Vintage Ace paperbacks are considered highly collectible for a few reasons, including the fact that the company popularized the double novel. But we like Ace because it often did well with art. This front for James M. Cain’s The Moth is about as striking as cover illustration gets. It’s uncredited, but we know exactly who it is. It’s Sandro Symeoni. How do we know? Because the cover at this link is confirmed to be Symeoni, and there’s no doubt the artist is the same as above. Not only is the style a match, but so is the time period. This came in 1958, and Ace used Symeoni’s art several times between ’58 and ’60. That makes this paperback a super discovery, because Symeoni, a brilliant Italian artist who specialized in movie posters, rarely painted book covers. It’s possible that, as with Arthur Miller’s Focus (you clicked the link above, right?) the art was borrowed from one of Symeoni’s posters, but if so we don’t know which one. Doesn’t matter. Sandro kills again.
Moving on to the novel, Cain, one of the towering figures of pulp literature, stretches himself here to tell the life story of a man through his first thirty-five years, spanning the Great Depression, Prohibition, and World War II; his various jobs, schemes, and hustles; and his ups, downs, ups, downs, ups, downs, ups… We’re not putting an end on that sentence in order to avoid giving a hint whether he ultimately triumphs or fails. For a time Cain’s protagonist works in the oil business. For years he’s a hobo riding the rails. For part of his life he’s a renowned soprano. But no matter where he goes or what he does, there’s a past destined to come full circle to stare him in the face. This is Cain’s longest book, but it’s pretty involving. Its only flaw—if it can be called that—is that it doesn’t surprise. You know which untrustworthy friend will come back to haunt him, and which unlikely love will reappear to offer a chance at redemption. Still, a good read. We recommend it.
