tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233Wed, 15 May 2013 03:13:10 +0000Tom MillerJames MeeseJohn A. FernieWilliam TeasonClark HulingsSam PefferGeorge GrossMitchell HooksHarvey KidderJames HillRon LesserHorizontal CoversVictor KalinFrank McCarthyRobert McGinnisRoss MacdonaldFred FixlerRobert MaguireWil HulseyRobert K. AbbettRay JohnsonThemesWalter PoppMike LudlowMort EngelFrank KaneRobert StanleyRobert E. SchulzInterviewsKiller Covers AnniversariesPaul RaderRafael de SotoThomas AllenSam CherryEllery QueenLu KimmelObitsAl BruleAl RossiRudolph BelarskiDavid DrummondGlen OrbikErle Stanley GardnerGil CohenGino FortéJames AvatiRudy NappiVerne TosseyBarye PhillipsWilliam RoseMichael GilletteRob KellyJames BondHarry BennettMort KünstlerJack GaughanLegsSax RohmerLou MarchettiErnest ChiriackaHarry SchaareNorman SaundersUnknown ArtistsBecause It’s What’s Up Front That Countshttp://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)Blogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-2839294651132591915Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:35:00 +00002013-04-19T12:35:00.020-07:00Gino FortéSam Cherry Today in The Rap Sheet, contributor Jim Napier writes fondly about the 1943 novel Laura, by Vera Caspary. To illustrate that essay, I used the cover from the most recent Vintage UK paperback edition. However, Laura has a long printing history, and at least two other, previous editions are worth celebrating on this page. The front above comes from the 1961 Dell paperback version, illustrated byhttp://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/04/too-beautiful-to-live.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-7228211804336125144Sat, 13 Apr 2013 20:01:00 +00002013-04-22T20:07:49.582-07:00Erle Stanley Gardner If you love vintage Erle Stanley Gardner paperback book covers (and, hey, who doesn’t?), you really ought to check out the Seattle Mystery Bookshop--Hard-boiled Tumbler site, which has lately been on quite a Gardner kick. It offers illustrated works by Robert McGinnis, Mitchell Hooks, John Fernie, and others. One of my favorites among its selections, though, is actually a photographic front (http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/04/multiple-choice.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-1862963459958751449Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:44:00 +00002013-04-11T12:44:00.664-07:00It’s often interesting to see how different paperback artists of old illustrated the same work of fiction. In the case of Carter Brown’s The Bombshell, though, it seems there were all of one rather suggestive mind. You’ll find many more Carter Brown covers here.http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/04/beware-curves.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-373071055856081044Thu, 04 Apr 2013 20:14:00 +00002013-04-04T13:14:00.658-07:00Mitchell HooksVeteran U.S. Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) invited derision last week when, in answer to a question about how technology is reducing the need for human workers, he told a radio audience, “My father had a ranch; we used to have 50 to 60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.” Young soon tried to walk back his bigoted reference http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/04/crossing-line.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-1556130289635679607Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:48:00 +00002013-04-04T10:48:00.105-07:00Have you scrolled through Nick Jones’ extensive “Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s” gallery over at Existential Ennui? If not, you really should. READ MORE: “Beautiful British ’50s & ’60s Book Jacket Design: Beyond 100 Covers,” by Nick Jones (Existential Ennui).http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/04/those-beautiful-brits.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-9199944366255664559Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:37:00 +00002013-04-04T09:37:10.902-07:00Are these really the “most iconic book covers of all time”?http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/04/its-whats-up-front-that-counts.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-8404137116628379059Fri, 22 Mar 2013 03:47:00 +00002013-04-19T11:32:56.019-07:00ObitsMitchell Hooks This is sad news, indeed. Canadian artist-cartoonist Leif Peng reports in his blog, Today’s Inspiration, that noted American illustrator Mitchell Hooks--whose work has been showcased several times on this page--has died. I don’t see any obituaries online, but according to Wikipedia, Hooks perished on Monday, March 18, at age 89. Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1923, Hooks was influenced early onhttp://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/03/oh-no-mitchell-hooks-is-gone.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-3938116024957460344Fri, 22 Mar 2013 03:10:00 +00002013-03-21T20:10:24.023-07:00British author Andrew Martin, creator of the railroad-related Jim Stringer series of historical detective novels, has benefited from an attractive series of book jackets rolling out over the years. Steve Holland has now put together a galley of those covers here.http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/03/full-steam-ahead.