 What the hell are you two snickering about? You never seen a guy polish his tommy gun before? 
Harry Schaare does nice work on a cover for W.R. Burnett's thriller High Sierra, copyright 1950 from Bantam Books. If anybody snickered it was probably Schaare himself. He had to know how masturbatory this looked, right? Or maybe it's just us. Anyway, this book obviously became a celebrated gangster film noir starring Humphrey Bogart, but the source material is electric. We read it years ago and it stuck with us. Highly recommended.
 Okay, okay. I wanted pizza, but we'll order the damn Thai food instead. 
You don't know pressure until the Pulp Intl. girlfriends have applied it, believe us. We'd almost rather face what the protagonist of Charles Francis Coe's Pressure deals with—going from an obscure lawyer trying to scrape by to a crucial cog in an organized crime cartel. It's a bit Breaking Bad in the sense that he initially does it for his family, but ends up alienating them. The pressure really mounts when he decides he has to get out or lose everything. The book first appeared in 1951 and the above Signet edition came in 1952, with cover work by Harry Schaare.
 Well, he says his name is Manny Slaughter, but for some reason I don't think he's as harmless as he seems. 
Elizabeth Daly fashioned herself as a U.S. version of Agatha Christie, writing the same kind of mysteries but setting them in New York City. We gather that she was even Christie's favorite mystery author, which is quite an accolade. Murder Listens In is seventh in Daly's Henry Gamadge series—the main character being a sleuth who writes mystery novels—and he's drawn into this puzzle by a crumpled note with his name and address on it found by a postman outside an Upper East Side mansion, and is soon dealing with a client who insists on anonymity to the point of throwing him notes out a window. Someone in this house filled with distant relatives and servants is in deep trouble, and Gamadge, with the help of his wife Clara and his sidekick Schenck, has to figure it out before someone (else) dies. Exceedingly well reviewed, and deservedly so. Originally published in 1944 as Arrow Pointing Nowhere, with this Bantam paperback appearing in 1949 graced by Harry Schaare cover art.
 These are people who definitely pay attention to the poles. 
When you look at lots of paperbacks sometimes a common thread suddenly jumps out at you that went unnoticed before. Such was the case a few weeks ago when we noticed the large number of characters on mid-century covers leaning against poles—light poles, telephone poles, sign poles, etc. We suggested someone should put together a collection, but of course we really meant us, so today you see above and below various characters deftly using these features of the urban streetscape as accessories. Art is from Benedetto Caroselli, Harry Schaare, George Gross, Rudolph Belarski, James Avati, et al. You can see a couple more examples here and here.                           
 When girl meets girl sparks fly. 
Above and below is a small percentage of some of the thousands of lesbian themed paperback covers that appeared during the mid-century period, with art by Paul Rader, Fred Fixler, Harry Schaare, Rudy Nappi, Charles Copeland, and others, as well as a few interesting photographed fronts. The collection ends with the classic Satan Was a Lesbian, which you’ve probably seen before, but which no collection like this is complete without. Hopefully most of the others will be new to you. Needless to say, almost all were written by men, and in that sense are really hetero books reflecting hetero fantasies (fueled by hetero misconceptions and slander). You can see plenty more in this vein on the website Strange Sisters.                                              
 Lady, if you don't start cooperating, you're going to be sorry, you hear me? Now for the last time—pull my finger! 
The 1959 mystery Crime Cop was written by Larry Holden, which was a pseudonym used by author Lorenz Heller. Why he didn't want to call himself Lorenz Heller is the real mystery, as that's about as writerly a name as one could hope to have. Actually, he did publish under his own name one time when he debuted in 1937, but soon chose new identities, including Burt Sims, which was reserved for his television writing. In this novel cops Flavin and Gilman hunt a strangler. The cover art, which is battered but beautiful (just like us!), is by Harry Schaare.
 I'm sorry for bringing you here, baby. The travel guides didn't make the Day of Blood sound nearly so violent and terrifying. 
William Vance's Day of Blood looks like a western at first glance, but it's actually set in Kenya against the backdrop of a looming uprising by the Mau Mau, whose “maniacal leader had vowed to kill all the whites in Kenya on sight.” What nerve, right? Some people just refuse to take invasion, land theft, and mass subjugation lying down. This one has all the hallmarks of mid-century fiction set in Africa—rugged and world weary hero, sexually desperate women ranging from rapacious to virginal, and, of course, wrongheaded tribal locals trying to ruin the colonial party. Not our thing, but for readers willing to look past the obvious shortcomings, these types of books often offer solid entertainment. 1961 copyright on this one, with nice art from Harry Schaare.
 Remember that time I pinned you down and shoved an earthworm in your mouth? That’s a bit ironic now, isn’t it? 
Brother and Sister is Donald E. Westlake writing incest sleaze under the pseudonym Edwin West, telling the story of a twenty-one-year-old meathead and his nubile teen sister who, er, come together on a deeper level after the accidental deaths of their parents. They hump like rabbits for a few weeks, deal with a villainous uncle, then morality triumphs and they die in the end. The male character here is in the Air Force, which is appropriate, because Westlake must have written this on autopilot. The Harry Schaare cover art shows a much older guy than the punk-ass troublemaker in the story, but it’s still quite nice. 1961 copyright.
 For better or worse, in sickness and health, women in pulp don’t have a heck of a lot of choice about it. Pulp is a place where the men are decisive and the women are as light as feathers. We’ve gotten together a collection of paperback covers featuring women being spirited away to places unknown, usually unconscious, by men and things that are less than men. You have art from Harry Schaare, Saul Levine, Harry Barton, Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, and others.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1924—St. Petersburg is renamed Leningrad
St. Peterburg, the Russian city founded by Peter the Great in 1703, and which was capital of the Russian Empire for more than 200 years, is renamed Leningrad three days after the death of Vladimir Lenin. The city had already been renamed Petrograd in 1914. It was finally given back its original name St. Petersburg in 1991. 1966—Beaumont Children Disappear
In Australia, siblings Jane Nartare Beaumont, Arnna Kathleen Beaumont, and Grant Ellis Beaumont, aged 9, 7, and 4, disappear from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, and are never seen again. Witnesses claim to have spotted them in the company of a tall, blonde man, but over the years, after interviewing many potential suspects, police are unable generate enough solid leads to result in an arrest. The disappearances remain Australia's most infamous cold case. 1949—First Emmy Awards Are Presented
At the Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles, California, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presents the first Emmy Awards. The name Emmy was chosen as a feminization of "immy", a nickname used for the image orthicon tubes that were common in early television cameras. 1971—Manson Family Found Guilty
Charles Manson and three female members of his "family" are found guilty of the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, which Manson orchestrated in hopes of bringing about Helter Skelter, an apocalyptic war he believed would arise between blacks and whites. 1961—Plane Carrying Nuclear Bombs Crashes
A B-52 Stratofortress carrying two H-bombs experiences trouble during a refueling operation, and in the midst of an emergency descent breaks up in mid-air over Goldsboro, North Carolina. Five of the six arming devices on one of the bombs somehow activate before it lands via parachute in a wooded region where it is later recovered. The other bomb does not deploy its chute and crashes into muddy ground at 700 mph, disintegrating while driving its radioactive core fifty feet into the earth, where it remains to this day.
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