
We had a friend who habitually added salt to every meal ever put in front of him. He was American, obviously. When we went to France together, our first dinner out he asked a waiter for a salt shaker (you won’t find them on the tables). He hadn’t even tasted the dish yet. Salt was a reflex with him. He got the dirtiest look ever shot at a paying customer and probably came a hair away from the treatment you see on the cover of Albert L. Quandt’s Crime Boss, published by Original Novels in 1952. But there’s no angry chef in the book. It’s a mob tale, the story of one Vic Santo, who rises to be king of the rackets. The art is uncredited, and by the way, that thing that looks like a band of scotch tape on the book’s spine is actually in the art. It’s a textured column in the restaurant.