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Pulp International - Bantam+Books
Vintage Pulp Jun 1 2019
CUTS LIKE A PAPER KNIFE
They said she needed a hobby and look what happened.


Each vintage book brings interesting discoveries. For instance, we recently learned that there was once a drink made with sherry and an egg yolk. Seriously. Reading Beast in View we learned that another name once used for scissors—at least by author Margaret Milar—was “paper knife.” Always have a really big paper knife around the house. Small ones are fine for cutting paper, but the huge ones are better for going through arteries. A terrible fate, surely, though no worse than drinking sherry with an egg yolk in it. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The villain in Beast in View begins as nothing more than a serial phone harasser who seems to know just enough about her victims to prey on their insecurities. The lies she tells her victims are terrible, and the language is ugly too. More direct forms of harassment soon commence, just about the time amateur sleuth Paul Blackshear steps in and is asked to find the caller. That seems easy enough at first, but he soon finds that identity is a more nebulous concept than he imagined.

Beast in View won the 1955 Edgar Award for best mystery of the year. Hmm... well we liked it. But is it really better than Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, which it beat? We don't know about that. Later Beast in View was voted one of the best mysteries of all time by the Mystery Writers of America. That's a broader accolade, in a way, and we can't find any fault there. It's a good book, written in classical mystery style, with a great ending, and this line:

[no spoiler] felt no pain, only a little surprise at how pretty the blood looked, like bright and endless ribbons that would never again be tied.

Well, that's certainly a nice piece of writing. This was our second Millar, and we have another lined up for a bit later. But first we may re-read The Talented Mr. Ripley, just to see if our memories are betraying us and Highsmith really isn't the better writer. But it isn't a competition anyway, is it? That defeats the entire point of reading for pleasure. Copyright on Beast in View is originally 1955, and this Bantam paperback edition came in '56 with Mitchell Hooks cover art of a woman holding Millar's paper knife.

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Vintage Pulp May 26 2019
VOICE A SUSPICION
So when you sang “You're So Vain,” the song really was about me, wasn't it?


This is top work from artist C.C. Beale on this cover for Van Wyck Mason's Saigon Singer, especially the small elements of the background writing on the wall and the Siamese cat in the foreground. The singer of the title—who never performs “You're So Vain,” sadly—is Pamela Saunders, a former prisoner in a Japanese internment camp who survives filth and near starvation to resurrect herself as singer in Saigon. Along the way she becomes known as Black Chrysanthemum before adopting the stage name Xenia Morel. Her transformation is interesting, but the star of the story is Major Hugh North, who turns up in Saigon looking for a dossier containing the names of British and American traitors who during the war sold secrets to a Japanese general. Saunders-Chrysanthemum-Morel survived the prison camp by becoming the mistress of the general, and it's due to this close association that she possesses the dossier. She'll give it to North, but only if he pays her enough money to get to Paris, where she wants to continue her singing career.

Mason knew this part of the world and uses his knowledge well in writing of Saigon social life, oppressive heat, scented baths, tiger hunts, French legionnaires, and other you-had-to-be-there aspects of post-World War II Vietnam. As number thirteen in a series of exotic Hugh North mysteries (others were set in Singapore, Burma, Manila, Bangkok, et al) we sense a formula here, but in the end we liked it despite the usual flaws of colonialist fiction, and we were envious of Mason for having travelled in that part of the world during that time, and having been lucky enough to make a career of writing about it. Well, maybe we can't complain too much—we've hit some good spots too. And we write, though we get fuck-all for it. In any case, this particular discovery makes us curious about earlier Mason books, so maybe we'll check out some of his Hugh North adventures. Saigon Singer was originally published in 1946, and the above edition is from 1948.

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Vintage Pulp Jan 24 2019
LEAVE A GOOD-LOOKING CORPSE
If you could ask the ones who did it we suspect they'd say dying young is overrated.


Above, a nice front for Dead, She Was Beautiful by Whit Masterson, aka Wade Miller, who in turn was actually William Miller and Robert Wade writing in tandem. This one has an unusually interesting set-up. A divorce detective is hired by a man to follow his unfaithful wife, and the detective is shocked to discover the woman is his ex-wife. This is in Los Angeles, which immediately raises the question of how such a bizarre coincidence could happen in a city of millions. Well, it isn't a coincidence, which becomes clear when the wife/ex-wife is killed by being shot in the back with an arrow. The cops think the detective may have done it, especially because he hated his ex, so what you get here is the time-honored scenario of a private op who has to solve a crime or take the fall for it. We'd describe this as decent, but nothing special. The cover art is by Barye Phillips, and the copyright is 1956.

