Below, nine first edition hardback dust jackets for Ian Fleming's James Bond series. You can see one more, for Dr. No, at the top of a previous post here.

We said we’d get back to Louis de la Hattais and today we’re keeping our word. Above you see four book covers from French author Jerry Lewray, who was a pseudonym invented by de la Hattais, and used by him and possibly other authors who churned out thrillers for Société d’Editions Générales' Interpol and Allo Police series during the 1960s, as well as stand-alone novels of his/their own. But it turns out Louis de la Hattais wasn’t real either—he was a pseudonym of author and editor Louis Fournel, who, starting in the 1940s, wrote under the names Louis Delaht, Anne-Marie Delfour, Jean Delhat, Lew Dolegan, Anne-Marie Fervel, Louis Hellais and several others. Confused? You’re not alone. But as the mystery deepens, we keep digging. It’s not just educational—it’s fun! 

Above, the cover of Spencer Hooke’s 1976 sex romp Swinging Wives. This is a good example of the type of dubiously skillful art used on the sleaze paperbacks of the sixties and seventies. In fact, the images often got much lower rent than this little cartoon. We’ll be doing an aggregate post on this genre soon. 

Below, fifteen pieces of pulp art with terror as their central theme. The cover in panel three from Erle Stanley Gardner is the German version of 1948's Perry Mason and the Case of the Vagabond Virgin, retitled Perry Mason und die Unschuld vom Lande, or Perry Mason and the Innocence of the Country.

Above, 1967’s The Long, Long Lust, by sleaze pulp specialist Tony Calvano, née Thomas Ramirez, with great cover art by Robert Bonfils of a guy who’s pretty cocky considering he’s wearing lace panties. Would that we all could be so confident. You can find an extensive bio of Calvano/Ramirez here, and more Bonfils covers by clicking keyword ‘Robert Bonfils’ below. 

We’re back to the French pulp today, with R. M. Letenre and his 1953 thriller Carte grise pour vienne, number 18 for Editions le Trotteur’s series Espions et Agents Secrets. We also have his 1954 effort for the horror series Frayeurs, Jennifer filleule du diable. The first book is illustrated by Mik, and the second by Aslan. We found zero information on Letenre, even on the many French websites and blogs we frequent. We'll dig, as always. In the meantime, it seems like a good opportunity to mention that our pulp uploader (in the right sidebar) is working again, so how's about somebody research this Letenre for us and shoot us some data?

Dekobra’s books were popular vehicles for film adaptation, and more than fifteen became movies, including his 1925 hit Macao enfer du jeu, which Clemens Klopfenstein directed in 1938. All the while Dekobra kept globetrotting—he visited India, Ceylon (now Sri-Lanka), Japan, Turkey, Pakistan, and became one of the few westerners to enter Nepal. His novels up to this point were “cosmopolites” infused with his travelexperiences. For instance La madone des sleepings follows the adventures of Lady Diana Wyndham as she travels by train from London to Berlin to Russia, broke but determined to use guile and gender to make a fortune exploiting a Russian oilfield about which she’s learned. The book was developed as a film in 1928, again in 1955, and was optioned once more in the ’70s with one of our favorite women Sylvia Kristel in the lead. This third version never came to fruition, sadly, though the project reached a stage where posters were produced (and these would be quite expensive collector’s items, we suspect).

In the late 1940s, Dekobra shifted literary gears and began writing pure detective novels, and he also wrote screenplays and even dabbled in film directing. Dekobra died in 1973 but it’s safe to say that he was a guy who lived to the fullest. His life and career stand as remarkable achievements—he traveled to exotic places almost unheard of in his day, met some of the most interesting people alive, and sold millions of books that were translated into seventy-seven languages. Today in Europe, heremains a twentieth century author of great renown; in the U.S. and many other countries where his books once sold well, he is virtually unknown. It’s a mystery we haven’t solved yet, but we’ll keep working on it. In the meantime, we’re happy to have finally made his acquaintance, and hope you’ll do the same.     

The 1963 tell-all Honey Baby, for which you see the uncredited cover art above, is a novel narrated by a call girl named Honey Baby Ashley to author Rex Nevins. The as-told-to framework must have worked nicely, because in 1964 Nevins wrote another book called The Swingers, which was told to him by a spouse swapper named Sherri St. John. Call us cynics, but we tend to think Honey Baby Ashley and Sherri St. John both came directly from Rex’s dirty little mind. But we can understand, because we have two imaginary friends, too—they’re called our readers.* 

*We're actually getting about 25,000 visits a month these days, so thanks so much—we know it's a lot of work for the two of you to click our link over and over and over.

Every once in a while, we like to feature Paul Rader as a reminder what a virtuosic illustrator he was. So here’s another aggregate post, this one of assorted steamy Midwood pulp covers by Rader, circa 1960s. As a side note, you may have noticed our pulp uploader is malfunctioning at the moment, but we’ll get that fixed as soon as we can. Anyone with contributions, please hold, thanks. 

Here’s a little artifact from our trip to Paris last year, which we picked up from one of the booksellers by the Pont Neuf. It’s a Louis de la Hattais novel from 1957, part of the “Allo Police” collection printed by Société d’Editions Générales. It’s called Des Mégots pour al Petit!, which means Cigarette Butts for the Little Girl. De la Hattais was a prolific mid-century pulp author, and we’ve actually seen a lot of his books around, although we suspect he was actually a pseudonym. We'll find out and get back to you on that. As far as the art goes, while it may be less masterful than that of pulp icons such as Aslan and Robert McGinnis, we find it quite effective. So much so that just for your visual pleasure this Wednesday, we’ve posted a few more “Allo Police” covers below. Enjoy.