I'm sorry to say it, but this has to end. I mean for today. I'll see you here tomorrow same time.
Does Hell Is a Woman look like a crime novel to you? Us either, but it is. Beacon Books decided to market this effort from Garrett W. Deas as sleaze, and used cover art from Jack Thurston to implant the idea into book rack browsers' heads. Beacon also wrote cover text in that vein, though it's wildly inaccurate. Protagonist Sheriff Ben Randall's wife Helen loved other men behind his back? Not true. She has an affair with one man. Mary Ann, according to the cover, loved other men in front of Ben? Not true. She starts the novel as a corpse. Lorna loved in very special ways? Maybe. She pines for the sheriff and ignores other men. Also, Helen's cheating is meant by Deas to be a suspicion followed by a revelation. Beacon spoiled that. You take your chances with cover blurbs. But all that aside, as a crime novel Hell Is a Woman is pretty good, with a rural setting that works, and Sheriff Ben as a likeable sort who doggedly tries to solve three murders while the county bigwigs want everything swept under the rug. The main flaw of the book is that the identity of the killer becomes obvious well before we think Deas means it to, but overall he did decent work. It seems to have been his only novel, though, which is too bad.
Hard to get and impossible to get rid of. Above, a cover from Beacon Books for Robert Turner's Woman Chaser, 1962. Turner was a prolific author of hard boiled fiction. Writing as Turner, as well as Eric Calhoun, K.K. Klein, Parker Lee, Lisa Roberts, et al, he produced titles such as She Devil, Cheater, The Night Is for Screaming, and The Girl in the Cop's Pocket. In this one a habitual cheater gets involved with much a younger woman, and as he devlops feelings for her, his wife emerges from alcoholism (a reason he began cheating in the first place), and he finds that the old marital emotions are still there. Things get complicated fast. There's some competence here from Turner, and the love scenes are written with enough skill to work as eroticism. With cover art by Jack Thurston.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
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. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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