Every novel can't be a winner. Lloyd Royce's H Is for Hell, which came in 1963 from Intimate Editions, has a nice cover painted by Chet Collom, but it's a really bad book. It's half-baked, dreary, and infantile. The story deals with the line of succession in a large business called Ace Sales, how the dying patriarch's alcoholic son and drug addict daughter are passed over in favor of his nymphomaniac niece, and what happens when the mafia tries to take over and the company's product manager Mike Lawe steps in to play hero. That may sound interesting, but the book is a front and rear cover folded around a gaping void where writing skill should be. Royce uses the word “withdrawl” not once, but three times. Three. And it got past his editors too. We're not perfect. We make occasional mistakes or typos here, but we write thousands of words a week, and with no editors at all. Inexcusable stuff from Royce. 

This is an interesting cover for the 1962 novel Sweet Smell of Lust by Arnold Marmor, with its mirror perspective and extra large Oscar standing on the bureau. Basically, it's the story of two women vying for the same plum film role. One woman is older, desperate, and ruthless enough to pull dirty tricks for the role, while the other is young and naive to the point that she'll do whatever she's asked, even if it means ending up on her back. There's something in the air indeed—pheromones. Agents, directors, criminals, hardcore partiers, and the obligatory oversexed lesbian round out the cast. There are numerous vintage books in this Hollwood sleaze category, so many that the genre cries out for a cover collection. Maybe we'll put one together.