Above is another beautiful piece painted by Benedetto Caroselli, a man we’re going to go ahead and anoint one of the greatest paperback cover artists of all time. His work on Richard Walker’s Nodo scorsoio—which means “slipknot”—is simply brilliant, with its red tressed, black dressed femme fatale, and graphic background elements. It dates from 1962 for Grandi Edizioni Internazionali‘s collection I Gialli dell’Ossessione, and is number ninety-seven in the series. The book was translated from Richard Walker’s original English text by Domenico Vitali, and once again we suspected the translator was the author, since we’re pretty sure this book was never actually released in English, thus would never have needed a translator. After some searching we confirmed our suspicions—Vitali wrote as Walker on several occasions, including two novels for Éditions S.E.P.’s P.J. Police collection. We’re going to keep digging up art by Benedetto Caroselli because it’s all good—every piece we’ve seen. You can see more of his work by clicking his keywords below.
1926—Aimee Semple McPherson Disappears
In the U.S., Canadian born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach, California in the middle of the afternoon. She is initially thought to have drowned, but on June 23, McPherson stumbles out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people named Steve and Mexicali Rose. However, it soon becomes clear that McPherson’s tale is fabricated, though to this day the reasons behind it remain unknown.