My dream is actually to be a singer, so I interrupt this striptease to perform Verdi's aria, “Stride la vampa.” This entry in Editions ERP's I Gialli dello Schedario's FBI series is a late one. It was number 259 and came in 1980, which is surprsing because we didn't realize ERP was still using painted cover art then. This one was the work of Mario Carìa, and Norman Forrest the author was actually—you guessed it—Renato Carocci, the guy who you could be forgiven for thinking wrote every Italian crime novel ever. You can check his output by clicking his keywords below, and you can see a small collection of FBI covers here.
Anonymous Italian cover artist hits the target.
Above: a pretty nice cover with a bullseye motif for Angeli neri di Brooklyn by Thomas Wright, from Editions ERP, entry fifty-four in their I Gialli dello Schedario series, published in 1959. Wright was a pseudonym often used by author Aldo Crudo, who wrote more than four hundred books beginning in 1957. The cover artist is unknown to us. We thought it could be Mario Ferrari. Alternate option, there's a possible artist signature in red ink but we can't read it and it doesn't correspond to any we could find. It might be from the person who owned the book. We've run into book signers before. Anyway, we like the art.
Where it stops looking good nobody knows. Below, a selection of beautiful Benedetto Caroselli covers for ERP’s giallo series I Narratori Americani del Brivido, with various Italian authors such as Aldo Crudo and Mario Pinzauti writing under Anglicized pseudonyms. We have much more from Caroselli. Just click and scroll.
When is keeping a secret more trouble than it’s worth? Above, a rather nice uncredited cover for Akeus Edwards’ Echec au F.B.I., number twelve in ERC’s series FBI Fichiers Secrets, aka Secret FBI Files, published in 1962. The series was originally published in Italy and, according to our friend over at Muller-Fokker, who helped us with info on this piece, "badly translated, like something out of Google translation." No surprise, then, that Akeus Edwards was a pseudonym for an Italian author named Rino Pele. Many pulp/sleaze authors used pen names, but the passage of time raises a question about such subterfuges. We get that they wanted to distance themselves from what they perceived to be low rent literature, but since the pen name thing makes it nearly impossible today to attribute certain books to their real authors, we wonder if any of them, if they were alive, would feel the entire practice was a bit self defeating. Just wondering.
They’re on the case faster than you can say passer les beignets. Above are some great covers for Editions ERP’s Super Policier series, which were published in France beginning around 1955. The authors here were all pseudonyms for guys like Mario Pinzauti, Pino Belli, Aldo Crudo, Franco Prattico, and a host of others. You may have noticed the distinctly Italian sounds of those names. Well, they were Italian, because ERP was based in Rome, but published in France. You may also notice, if you’re looking very closely, that the last cover is from ERP’s Super Détective series. We threw that in just because we liked it. The art on at least one of these covers is by Mario Carìa, and a few others are by Mario Ferrari, who we talked about here and here.
He really knows how to take a girl’s breath away. Above, a cover for the thriller Où est le cavadre, which as you might guess means, Where Is the Corpse?, a question the man involved here seems to be asking with some urgency. Well, if you can’t find a corpse you might as well make one yourself. This book, which appeared in France in 1962, actually originated in Italy with Editions ERP, where in 1961 it was published as part of their I Gialle dello Schedario series. The writer, Joe Vivard, was really Pino Belli, and wrote under several names, including Ricky Lambert, Steve Cockrane, and others. The excellent is art by Mario Ferrari, whose work we showed you a while back when we did a post of eleven I Gialle dello Schedario covers. See those here, and see more from Ferrari later.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Mussolini Is Arrested
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable. 1933—The Gestapo Is Formed
The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond. 1937—Guernica Is Bombed
In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced. 1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves.
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