Didn’t we just feature a cover for Waterfront Girl last month? Nope. That was Waterfront Blonde. Totally different book. Similar themes, though. We wouldn’t go so far as to call books about untamable waterfront girls a sub-genre of mid-century fiction, but more than a few tales of that type hit newsstands during the 1950s.
This one came from Amos Hatter, aka James W. Lampp, and tells the story of, well, an untamable waterfront girl on the mighty Mississippi. Her name is Vivian Doyle and she runs the Cabaret Boat Dock down the water several miles from St. Louis. She inherited it from her father, and though business is down due to competition, she’s determined to keep it alive at any cost.
Into this situation motors studboy Cliff Abbott aboard his pleasure craft. He romances Vivian, but Frank Weaver and Joe Mosley want her too. Frank is her creditor and is willing to use financial power to leverage Vivian into his bed, while Joe is a tough guy with plans to use emotional coercion to achieve the same result. Female bodily autonomy is the lever of dramatic tension in these “love novels,” and typically the heroine is used at least once. If Vivian manages not to submit one or both of these boors, it’ll be barely.
Of the authors we’ve read in this genre Hatter is pretty good. He wrote, we’re guessing, at least a dozen such books. This one is from Original Novels, was published in 1952, and the cover is uncredited, though some think it’s the work of Rudy Nappi. You see the original art below. Its creator really deserves recognition for this effort, but no such luck. Sign your art, everyone. Don’t be like this person.
