Pulp International

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BECAUSE THE NIGHT

At any random time any random man can cause any random trouble.

The thriller Night Man was first an episode of the CBS radio program Suspense written by Lucille Fletcher. Allan Ullman then novelized it in 1951. It came with the interesting though uncredited cover art you see above that captures the creeping sense of something possibly not right that women often experience. The main character, Stella Rhodes, comes to suspect that the night shift elevator operator in her apartment building is a convict out to avenge testimony she gave that put him away. She can’t be 100% sure it’s him after the years that have passed, and a chat with prison authorities informing her that he supposedly died behind bars. But she doesn’t buy it. The elevator man acts strangely, and other unusual events occur, leading her to conclude beyond a doubt that her life is in danger. Stella’s backstory takes up the book’s middle and is a bit less interesting than the more visceral framing sections set in the present, but overall Fletcher/Ullman succeed in capturing a woman’s terror, her frustration that she isn’t believed by authorities, and her helpless desperation. Her solution to these problems is surprising, but perhaps not farfetched. It’s an extremely unusual novel.

Bantam Books, Lucille Fletcher, Allan Ullman, cover art, literature

THE SPICE OF DEATH

I don't know what that smell is, but it's making me crave snickerdoodles.

Frances Crane, from 1941 to 1965, wrote a series of twenty-six murder mysteries with colors in the titles starring franchise sleuths Pat and Jean Abbott. The Cinnamon Murder, eighth in the set, originally came in 1946, with this Bantam edition following in 1947, and tracks the Abbotts as they’re asked to a party by ethereally beautiful Brenda Davison, who turns up dead, her face bashed in. The murder seems to be over an inheritance, and various people in Brenda’s immediate circle have motives. All of it takes place among New York City’s chic Park Avenue echelon, a setting we guess was supposed to transport readers to places they could never afford, as well as provide an appropriate backdrop for the book’s wit. But we thought The Cinnamon Murder was strictly average in all respects. We won’t rule out reading Crane again, though. If we find something costing no more than seven or eight dollars we’ll take the plunge.

New York City, Bantam Books, Frances Crane, cover art, literature

MAD ABOUT U

The day the universe split in two.

This 1950 Bantam Books edition of Fredric Brown’s What Mad Universe is fronted by Herman Bischoff art that successfully gets across the weird mood of the novel, originally published in 1949, about an everyman blasted into a parallel reality in which space travel is the norm, aliens live amongst humans, and intergalactic war rages against enemies from Arcturus. It’s considered a satirical space opera with horror and humor elements. More than anything, though, we feel it’s elementally lesser Brown. Crime fiction from the period tends to read adult, with its murder and sex, but science fiction usually reads a bit junior. We’ll stick with Brown as a crime author. It’s hard to believe this is the same guy who wrote Madball.

Bantam Books, Fredric Brown, Herman Bischoff, cover art, literature, sci-fi

SATYR DAY

It's always a memorable occasion when the old goat comes around.

Above: an alternate cover from Bantam Books for W. Somerset Maugham’s set-in-Italy society thriller Up at the Villa. The art by Charles Andres depicts the central event in the story without giving away what actually happens. We won’t either. This showed up in 1947, as did the other, but we suspect this one came first. You can see our original write-up here.

Italy, Bantam Books, W. Somerset Maugham, cover art, literature

LAST VILLA ON THE LEFT

Her entire existence is a house of cads.

We don’t read anything that doesn’t have art suitable for our website except on the rarest of occasions, so it’s lucky the wave of repackagings of earlier literature by publishers allows us to visit some classics. The acclaimed W. Somerset Maugham’s Up at the Villa came in 1941 originally, with this Bantam edition and its uncredited cover arriving in 1947. It’s about an American widow named Mary Panton, aged around thirty, living in a Tuscan villa. She’s beautiful and desired by two well-heeled men, but is drawn to an impoverished village violinist. When a tryst between the two goes haywire, she’s stuck in a moral dilemma. There’s nothing new in this idea, but Maugham is just a superior writer. Such as here:

The centuries fell away and wandering there you felt yourself the inhabitant of a fresher, younger world in which instinct was more reckless and consequences less material.

Without getting into detail, the pickle Mary finds herself in is the type of fix you’d tend to find in a pulp thriller. How Maugham approaches and deals with this quandary proves that he’s got bigger fish to fry than in any sin-obsessed crime novel. But you don’t need us to tell you that he was excellent at his craft. No less an entity than the British Empire appointed him a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1954, on the recommendation of Winston Churchill, himself a writer. Later Maugham and Churchill were two of the first five writers to be made Companions of Literature. So there you go. Up at the Villa is a nice read.

Italy, Britain, Bantam Books, Order of the Companions of Honour, Companion of Literature, W. Somerset Maugham, Winston Churchill, cover art, literature

OFFICE RULES

It's my wife? Okay, first thing to know about this job—when she calls I'm always busy.

Above: Jeanne Judson’s novel Nancy Ross Private Secretary from Bantam Books. We can’t call this an office sleaze cover, exactly, because the uncredited art is so chaste, but we have little doubt the actual story follows the genre’s form: woman must choose between career and love. Today the very idea is thought to be insulting, and rightly so, but back then readers loved these tales. This one is copyright 1958.

Bantam Books, Jeanne Judson, cover art, literature

A MATTER OF TASTE

I didn't care for it. I prefer the wine of Sonoma.

