| Vintage Pulp | Mar 23 2020 |
Wow, he sees me naked and drops dead. I guess all those guys were right—I do have a killer body.
Above you see a Victor Kalin cover for Girl Meets Body, written by Jack Iams for Dell Publications, and published in 1947. In the story a woman having a nude walkabout on a secluded New Jersey beach encounters a corpse. The discovery unleashes problems with police, mobsters, tabloids, and particularly her husband, who she married in England during World War II, before being kept away from him by the conflict for two years. The husband soon suspects this wife he barely knows and has spent only a few weeks with total has a secret connection to the murdered man.
It sounds sinister, but Iams is not trying to be too serious with this book. Major characters are named Whittlebait, Barrelforth, and Squareless, if that gives you an indication of the feel. The writing style is a bit Thin Man, with numerous quips and asides, and the spouses, named Sybil and Tim, cast as dueling lovebirds. Throughout the arguments there's never a doubt they'll work it out. They also work out the mystery, unconvincingly, but overall, we have to say the book was enjoyable. We were betting Sybil and Tim would be recurring characters, but it doesn't seem like that happened. Girl Meets Body is the first and last of them.
| Vintage Pulp | Jun 11 2014 |
Hey everybody—get an Eiffel of these!
If you’ve been visiting the site for a while, you perhaps remember the cover we shared for H.R. Lenormand’s Renée, which shows a lonely woman staring out of her room at the majestic—and in that context clearly metaphorical—Eiffel Tower. Since then we’ve seen the tower pop up on many covers, including Passion in Paris by Harrison Stone, above, so today we’ve compiled a collection. Most of these examples view the tower as just an innocent civic landmark, but take it from us—once the idea that it stands for something else gets into your head you really can’t get it out. Interestingly, while the tower appears on many U.S. book fronts, we found it on only two of the hundreds of French covers we have. Perhaps they consider it too banal. Twenty-one scans below.
FranceCharadePaul ReninJack IamsPaul DaneMack ReynoldsJoseph HerronWill NewburyHelga MorayMichael WellsAaron BellAuguste le BretonSim AlbertMichel BriceGérard de VilliersJean de BallardGeorge GoodmanPeter StoneMatthew HeadDiane FrazerJean d’AuffargisHarrison StoneBernard Maracover artcover collectionliterature
