Edward Ronns churned out about eighty novels over the course of his career, writing under his birth name Edward Aarons, and also as Paul Ayres. He wrote a novel called Death in the Lighthouse in 1938, which Australian imprint Phantom Books published as Cowl of Doom in 1954 with the curious cover art you see above. Plotwise, a man with a head injury—caused by a bullet—awakens in the apartment of woman he doesn't know and quickly realizes he's somehow lost three years. As usual, Phantom gives no artist info so we don't know who the brush behind this was. And yeah, we know we should stop ragging on Bieber, but we're getting better. Last time we compared him to Hitler.  

Above, great cover art for Robert O. Saber's Murder Honeymoon, a digest style paperback from the Australian imprint Phantom Books, 1953. The art originally fronted Saber's 1952 Original Novels thriller City of Sin, which you see at right, and was painted by the always amazing George Gross. Saber was aka Milton K. Ozaki, and we've featured him quite a bit because he seems to have always managed to have his books illustrated by the best. Though the art on these two books was basically the same, the novels were different. This is the first time we've come across identical art for separate novels by the same author.

This is a pretty interesting cover for Mason Gregory's paperback mystery If 2 of Them Are Dead, done pamphlet style by Australia's Phantom Books. One-percenters hit the mountain for downhill thrills, but when one dies on a run there's a question whether it was an accident or if he was pushed. Well, since the title refers to that famous line by Benjamin Franklin—"Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead"—accident obviously isn't the explanation. The real shame of the death, in our opinion, is the waste of a lift ticket. Those things are out-of-control expensive. A yard sale, by the way, is when someone falls and leaves their shit scattered all over the mountain—a ski here, a ski there, maybe a hat over yonder. Been there, done it. 1954 copyright on this one (1953 hardcover), with uncredited art.

Above, the cover of Homicide Hotel written by Joe Barry, aka Joe Barry Lake, for the Aussie publisher Phantom Books, 1951. The art, which depicts a scene that doesn’t occur in the text, is uncredited. 

Remember our set of paperback covers featuring women who had died with their eyes agape? Here’s another to add to the list, which we saw over at Bill Crider’s blog. It’s Robert O. Saber’s The Affair of the Frigid Blonde, published in 1950 by the Handi-Books imprint of Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. This one is a bit strange, though, because of the three men seemingly hovering in mid-air to get a look through the deceased’s skylight. We chalk the bizarre perspective up to artistic license, or maybe we’re just not seeing it right. In fact, maybe she’s not even dead. Maybe she’s just in a state of shock. If we saw three guys floating above our skylight we’d fall into a stupor too. But no, the synopsis makes clear she’s dead. 

Anyway, Robert Saber was a pseudonym used by Milton K. Ozaki, who also published frequently under his own name. The book also appeared in Australia as The Deadly Blonde in 1953, published by the Australian imprint Phantom Books, with slightly altered art. Among other details, what looks like a robot but is probably supposed to be a lamp was removed from the background, a clock disappeared, a humanoid shadow at the far right edge vanished, and the woman’s undies were made less sheer (though the floating guys still get a pretty interesting angle). All in all, this is very instructive example of how cover art changes between editions of pulp paperbacks. We’ll dig up more examples later.