 On the first day of murder, my true love gave to me... 
The 42 days of Roger Torrey's 42 Days for Murder refers to the six weeks that someone needed to be resident in Nevada to qualify for a divorce, which we think is kind of clever title-wise. The story deals with a rich man's wife who runs away to Reno to dissolve her marriage but goes incommunicado after she arrives. The husband hires a detective named Shean Connell to track down his wife so that he can at least talk to her before she ditches him. Finding her is not much of a problem for Connell. Arranging for his client to talk to her is another deal entirely. As the story unfolds, it turns out there's a reason for her reluctance to chat. A very good reason, actually, which Connell figures out only at the cost of considerable mayhem, two deadly shootouts, and a veritable pile of corpses.
The book was originally published in 1938, but this Hillman edition featuring a photo cover came in 1949. Torrey was an experienced writer, having produced stories for the pulp magazine Black Mask, and here he shows a deft hand with a unique idea that we can't even hint at without spoiling the book. Flaws include dialogue that sometimes stretches past the point of usefulness or interest—Torrey could have cut the book by twenty pages easily, if not thirty—but it remains a fun ride tearing around 1930's Reno with Connell, who's not only a shamus but an ace piano player. He's the best part of the novel, though he's unusually cynical about women. Too bad 42 Days for Murder was Torrey's only book. It's not perfect, but it's one to catch if you can.
 There's a whole lotta woman going on. 
From Hillman Publications, a company better known for publishing paperbacks as Hillman Books, but whose execs were smart enough to know a good non-paperback thing when they saw it, comes this life-sized poster of Jayne Mansfield. This is another of the door panel pin-ups we've shown you over the years. Maybe now would be a good time to review a few of those. We've shown you ultra rare posters of Raquel Welch, Sophia Loren, five stars of The Silencers, the Bond girls of Goldfinger, the women of the Bond spoof Casino Royale, and more. We'll have additional posters of this type later. The above example is from 1956.
 What do you expect? I've tried therapy, meditation, and religion. But alcohol actually works.  
Above, front and rear covers for John White's The Sins of Skid Row, 1959, for Hillman Books. This was originally published as Ward N-1 and it's basically five autobiographical days spent in Bellevue Mental Hospital's detox wing. These were the days of involuntary commitment, electroshock, and lobotomies, with a lot of secrecy around these practices, so this was likely a very illuminating book for the time. Inside are various curious characters with nicknames like Creep, Minny, and Bomber. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a similar story, would come along several years later, with the major difference being the ending. The art on this paperback is by an unknown.
 Psst. Guess what unspeakable perversion I'm thinking about right now. 
The Whispered Sex isn't about perversion at all, unless you assess it in 1960 terms. It's lesbian fiction involving a Los Angeles woman who is unshakably heterosexual—until she meets the right woman, a slinky nightclub singer with a bigger-than-life persona and a blazing sex drive. But even though the protagonist feels an immediate and powerful attraction, it takes some doing to nudge her into the singer's arms—namely sexual abuse by the man she had come to L.A. in hopes of marrying. After he proves himself to be a slimeball, the heroine escapes by moving into the singer's house—which is filled with more lesbians. From there things get complicated. Author Kay Martin was a pseudonym used by Adela Maritano, who was also responsible for A Taste of Passion. The excellent cover art here was painted by Ernest Chiriacka, who signed it as his alter ego Darcy. You can see a bit more from him here.
 Say hello to his other little friend. 
This likeness of gangster John Dillinger stands in stark contrast to the highly pornographic Tijuana bible sketches of him and his little friend we shared last week. We figured we’d show Dillinger in a better light, and wearing more clothes, so above you see the cover of Saul Cooper’s Dillinger, painted by famed portraitist Everett Raymond Kinstler, who has created likenesses of everyone from Katherine Hepburn to George H.W. Bush. See more of his amazing work here, and see those racy Dillinger sketches here. You know you wanna.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1927—Mae West Sentenced to Jail
American actress and playwright Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for the content of her play Sex. The trial occurred even though the play had run for a year and had been seen by 325,000 people. However West's considerable popularity, already based on her risque image, only increased due to the controversy. 1971—Manson Sentenced to Death
In the U.S, cult leader Charles Manson is sentenced to death for inciting the murders of Sharon Tate and several other people. Three accomplices, who had actually done the killing, were also sentenced to death, but the state of California abolished capital punishment in 1972 and neither they nor Manson were ever actually executed. 1923—Yankee Stadium Opens
In New York City, Yankee Stadium, home of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees, opens with the Yankees beating their eternal rivals the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1. The stadium, which is nicknamed The House that Ruth Built, sees the Yankees become the most successful franchise in baseball history. It is eventually replaced by a new Yankee Stadium and closes in September 2008. 1961—Bay of Pigs Invasion Is Launched
A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. However, the invasion fails badly and the result is embarrassment for U.S. president John F. Kennedy and a major boost in popularity for Fidel Castro, and also has the effect of pushing him toward the Soviet Union for protection.
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