Though you wouldn’t guess from the title, Martha Gellhorn’s The Wine of Astonishment is a war novel in which the lead character experiences such horrors as the Battle of the Bulge and Dachau. It originally appeared in 1948 with this Bantam edition and its James Avati cover art coming in 1949. Gellhorn was a towering literary and journalistic figure who reported from Civil War Spain, D-Day Normandy, and Vietnam, and who today has a prize named after her—The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. She also married Ernest Hemingway. The Wine of Astonishment isn’t something we’ll read, because we stopped with war literature a while back, but we may try one of her other books.

Bantam Books, Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, Martha Gellhorn, James Avati, Ernest Hemingway, cover art, literature

LAST GUESS

Really? You have a surprise for me? Is it flowers? Is it a kitten?

Above: a cover for One More Unfortunate, written by British author Edgar Lustgarten and published in hardback in 1947, before this Bantam paperback followed in 1949. Lustgarten, who was also a broadcast personality, generally wrote true crime. He also hosted the British series of film shorts known as Scotland Yard, which were shown in cinemas before the main features. Later he hosted a true crime television series called The Scales of Justice. Altogether he wrote five novels and numerous true crime books. One More Unfortunate, grim fiction about an unjustly accused man ramrodded to the gallows, was his debut. 

Bantam Books, Edgar Lustgarten, Bernard Safran, cover art, literature

I OF THE STORM

Chaos thy name is woman.

Above you see a Mitchell Hooks cover for the 1951 Robert Standish novel Storm Centre, and yes, from the art alone you can see that once again we’ve taken the plunge into tropical island fiction. It’s impossible for us to resist the stuff. This one is about what happens when a devastatingly beautiful woman named Diana Maynard shows up at an isolated British plantation community in Malaysia. Everyone immediately covets her, particularly John and Adrian, friends and business partners who turn against each other. Even the local orangutan Jimmie is driven to distraction, theoretically because he senses something “primal” in Diana.

The consequences of all this lust are serious. An eye is lost. A skull is fractured. A face disfigured. A suicide completed. It’s an interesting story in that there are no villains at first, but rather good people acting increasingly out of character due to obsession. Diana, the titular “storm centre”, is up front from the beginning about not wanting any of the men. Well, until a charming rogue of a Frenchman turns her head. Storm Centre is a surprisingly forward-looking tale by Standish about male toxicity and aggressive attitudes toward beauty. Because he’s writing about women to depths that seem a bit beyond him, the story may not ring entirely true for some. But it certainly rings.

Malaysia, Bantam Books, Robert Standish, Mitchell Hooks, cover art, literature

THE HAND OF DEATH

West Virginia town develops a miner problem.

Dorothy Salisbury Davis entertained us with her debut novel The Judas Cat, so we decided to jump ahead to see how she fared after a few years of literary seasoning. The Clay Hand, which Bantam published in paperback in 1952 with uncredited cover art, is set in a coal mining town where a famous journalist is found dead. His pal Phil, who writes for the Columbus Dispatch, shows up for the inquest and starts to dig into the circumstances of the death, as well as his own complicated feelings for his friend’s beautiful widow Margaret.

Davis was good with characterizations in her first novel. Here, instead of the usual mutual affection between the male and female leads, she opts for a love/hate relationship. Owing to the tension they feel toward each other, both characters can sometimes be unpleasant. It makes for a few jarring moments, but certainly presents interesting backstory as the two try to unravel the mystery. Eventually they figure out both the journalistic angle, the reasons for the death, and their own feelings. All in all, another good result from Davis.

Bantam Books, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, cover art, literature
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1960—Nevil Shute Dies

English novelist Nevil Shute, who wrote the books A Town Like Alice and The Pied Piper, dies in Melbourne, Australia at age sixty-one. Seven of his novels were adapted to film, but his most famous was the cautionary post-nuclear war classic On the Beach.

1967—First Cryonics Patient Frozen

Dr. James Bedford, a University of California psychology professor, becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation. Bedford had kidney cancer that had metastasized to his lungs and was untreatable. His body was maintained for years by his family before being moved to Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona.

1957—Jack Gilbert Graham Is Executed

Jack Gilbert Graham is executed in Colorado, U.S.A., for killing 44 people by planting a dynamite bomb in a suitcase that was subsequently loaded aboard United Airlines Flight 629. The flight took off from Denver and exploded in mid-air. Graham was executed by means of poison gas in the Colorado State Penitentiary, in Cañon City.

1920—League of Nations Convenes

The League of Nations holds its first meeting, at which it ratifies the Treaty of Versailles, thereby officially ending World War I. At its greatest extent, from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, the League had 58 members. Its final meeting was held in April 1946 in Geneva.

1957—Macmillan Becomes Prime Minister

Harold Macmillan accepts the Queen of England’s invitation to become Prime Minister following the sudden resignation of Sir Anthony Eden. Eden had resigned due to ill health in the wake of the Suez Crisis. Macmillan is remembered for helping negotiate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty after the Cuban Missile Crisis. He served as PM until 1963.

1923—Autogyro Makes First Flight

Spanish civil engineer and pilot Juan de la Cierva’s autogyro, which was a precursor to the helicopter, makes its first successful flight. De la Cierva’s autogyro made him world famous, and he used his invention to support fascist general Francisco Franco when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936. De la Cierva was dead by December of that same year, perishing, ironically, in a plane crash in Croydon, England.

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WALKING AFTER MIDNIGHT

Italian artist Sandro Symeoni showcases his unique painterly skills on a cover for Peter Cheyney's He Walked in Her Sleep.

OPEN SECRETS

French artist Jef de Wulf was both prolific and unique. He painted this cover for René Roques' 1958 novel Secrets.

THE WORST DAY OF CHRISTMAS

Christmas themed crime novels are rare, in our experience. Do Not Murder Before Christmas by Jack Iams is an exception, and a good one. The cover art is by Robert Stanley.

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