 Walk a city's streets and you never know what you'll find. 
We were wandering around town earlier today, and what did we spy outside a sundries shop but a stack of vintage reading material. Wedged between English teaching books and bags of sawdust was a stack of José Mallorquí and Keith Luger paperbacks, and there were even more inside. All of which reminded us that we had posted something from Luger—aka Miguel Oliver Tovar—years ago, which can see at this link. We didn't buy any of today's pile, but we may mosey back round that way another morning and pick up a few. After all, why not? They're cheap as hell. Also, we want to know why people buy bags of sawdust, and we can only find out by going back to the store and asking. The overarching theme, though, is this: it's nice to be living in a city where we can find a bit of pulp style treasure just by taking a stroll. For years that wasn't the case.
 The FBI’s ten most wanted.          
Above, a mix of ten covers of F.B.I. and F.B.I. Selecciones, published by two Spanish companies, Bruguera and Ediciones Rollán, during the 1960s and early 1970s. Art is by Prieto Muriana and others. Also, you may notice that cover three is modeled after a famous portrait of James Dean, and, though we aren't 100% sure, cover ten, just above, looks like it was based on Monica Vitti.
 Pulp is where you find it. 
We’re back from our jaunt to Sevilla, Cordova, and Pamplona, and as promised we looked for and found some pulp. On a 100 Fahrenheit day in Cordova we met an antique dealer on the Plaza de la Corredera who had four crates of vintage cowboy pulps from the Spanish publishing houses Bruguera, Crucero, and Andina. The example below, entitled La Heina de Tulsa, was written by Marcial Lafuente Estefanía in 1983, just a year before his death. Bruguera cover art was often uncredited, however this one is attributed to someone identified as Garcia. We’ll get to uploading more of these later.
 Wow this expensive body wash is great. Hope the missus doesn’t catch me using it. 
We’ve seen a lot of covers for James M. Cain’s classic 1934 pulp The Postman Always Rings, but never one quite as unhinged as this Bruguera Spanish edition. Whereas the art is almost comical, in the fiction Cain’s murderous lovers are anything but. In fact, Postman was considered so provocative for its time that it was banned in Boston. The book is short (possibly that’s why it’s paired here with Cain’s The Embezzler), and its concise story arc made it a natural for adaptation to cinema. Over the years it spawned four official film versions, and its influence is detectable in many other movies. We recommend giving this one a read, and also, take the lesson of the cover to heart and leave your girl’s fancy soaps alone.
 In the future we’ll all wear jumpsuits or else. 
Check out these sweet covers we found. The little-known author Eric Sorenssen—not to be confused with the little-known author Eric Sorensen, with one ‘s’—wrote for the quite well known Heroes of Space series published by Spanish imprint Bruguera. We’ve seen no Sorenssen material in English, although it may be little known enough to have escaped our notice. We also know very little, or actually nothing, about who did the cover art—but it’s great.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1959—Holly, Valens, and Bopper Die in Plane Crash
A plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa kills American musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper, along with pilot Roger Peterson. The fault for the crash was determined to be poor weather combined with pilot inexperience. All four occupants died on impact. The event is later immortalized by Don McLean as the Day the Music Died in his 1971 hit song "American Pie." 1969—Boris Karloff Dies
After a long battle with arthritis and emphysema, English born actor Boris Karloff, who was best known for his film portrayals of Frankenstein's monster and the Mummy, contracts pneumonia and dies at King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, Sussex, England. 1920—Royal Canadian Mounted Police Forms
In Canada, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, aka Gendarmerie royale du Canada, begins operations when the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, founded 1873, and the Dominion Police, founded 1868, merge. The force, colloquially known as Mounties, is one of the most recognized law enforcement groups of its kind in the world. 1968—Image of Vietnam Execution Shown in U.S.
The execution of Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan is videotaped and photographed by Eddie Adams. This image showed Van Lem being shot in the head, and helped build American public opposition to the Vietnam War.
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