement in readers’ minds the fact that Stanley created some of the most recognizable paperback fronts of the mid-20th century.

If you weren’t keeping up with Killer Covers’ series, you can go back now and discover what the fuss was all about. Simply click here.

Stanley Steams Ahead

Today in my Killer Covers blog, I launched what will be a heavily illustrated tribute to prolific paperback cover artist Robert C. Stanley (1918-1996). As I note in an introduction to that series, Stanley’s “realistic artistry graced more than 200 covers of paperback releases from Dell Books during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, giving that line an immediately familiar style.”

Killer Covers’ Stanley salute will continue through next Friday, April 6, with new postings every day. I kick things off with California librarian Randal S. Brandt’s introduction to this artist’s life and labors.

You should be able to keep track of the whole series here.

A Bumper Crop of Bennetts

Killer Covers’ month-long tribute to Connecticut artist-illustrator Harry Bennett concluded yesterday. Although the series ran for 31 days—from December 4 through January 3—the blog managed to present 70 of Bennett’s book fronts in total. If you weren’t keeping up with the posts as they appeared, you can click here to find them all.

Gifts for December: Bounteous Bennetts

Beware the Curves (Pocket, 1960), by A.A. Fair, aka Erle Stanley Gardner; and The Savage, by Noel Clad (Permabooks, 1959). Artwork on both novels created by Harry Bennett.

American artist-illustrator Harry Bennett (1919-2012), who created some of the most recognizable paperback fronts of the 20th century, is being honored in my book design-oriented blog, Killer Covers, with a month-long succession of posts showcasing some of his best work. As I explain in the introduction to that series,

The paintings he produced for U.S. publishers ranging from Permabooks and Pocket to Gold Medal and Berkley could be seductive or shocking, ominous or humorous, but they were rarely less than outstanding. During a more than three-decades-long freelance career, Bennett—who passed away just over five years ago, at age 93—created the anterior imagery for everything from detective novels and Gothic romances to Hitchcockian thrillers and tales about amorous young nurses. “Literally millions of people have seen hundreds of paintings by Harry Bennett, but few would know his name,” writes a blogger who calls himself NatureGeezer and lives in Ridgefield, the historic western Connecticut town where Bennett also resided for most of his life. Along with artists such as Robert McGinnis, Mitchell Hooks, Paul Rader, Harry Schaare, Ernest Chiriacka, and Victor Kalin, Bennett made 20th-century paperbacks worth collecting simply for their covers.

Today, Killer Covers celebrates the fourth day of its Bennett tribute by posting a scan of the 1963 Pocket Books edition of Erle Stanley Gardner’s This Is Murder, a book the prolific Gardner originally published in 1935 under the pseudonym Charles J. Kenney. You can keep up with the full series by clicking here.

Get an Eyeful of More Peeping Toms

Anyone who’s worked with me knows my perfectionist tendencies. I generally hold myself to standards just shy of unreasonable, whether in my news reporting, my interviewing, my book criticism, or my blog designing. When laboring on behalf of print publications, my habitual desire to tinker with my work is restricted by deadlines and the fact that once a magazine or newspaper article (or a book, for that matter) goes to press, I can no longer polish sentences, sharpen my analysis of a subject, or correct errors I failed to spot originally. However, such limitations don’t necessarily exist in the world of Web publishing. Even after a piece is presented in The Rap Sheet or Killer Covers, I can return to it hours, days, weeks, months, or years later to make improvements or additions. And I often do.

This flexibility has served me well in regard to themed galleries of vintage book fronts I’ve assembled for Killer Covers. Over the last couple of years, I have gone back to several early collections of paperback covers—including those having to do with suburban sleaze, summertime sex and scandals, captivating blondes, and showcased legs—and improved their look, beefed up their diversity, or both. This week I finally found the opportunity to enhance and expand a feature I put together a full eight years ago, about Peeping Tom covers.

I haven’t done much to that post in terms of its text, but I have greatly expanded its visual presentation. When the Peeping Tom gallery first went up in October 2009, it comprised a modest 33 book covers; now, with my having spent a few extra years collecting specimens of this breed, it has almost quadrupled in size, boasting 121 fine façades—a new Killer Covers record. There are likely other handsome examples out there waiting to be discovered. For the present, though, I declare this set pretty darn perfect.

Click here to see if you agree.

Right This Way to the Exhibits

With a new academic year now starting up in the United States, this seems like an ideal time to revisit Killer Covers’ gallery of more than 80 school-related book fronts—including a couple of new ones I just added to that mix. You’ll find them all right here.

While we’re on the subject of such artistic collections … As you know, last Friday I added to this page a post showcasing 106 covers “on which women bare or prepare to bare their assets to men (and occasionally other women), either voluntarily or not, and with varying responses.” That provoked one reader to ask what other themed compilations might be found in the archives of this site.

Some of the galleries listed below (in order of publication) are larger than others, but I hope they never cease to entertain:

• Suburban Sleaze (May 12, 2009)
• Summertime Sex and Scandals
(June 18, 2009)
• Peeping Tom Covers (October 4, 2009)
• Horizontal Paperback Fronts
(October 31, 2009)
• Covers Starring Women’s (and Sometimes Men’s) Legs (March 7, 2020)
• A Treasury of Blondes (June 12, 2010)
• Books with “Kiss” in Their Title (February 14, 2012)
• Deadly Beds (April 19, 2014)
• Nymphs and Nymphos Aplenty (May 19, 2014)
• Bodies in Bathtubs (May 11, 2015)
• Wantons on the Loose (June 8, 2015)
• French Fronts for Bastille Day (July 14, 2015)
• Vixens! Yes, Vixens! (December 23, 2015)
• Brass Beds (May 3, 2016)
• Red-Headed Sinners (May 12, 2016)
• Swamp Treats (January 25, 2017)
• Books with “Business” in Their Title (June 21, 2017)

In a perfect world, I would put together many more of these colorful collections for my Killer Covers blog. I have no shortage of ideas, believe me, but not enough spare time to do the work. I guess we’ll just all have to be patient, and wait.

This Should Turn a Few Heads

What may be the biggest themed paperback gallery I’ve ever posted went up today in my Killer Coves blog. It offers 106 book fronts “on which women bare or prepare to bare their assets to men (and occasionally other women), either voluntarily or not, and with varying responses.” You can enjoy the whole set here.

In All Their Felonious Finery

Today wrapped up Killer Covers’ “The 12 Dames of Christmas" series, that blog’s celebration of dangerous damsels and brassy bombshells. If, for some reason beyond human understanding, you haven’t been keeping up with the day-by-day roll-out of these handsome, vintage covers, you can catch up with them all by clicking here.