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PRIORITY MAILMAN

Slide it in her slot! I did and it was great!

French author Roger Martin du Gard’s The Postman, about a mail carrier whose job helps him learn all the dirty little secrets in the village of Maupeyrou, was originally published in 1933 as Vieille France, and, while a bit racy, is a serious novel. Therefore our subhead is juvenile, we admit, and in this case we’re even being crude about a Nobel Prize winning novelist. But we’re no more crude than the publishing companies that repackaged literary masterpieces inside sexualized cover art. This Berkley Books edition from 1958 with art by naughty Rudy Nappi, is a very good example of that phenomenon.

France, Berkley Books, Nobel Prize, Roger Martin du Gard, Rudy Nappi, cover art, literature

WAITING FOR MR. RIGHT NOW

Many men have tried these stools. None have lasted.

Above is another cover for Charles Gorham’s novel Martha Crane. It was reprinted many times. This is the 1960 Berkley Books edition, with Rudy Nappi cover art. We love this because the empty stools subtly convey that the story is about a call girl—i.e. any man can approach her but they’re all temporary and unmemorable. You can see another excellent cover here.

Berkley Books, Charles Gorham, Rudy Nappi, cover art, literature

THE ART OF THE DEAL

That's a pretty good offer. Could you throw in some performance bonuses?

Above: Charles Copeland cover art for Charles Gorham’s Make Me an Offer. Originally published in 1948 as The Gilded Hearse, this Berkley edition is from 1959. The story is about an up-and-comer in NYC’s publishing industry, and whether he’ll lose his soul chasing success. Seems like we’ve read many such novels, but this one is pretty well regarded. Maybe we’ll check it out one day.

Berkley Books, Charles Gorham, Charles Copeland, cover art, literature

BOYS WILL BE TOYED WITH

I want this to be good, you two. So take one more look over here to remind yourselves what you're fighting about.

Last time we read a novel by the globetrotting Ed Lacy, we said afterward we’d travel anywhere with him. In 1961’s The Freeloaders, for which you see a beautiful but uncredited cover above, he once again conducts readers to an exotic place—the Côte d’Azur, in the company of a small clan of Americans trying to survive without work visas in and around Nice.

Freelance writer Al Cane, the most recent addition to the group, has occasional gigs and makes enough money to live. Ex-boxer/ex-cop/ex-advertising man/constant enigma Charley Martins has savings that keep him in a nice seafront apartment. But painter Gil Fletcher and inveterate schemer Ed Jones struggle daily. The women within the group are diverse. Charley’s girlfriend Pascale is young, beautiful, and precocious; Gil’s partner Simone is opportunistic and fickle; Ed’s girlfriend Daniele is industrious and kind.

Eventually, Gil, desperate to stay in Nice and in need of money for he and Daniele, cooks up a foolproof robbery scheme. But to quote Mickey Rourke in Body Heat, “Any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you’re gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you’re a genius.” Gil is no genius. The rest of the story deals with the aftermath of the crime on the Nice guys, the unraveling of the mystery of who the mysterious Charley really is, and Al’s growing lust toward Pascale.

As with other Lacy novels, the flavor is as important as the plot, and he dishes up the South of France (with sides of Italy) in satisfying fashion. There are always a few nits to pick with him. Any time you write a novel there are at least fifty ways to fuck up. Lacy is no genius, but he always entertains. That’s travail numéro un.

France, Italy, Nice, Cannes, Ventimiglia, Berkley Books, Ed Lacy, Leonard Zinberg, cover art, literature

MISPLACED CONFIDENCE

You're upset I betrayed your trust. But if I hadn't, all the publishers calling about your scandals would have been even more upset.

It’s election season in the U.S., so above we have a cover for Harriett H. Carr’s Confidential Secretary, originally published in 1958, with this Berkley paperback arriving in 1961. It’s about a woman who takes a job in a Washington, D.C. corporation and is drawn into congressional intrigue, over the course of which she finds true love. This isn’t one we’d read, but it does fit into our cover collection featuring the U.S. Capitol building—soon to be belching smoke and flames, the way things are going over there. The art is uncredited. 

Washington D.C., Berkley Books, Harriett H. Carr, cover art, literature

ANATOMY OF AN ASSASSINATION

A murder by any other name would kill as dead.

This is a rather pretty cover painted by Charles Copeland for E.M. Harper’s 1960 novel The Assassin, the story of Alec Jordan, who’s spared the guillotine in an Algerian prison but must repay the shadowy government operatives who freed him by murdering an Arab political figure. We’ve seen convicts turned into assassins a couple times in vintage literature. What sets this story apart is its many flashbacks to Jordan’s youth, from the time he was witness to his moonshiner father’s killing by cops, to being sprung from reform school to play high school football (seems someone always wants to put his skills to use), to his various war experiences.