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Vintage Pulp Nov 10 2018
LEGAL BRIEFS
Prosecution maintains that the only way to know if these are in fact the witness's panties is to have her try them on.


As the great defense attorney Johnny Cochran once so memorably intoned, “If the panties don't fit you must acquit.” Lawyering is all about snappy rhymes. Robert Traver knew this because he was in reality John D. Voelker, first a prosecutor, second a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court, and all the while the author of numerous novels. The most famous of those was Anatomy of a Murder, which became an Otto Preminger motion picture starring Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick.

Looking at the odd cover scene above, you probably want to know what's happening. An assistant prosecutor is trying his first case, which centers around a house painter who “did ravish and carnally know” a young woman named Gloria. But it turns out Gloria's mother had interrupted what was actually a consensual encounter, exploded with shame and outrage, and forced her daughter to file rape charges. The case falls apart in court and the young prosecutor is made to look like a fool, so the cover art tries to capture that event. Trouble Shooter was originally published as Trouble-Shooter: The Story of a Northwoods Prosecutor in 1943, with this Bantam paperback edition coming in 1947. 

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Vintage Pulp Aug 2 2018
SAN FRANCISCO VALUES
Then when he tripled my rent so he could evict me and give my place to some Silicon Valley tech jerkwad I just snapped.


Yet another subset of pulp novels was the true crime book, and this effort called San Francisco Murders was edited by Joseph Henry Jackson, written by Allan R. Bosworth, Hildegarde Teilhet, and others, and details ten San Fran murders that took place over the course of a century. Among the killers: Jerome von Braun Selz, aka The Laughing Killer, Theodore Durrant, aka The Demon of the Belfry, and Cordelia Botkin, who had no nickname but probably should have, considering she killed rather exotically with arsenic laced chocolates. She was trying to do in her ex-lover's wife and ended up poisoning not only her target, but a hungry bystander as well. We're thinking the Accidental Chocolatier, or maybe the Bitter Chocolate Killer. Right? Yeah? San Francisco Murders was originally copyright 1947, and this Bantam paperback edition came in 1948 with cover art by Bob Doares.

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Vintage Pulp Jul 31 2018
FABULOUS OPPORTUNITY
Hello, ma'am. I'm from the ACME home security company and I'm selling new and improved shorter door chains.


The Fabulous Clipjoint is the 1947 debut novel by Fredric Brown, published originally as Dead Man's Indemnity in Mystery Book Magazine in April 1946. This edition came from Popular Library in 1948. The basic idea here is a hapless alcoholic is murdered in Chicago and his son and brother decide to find the killer or killers. As their investigation unfolds, the son learns his father wasn't hapless at all, but rather had lived a full life that included adventures in Spain and Mexico, winning a duel, romantic entanglements, and more. None of it has to do with why he died. It merely serves to awaken his son to the possibilities of life, and helps convince him to run off to join a carnival. A clipjoint, literally speaking, is a nightclub or strip bar where customers are promised everything, delivered little, and cheated down to their last dime. The clipjoint of The Fabulous Clipjoint is figurative. It's the city of Chicago, perhaps even the entirety of life itself. As a metaphor it's grand, but the novel is less so. It's competent, but Brown would do better later in his career. The cover art here featuring the world's most useless security chain is by Ed Grant, and fits nicely into our collection of women confronting trouble at their doors. See that here.  

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Vintage Pulp Jun 13 2018
NO END IN SIGHT
Yep, from now on I think all my problems are behind me.


First published in 1945 with this Bantam paperback appearing in 1951, Dorothy Macardle's The Unforeseen deals with a woman who installs herself in a quiet Irish cottage to work on a book about birds, but begins having a series of hallucinations. The main character Virgilia at first thinks they're manifestations of second sight, especially since more than a few of her visions come true. But they're such minor predictions that it's easy for her—after seeing a psychiatrist friend who offers rational explanations—to dismiss them as imaginings brought on by fatigue and stress. But the doctor's psychic researcher son believes the visions are supernatural, and covets Virgilia as a prospective case study. Things get darker when the visions at the story's center go from basically harmless to darkly frightening, but are they actually real? We won't tell. The Unforeseen is pretty entertaining, all in all, especially considering we picked it solely because of the cover art by H.E. Bischoff. However, pulp fans may find the book slow, as it owes more to du Maurier than to any crime or adventure writers.