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-1408122048325642973Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:08:00 +00002013-03-20T11:08:42.369-07:00Harry BennettSam PefferMitchell HooksBarye PhillipsWilliam RoseWalter PoppAn editor at Litro, the self-identified “little London literary magazine with a big worldview,” asked me recently to submit a selection of my 12 favorite vintage crime-novel covers. I hesitated to take the assignment, knowing that to pare my extensive collection down to a mere dozen choices was not going to be easy. Sure enough, in the end I left plenty of sacrificial carnage on my office floor http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/03/rollin-out-old-gold.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-546861019091547331Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:44:00 +00002013-03-10T13:44:13.287-07:00Ernest ChiriackaAnyone who has kept up with this blog knows that one of my favorite paperback and pinup artists is Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka. So, naturally, I noticed when Pulp International posted scans of Esquire magazine’s 1952 calendar, featuring “twelve luscious lovelies in full color,” all by Chiriacka himself. I presume that men who originally purchased copies of this “Esquire Girl” almanac (at 50¢ apiece!http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/03/favor-of-months.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-2535271294630588229Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:17:00 +00002013-03-20T10:17:26.830-07:00Mitchell HooksThis morning brings us the final segment of a five-post series in Today’s Inspiration, based around a 1988 Paperback Parade interview with noted American illustrator Mitchell Hooks. Over the course of these posts we hear about Hooks’ early days painting paperback covers, his favorite painting medium and his work with models, his fronts for a series of Ross Macdonald softcover reprints, some http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-line-on-hooks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-6444126238004790643Mon, 25 Feb 2013 21:11:00 +00002013-02-25T13:11:00.043-08:00I’ve written a couple of times about efforts by Northern California artist, photographer, and author Derek Pell to create a pictorial collection of 100 “missing mysteries,” puckish fronts for whodunit and thriller novels that never actually existed. He started out by periodically dropping new covers in that line onto a page of his online magazine, Zoom Street. More recently, however, the “http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/02/not-at-bookstore-near-you.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-1037040744349161946Mon, 25 Feb 2013 00:08:00 +00002013-02-24T16:08:02.655-08:00Try to visualize if you can, what some of today’s most popular Web sites might look like were they re-created as old-fashioned paperbacks. Can’t quite get your mind around that assignment? Don’t worry: French illustrator Stéphane Massa-Bidal has done all of the imagining for you. The Book Haven blog has now posted 10 of Massa-Bidal’s creations, representing Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia,http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/02/pixels-to-paper.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-5187713339602146873Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:56:00 +00002013-02-22T07:56:00.249-08:00Legs Having already written once on this page about the attractions of crime novels exploiting shapely women’s legs to capture buyers’ attention on bookstore shelves, I now feel quite inured to any further criticism of my male fascination with such fleshy appendages. Therefore, let me put forth this question: Was publisher Mysterious Press wise in switching up the front cover of Thomas Perry’s new http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/02/leggin-it.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-514197314541119048Mon, 11 Feb 2013 20:40:00 +00002013-02-11T12:40:02.511-08:00Sean Manning writes the blog Talking Covers, which examines how various contemporary book fronts came to look as they do. In an interview with another blog, Imprint, he remarks on how e-books (or “eBooks,” as he writes it) have the potential to do away with one of the greatest rewards of browsing conventional bookshops: I used to be really anti-eBook. I even edited an anthology in defense of http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/02/rewards-of-random-discovery.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-2116737559463493779Wed, 30 Jan 2013 02:09:00 +00002013-01-30T03:18:42.547-08:00 Wow, publisher Thomas & Mercer has certainly done well by Max Allan Collins, releasing many of his older novels in handsome new paperback editions. It’s especially nice to see Collins’ six “disaster mysteries” back in print. I’ve read all half-dozen of those works, and can certainly endorse your doing likewise. That’s especially true in the cases of The Titanic Murders (1999), which casts http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/01/tragic-beauties.