The story begins in Paris, from which Jordan pursues his target to London and Vienna, world weary, haunted by the past, and hounded by the people who are operating him. There’s, unsurprisingly, the requisite woman-from-his-past for whom he still has feelings—a beauty named Renée who married an Austrian count while Jordan was hors de combat. Conveniently, she’s now a widow, but is reclaiming the past an option for Jordan? To survive but lose your soul, to resist corruption but be killed, to find redemption in love. You’ve read it before, and though Harper breaks no new ground plotwise, he wrote a contemplative iteration of the story that offers some enjoyment.

Algeria, Paris, London, Vienna, Berkley Books, E.M. Harper, Charles Copeland, cover art, literature

YOUNG COPS IN LOVE

Thou shalt not covet thy partner's wife. But on the other hand rules were made to be broken.

Eager to read another novel by Dan J. Marlowe after enjoying Death Deep Down, we selected 1961’s Backfire, for which you see an uncredited cover above. This time Marlowe is in police mode, with the tale of cop named Marty Donovan whose bad practices end with his partner shot dead. In order to save his job he re-stages the crime elsewhere, but he’s immediately assigned by his superiors to solve the murder. That puts him in the no-win position of searching for a killer who is—of course—the only witness to the fact that the shooting happened somewhere different than everyone thinks. You know what that means. The only way Marty can carry off his scam is to kill the killer. That’s a bad spot to be in, but there’s an additional complication to this tangled mess—Marty was secretly sleeping with his partner’s wife Lenore. A sticky wicket indeed.

Those of an untrusting mindset might think Marty arranged the murder to leave Lenore an available widow. Those of an even less trusting mindset might think Lenore arranged the set-up. We know for sure Marty didn’t do it—he’s the narrator. In turn, he’s pretty sure Lenore didn’t do it. So investigating he goes, chasing the very person who could cost him the only career he’s ever known. While the search has its twists and turns, we can’t say we were as enthralled by this book as we were with Death Deep Down. That book had a more interesting concept and main character. It came four years after Backfire, and the additional writing experience shows. Still, nothing Marlowe did here shook our confidence in him. We may read him again, but if we do we’ll try to pick something outside the police milieu.

Berkley Books, Dan Marlowe, Dan J. Marlowe, cover art, literature

DOWN AND OUT

Honey! Oh no! There goes your undefeated record! And in your very first fight!

This 1959 Berkley Books edition of the 1958 W.C. Heinz boxing novel The Professional has excellent Robert Maguire cover art of a boxer on the deck and a distressed woman looking on in horror. You’ll also notice Ernest Hemingway’s endorsement. Papa’s fame led to his stamp of approval being highly coveted. We’d guess we’ve seen his name used this way on ten covers, but we bet there are more.

If you go by the reviews on this book, Heinz deserved all the praise he received for his tale of a middle-weight boxer trying to climb to the top. As an award winning sports writer he knew his stuff, and he collected other accolades to go with his anointment by Hemingway, winning the E. P. Dutton Award for best magazine story of the year five times, and earning the A. J. Liebling Award for boxing writing.

Over the decades Heinz had his work reprinted in dozens of anthologies and textbooks, so if you’re into sports journalism he’s one of the main dudes. We have a fair number of boxing covers in our website, and they tend to be amusing if you look at them just the right way. We won’t link to them all, but if you want to see some good examples try here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Berkley Books, W.C. Heinz, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Maguire, cover art, literature, boxing
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott

In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city’s African-American population were the bulk of the system’s ridership.

1936—Crystal Palace Gutted by Fire

In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure.

1963—Warren Commission Formed

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. However the long report that is finally issued does little to settle questions about the assassination, and today surveys show that only a small minority of Americans agree with the Commission’s conclusions.

1942—Nightclub Fire Kills Hundreds

In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the fashionable Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people. Patrons were unable to escape when the fire began because the exits immediately became blocked with panicked people, and other possible exits were welded shut or boarded up. The fire led to a reform of fire codes and safety standards across the country, and the club’s owner, Barney Welansky, who had boasted of his ties to the Mafia and to Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, was eventually found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

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DEAD END STREET

Barye Phillips cover art for Street of No Return by David Goodis.

SPEED THRILLS

Assorted paperback covers featuring hot rods and race cars.

FIERY FEMMES

A collection of red paperback covers from Dutch publisher De Vrije Pers.

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