| Vintage Pulp | May 12 2023 |
*sob* Have a few affairs, trash a hotel room, wreck a car, slap a child—and your reputation is ruined. It isn't fair.
Above is a cover for Day Keene's 1954 novel Notorious, republished in Italian by Longanesi & Co. in 1958 with cover art by John Floherty, Jr. The art reminded us that we have a couple of Keene books, so we're going to move him near the top of the pile because he's always given us a wild read. Meanwhile, if all goes well, one of our beloved pulp mules will be bringing us a group of fun paperbacks from the U.S., including efforts from Milton K. Ozaki, Lou Cameron, Chester Himes, and Dorothy Salisbury Davis. We hope to have a summer of great reading.
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 1 2022 |
The beasts of the jungle are dangerous, savage, and human.
You'd never guess, but this cover for U.S. writer Jonathan Latimer's L'avventura nera is the 1956 Italian translation of his 1940 African safari novel Dark Memory. It was painted by Lu Kimmel, possibly borrowed from something he originally painted for a U.S. novel or magazine. We recently talked about this book in detail—a lot of detail—but long story short, it's about Yanks in Africa, and a difficult, dangerous safari that brings out the beast in its participants. It was great. Learn more? Click here.
| Vintage Pulp | Jul 6 2019 |
Rare perennial blooms on crime book cover.
Not long ago we shared some covers from the Milanese publishers Longanesi & Co., and the lure of those for us was the presence of U.S. model Virginia Gordon on two of them. Here's another Longanesi offering—James Kieran's translated novel Come Murder Me—with burlesque legend Lilly Christine reclining on an ottoman. Longanesi published this in 1957.
| Vintage Pulp | Oct 6 2018 |
Cats always get in the way at the worst moments.
The above cover from the Milan based publishers Longanesi & Co. features U.S. glamour model Virginia Gordon fronting a 1959 translation of Ed McBain's The Pusher. McBain is basically a legend, but is it a stretch to call Gordon legendary too? We don't think so. She was Playboy magazine's January 1959 Playmate of the Month, and because of that her photos are highly collectible and expensive. You'd see two important reasons why if not for a mischievous cat, but you can outmaneuver him by clicking here or here.
Below we have a few more fronts from Longanesi, including Jonathan Craig's Case of the Village Tramp, which also has Gordon on the cover, and John Jakes' detective novel Johnny Havoc, featuring Carol Baker giving a nice over-the-shoulder glance. Like Australia's Horwitz Publications and several other non-U.S. companies, Longanesi used (probably) unlicensed images of Hollywood starlets and glamor models as a matter of habit. We'll show you more examples of those a bit later.
ItalyMilanLonganesi & Co. PlayboyVirginia GordonEd McBainEvan HunterJonathan CraigJohn JakesHenry KaneJohn McPartlandAdam KnightCarol Bakercover artliteraturecover collection
