| Vintage Pulp | Mar 5 2024 |
British adventurers get high in South Asia.
The cover you see above for Berkely Mather's, aka John Evan Weston-Davies', 1960 adventure The Pass Beyond Kashmir is one of the more pleasing we've come across. It's by Barbara Walton, a preeminent dust sleeve illustrator from the 1950s until around 2000. We've featured her a few times, such as here, here, and here, and this effort maintains her incredibly high standard. The scene depicted makes one think there's a major romantic subplot in the novel, but the love interest is in the book for maybe twenty pages. It isn't Walton's fault that the art gave us expectations that weren't met. It happens with covers sometimes. No romantic adventure here.
The story actually revolves around a sardonic and extremely determined ex-intelligence operative named Idwal Rees who gets caught up in a search for missing documents in the Himalayas that might reveal the location of an oil discovery. The action takes the form of a quest from Bombay-Mumbai into the high mountains, with new difficulties encountered in each stop by he and partner Smedley, servant Safaraz, and reluctant informer Poison. Each obstacle is followed by desperate problem solving, and hairsbreadth escapes. The aforementioned sort-of love interest, a nurse named Claire Culverton, is mainly a source of consternation for Rees and a focus for his chauvinism.
The set-up and framework are fine, but we felt that the book got bogged down with too much local color. Obviously, authors wish to impart that they've at a minimum done their homework, and at a maximum lived some version of what they're writing about, but there's also such a thing as narrative flow. We get it—Mather was really in India and Pakistan. He even served in the army there. But in our opinion he needed another pass from an editor to make for a better book. Still, as it resolved, it was decent, though anyone of Indian, Pakistani, or Chinese descent—or of good conscience—will bristle at the treatment meted out by Rees and other Brits. But you know that going in, right?
IndiaPakistanChinaBombayMumbaiWilliam Collins Sons & Co.Berkely MatherJohn Evan Weston-DaviesBarbara Waltoncover artliterature
| Vintage Pulp | May 23 2018 |
I'm not usually a quitter! But right now! I'm considering! Going back! To delivering pizzas!
And speaking of trains, above you see the cover of Lawrence G. Blochman's novel of foreign intrigue Bombay Mail, a murder mystery set in India and staged on a Calcutta to Bombay mail train. The lead character isn't actually a postal worker, but rather an investigator, Leonidas Prike of the British C.I.D., also known as the Criminal Investigation Department. This was Blochman's debut, originally appearing in hardback in 1934, which was the same year another celebrated trainbound mystery—Murder on the Orient Express—was published.
About that copyright date, by the way. Nearly every place you look will have Bombay Mail listed as arriving in 1934, but it may have appeared, at least in limited form, in 1933. We deduced this because the movie Bombay Mail, which was based on the novel, premiered in the U.S. in January 1934. We have a hard time imagining a debut novelist selling his book to movies before it hit the stores, so 1933 might be the actual publication date. One thing we're sure about, though, is this Dell mapback edition arrived in 1943, and the art is by Robert Stanley.
| Vintage Pulp | Feb 18 2016 |
When the sun goes down in the city.
Hotels, museums, and restaurants are all important aspects of travel, but what you really need to know is where to score hookers and cocaine, right? Or is that just us? Above, assorted covers from MacFadden-Bartell’s famed sleaze series After Dark, published late 1960s and early 1970s, and which purports to tell readers where and how vice can be found in different cities, as well as the unique variations that exist in each place. Don’t leave home without one. And a pack of condoms.
MexicoFranceLondonParisNew York CityTokyoBangkokRomeHamburgLondonAmsterdamTaipeiCopenhagenSaigonBombayRio de JaneiroManilaIstanbulHong KongMacFadden-Bartell BooksWilliam HopsonLois O'ConnerColin RossWilliam FitzpatrickAndrew HarrisRoberto OrsiOgden FoxNorman NashPhil LewisJean de BallardPhilip MarnaisAllen V. Rosscover artliteraturecover collection
| Musiquarium | Apr 18 2009 |
Sin and song done Indian style.
Various Bollywood soundtracks, circa 70s and 80s.
IndiaBollywoodMuqaddar ka SikandarShaanThe Burning ManDonGamblerThe Bombay ConnectionSheelaKaratePrem ShastraBappi LahiriAmarjeetKalyanji AnandjiRamesh SippyRahul Dev BurmanB.R. Shopraalbum artcinema