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-4298346220757313646Fri, 14 Dec 2012 02:44:00 +00002012-12-13T18:44:17.967-08:00Via the Caustic Cover Critic comes word that the oddly named and image-obsessed blog, If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, “has instituted a new category, for strange book covers.” The fronts posted there earlier today by contributor Daniel Riccuito certainly live up to that description, including this bizarre specimen, showing a young woman either being http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/12/file-these-under-strange.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-3387761174646302179Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:17:00 +00002012-11-15T15:19:40.951-08:00Following up on his last big gallery of cheesy espionage/action paperback covers, Retrospace’s “Boogie Pilgrim” is offering another collection, this one featuring works by John Creasey, Helen MacInnes, and Rod Gray (the creator of Eve Drum, “The Lady from L.U.S.T.”). Monsieur Pilgrim’s latest cover compilation is here. A far superior array of spy-novel fronts is presented in a two-part piece forhttp://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/11/can-you-say-terrifically-tacky.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-4632548357968299002Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:20:00 +00002012-11-21T05:56:32.774-08:00Harry SchaareYesterday, author and editor Win Scott Eckert kicked off what he says will be 11 straight days of Honey West book covers decorating his blog. The first front posted was from the 1957 Pyramid Books edition of This Girl for Hire, by G.G. Fickling, with artwork by Harry Schaare. Today brings us another Schaare illustration, this one adorning the 1958 Pyramid paperback Girl on the Loose. It’ll be http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/11/hot-stuff.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-9205891368653705575Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:03:00 +00002012-11-06T16:03:56.367-08:00Unknown Artists In honor of today being Election Day in the United States, here’s the cover from the 1950 Bantam Books paperback edition of Politics Is Murder (a mystery originally published in 1947). The author here is Edwin Lanham (1904-1979), who was born in Texas, but went on to work for the New York Herald Tribune and see three of his novels turned into Hollywood pictures: The Senator Was Indiscreet; Ifhttp://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/11/politics-is-murder-by-edwin-lanham.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-804715166746020064Tue, 30 Oct 2012 06:29:00 +00002012-11-02T15:45:30.833-07:00Jack Gaughan Well, Hurricane Sandy might have flooded large parts of New York City and plunged many residents into darkness. But at least conditions there aren’t as dire as those imagined by artist Jack Gaughan for this 1965 cover of a science-fiction novel by Lan Wright. READ MORE: “A Visual History of New York City’s Destruction in 200 Years of Fiction,” by Maria Popova (Brain Pickings).http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-last-hope-of-earth-by-lan-wright.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-901322116768809881Sun, 21 Oct 2012 18:29:00 +00002012-10-21T11:29:00.323-07:00Mike Ludlow Early last year, I devoted a post on this page to the demise of American illustrator Mike Ludlow and some of his truly exceptional paperback book fronts. Since then, I’ve discovered more of his cover artwork, and would like to share it with you. The front at the top of this post ranks among of my all-time favorites. It comes from the 1952 Dell Books mass-market paperback edition of My Enemy, http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/10/high-on-ludlow.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-5882265512561372269Sun, 21 Oct 2012 15:48:00 +00002012-10-21T08:48:00.215-07:00Guardian books blogger Alison Flood goes looking for the world’s worst novel fronts ... and finds more than she’d ever hoped to see.http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/10/warped-wrappers.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-8887049238176932770Sat, 06 Oct 2012 03:23:00 +00002013-02-17T08:24:58.484-08:00James Bond A 1964 Spanish edition of Dr. No Like millions of other people, you probably missed the memo, but today happens to be Global James Bond Day. It was 50 years ago, on October 5, 1962, that the film Dr. No--the first big-screen Bond movie, and the earliest of Sean Connery’s seven Agent 007 pictures--commenced showing at the London Pavilion. That thriller went on to debut in a number of other http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/10/just-say-yes-to-no.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6916093510949419233.post-5856861853506621982Fri, 21 Sep 2012 19:30:00 +00002012-09-21T12:50:19.619-07:00Glen Orbik It’s still only September 2012, but I am already looking forward to a couple of Hard Case Crime releases for 2013--in large measure because of their exceptional cover illustrations. Seduction of the Innocent, the third entry in Max Allan Collins’ series of Jack Starr historical thrillers, is set to reach bookstores next February, with artwork by the prolific Glen Orbik. Orbik is responsible ashttp://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2012/09/scream-and-scream-again_21.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce)0