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Vintage Pulp May 30 2018
CAN'T BUY ME DOVE
Actually, that's more than enough money, lover. You're under arrest.


The thing about GGA covers is they often mislead in terms of written content. The dove in The Frightened Dove is not the femme fatale on the cover but rather a Mussolini underling named Colombo—Italian for dove—who's hunted by the hero Ricci Bartoli, a retired anti-fascist fighter dragged out of his peaceful life as a tailor in New York City. Colombo is after a trove of gold, and Bartoli is out to stop him, with the crucial action taking place in Montreal. You can always tell there's something French about a book when the cover femme is wearing a beret. And her name is Marie, which seems to be the go-to for French women in genre fiction. The story here fits squarely into the post-war political adventure niche—i.e. cleaning up the loose ends of World War II. And on the subject of pseudonyms, Hardin was actually a Hungarian author named Louis Vaczek. The Frightened Dove was originally published in hardback in 1951, with the above Bantam paperback arriving in 1952 with uncredited cover art.

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Vintage Pulp May 13 2018
FEMININE TOUCH
It's a dirty job but at least I get to enjoy these little reversals of male privilege. Now bend over.


Above, a cover for Woman Doctor, originally titled Women Will Be Doctors, by Hannah Lees. In mid-century fiction there's an entire sub-genre of nurse novels, and this should be considered an offshoot. But it's basically the same idea whether nurse or doctor—woman in male dominated profession must show her skill and mettle, winning over skeptics, and usually finding true love along the way. The rear cover gives you a sense of these themes, though obviously the main character doesn't dish out prostate exams. But it would be funny if she did. Copyright 1955, with uncredited art. 

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Vintage Pulp Apr 15 2018
OTHERLY LOVE
That was interesting. Next time can we just do it the normal way?


There's no festish sex or podophilia in With Naked Foot. This is actually a serious novel about whites coming to ruin in Africa, which is a crowded literary niche, but one in which Emily Hahn carved out an important place for herself. In fact, maybe the adjective “Hahnesque” should be used alongside “Hemingwayesque.” This is a person who wrote fifty-four books and more than two hundred articles and short stories, whose works were significant in romanticizing  Africa and Asia for western readers, who lived in Florence and London in the mid-1920s, traveled to the Belgian Congo where she worked for the Red Cross, lived with a pygmy tribe for two years, crossed Central Africa alone on foot, and journeyed to Shanghai where she taught English for three years while becoming acquaintances with political powerhouses the Soong Sisters and the Chinese poet Zau Sinmay. With Naked Foot is, therefore, unusually well informed. It revolves around a beautiful Congolese girl named Mawa whose relationships with various lustful white men bring disaster. The reviews were rapturous, though some critics protested that it was too focused on sex. That's never a complaint you'll hear from us, though some of the usual flaws of mid-century racial fiction are evident. The cover art on this Bantam paperback was painted by an unknown, and the copyright is 1951.

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History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
March 29
1951—The Rosenbergs Are Convicted of Espionage
Americans Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage as a result of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. While declassified documents seem to confirm Julius Rosenberg's role as a spy, Ethel Rosenberg's involvement is still a matter of dispute. Both Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953.
March 28
1910—First Seaplane Takes Flight
Frenchman Henri Fabre, who had studied airplane and propeller designs and had also patented a system of flotation devices, accomplishes the first take-off from water at Martinque, France, in a plane he called Le Canard, or "the duck."
1953—Jim Thorpe Dies
American athlete Jim Thorpe, who was one of the most prolific sportsmen ever and won Olympic gold medals in the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football at the collegiate and professional levels, and also played professional baseball and basketball, dies of a heart attack.
March 27
1958—Khrushchev Becomes Premier
Nikita Khrushchev becomes premier of the Soviet Union. During his time in power he is responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, and presides over the rise of the early Soviet space program, but his many policy failures lead to him being deposed in October 1964. After his removal he is pensioned off and lives quietly the rest of his life, eventually dying of heart disease in 1971.
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