Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

SAMBA DO CRIME

It's a carnaval of mayhem in Brazil.


We wanted to call attention one last time to an interesting Facebook page dedicated to vintage crime paperbacks published in Brazil by Edições de Ouro and Editora Tecnoprint. We started our webpage in 2008 and back then we had a lot of company. Somehow or other, regretfully, we’ve outlasted many of them. Maybe in the age of Twitter and Instagram, blogs with actual words have died. But for that reason it’s exciting to see someone launch something new—especially dedicated to such an exotic (from our point of view) niche of paperback style. It was actually launched in 2017, but we saw it only recently. We can tell you this—we love Brazil, have been there for carnaval, and if we’d known these books were down there we’d have brought back more than just a long lasting cachaça hangover. We knew Brazil had produced some pulp style paperbacks—much of the art was repurposed from U.S. editions—but we didn’t know it was this extensive. Carnaval 2022? Well, probably not. But one day, return we will, to old Brazil.

Brazil, Tecnoprint, Edições de Ouro e Editora Tecnoprint, Bruno Fischer, Wade Miller, William Ard, Frank Kane, Rex Stout, Brett Halliday, Stephen J. Marlowe, cover art, cover collection, literature

PAST DUE

Actually, I'll pay first. I once bought a television on installments and I can tell you easy financing is a scam.

This cover illustration from Robert McGinnis features one of his more famous elongated femmes fatales. He’s also cleverly included iconic detective art objects such as a pistol, a martini glass, a smoldering cigarette, and a tumbler of some amber liquid or other, and with some nifty positioning he’s placed all these items clearly in view while keeping the poses of his stylized figures easy and balanced. And for good measure his femme has lost a heel, which invites speculation as to how that happened. That’s GGA (good girl art) at its best.

Could Robert Kyle’s, aka Robert Terrall’s, aka Brett Halliday’s 1960 thriller Kill Now, Pay Later possibly be as good as its cover art? That’s a big ask. Too big, really, though the book is pretty good. Kyle’s franchise detective Ben Gates is hired to guard gifts at a high society wedding, but someone slips a mickey into his coffee and he’s in la-la land while two murders and a robbery occur. As a matter of self preservation he has to solve the crimes or his chances of securing more work will be pretty slim. After all, who’d hire a detective that passes out on the job?

So Gates delves into the mystery, unravels a complicated plot, and handles the advances of three beautiful women. We think of these babe-magnet detectives as the male analogue to the dewy maidens of romance novels. As male wish fulfillment goes, Kill Now, Pay Later gets the job done, offering up a tough and competent protagonist and an engaging assortment of secondary personalities. This was third in the Gates series after Blackmail, Inc. and Model for Murder. We’ll probably try to locate those. Kyle/Terrall/Halliday knows how to entertain a reader.

Dell Publications, Robert Kyle, Robert Terrall, Brett Halliday, Robert McGinnis, cover art, literature

WANTON SOUP

A flavorful stew of mid-century paperback covers.

This post was long overdue. Most pulp oriented websites do a collection of covers that have the word wanton in the title, so we’re following suit. Basically because we couldn’t think of anything else to do today. Numerous examples below. Enjoy.

Lon Williams, Ian Gordon, Kermit Welles, R. Wilkes Hunter, Dave King, Lester Lake, John B. Thompson, George Cassidy, James Clayford, Michael Gillian, Judson Grey, Al James, Arnold Marmor, J.C. Perlman, Lawrence Treat, Martin A. Larson, Henry Klinger, Carter Brown, Lewis Clay, Curt Aldrich, Richard S. Prather, Drew Palmer, Peter Cheyney, Brett Halliday, Mark Daniels, cover art, literature, cover collection

HOT PINK LINE

*gasp* That phone is just everything! Where did you find it in that color? I'm dying of jealousy right now.

Murder takes no holiday and neither does artistic talent, as proven by this beautiful Robert McGinnis cover of a man losing his shit over the latest pink phone from Ma Bell. Okay, that isn’t what’s happening, but it looks that way, right? Actually the male figure is way over his head in a smuggling plot and the female figure—a femme fatale named Vivienne Larousse—is keeping him from losing his nerve. The book is set on the fictional Caribbean Island of St. Albans, a British enclave that seems to be modeled after the Caymans. Brett Halliday’s franchise sleuth Michael Shayne is thrown into the mix to solve a murder that took place in the U.S., and follows the clues to the tropics. Of the approximately seventy Shayne novels, this one—number thirty-five or so—is merely adequate. Actually, all the ones we’ve read have been merely adequate. But we’ll keep at it. McGinnis, on the other hand, is masterful. Of all the moments in an action oriented book to illustrate he chose an unlikely one, but the result is excellent. His alternate cover, below, is also great.

Cayman Islands, Dell Publications, Brett Halliday, Davis Dresser, Robert McGinnis, cover art, literature

A LETHAL REWRITE

Michael Shayne stabs Phillip Marlowe in the back.

Above you see a promo poster for the detective yarn The Time To Kill, a movie that premiered in the U.S. today in 1943 and has a mildly convoluted provenance that will be interesting to pulp fans. Mystery authors Brett Halliday and Raymond Chandler were both popular writers, but Twentieth Century Fox had already made six movies based on Halliday’s novels. So they bought Chandler’s The High Window and changed the main character from Phillip Marlowe to Halliday’s franchise detective Michael Shayne. We don’t know if Chandler and Halliday had any sort of rivalry to that point, but we wouldn’t be surprised if one started.

Fox had made the previous Shayne flicks in just two years, and they’re light in tone, which is one reason we think websites that label The Time To Kill a film noir are stretching. The lead character is not a driven loner, the general sense of corruption is nowhere to be found, and most of the usual noir iconography, such as rain or water, neon, newspapers, sidewalks, etc., is absent. No flashbacks. No voiceover. Nothing. Co-star Doris Merrick is a femme fatale perhaps, but virtually any woman in a crime thriller can fit that cubbyhole. Then surprise—four fifths of the way through its running time the movie shifts gears—Shayne walks into a nighttime murder scene that’s draped with shadows and ill portent, but even this is played for laughs when he pratfalls down a staircase. And the ultimate fate of the villain is basically a bad barroom joke.

Director Herbert Leeds had worked on a variety of low budget westerns, comedies, and serials, and was a technician, not a stylist. His spliced in noir sequence is a nice nod to an emerging trend, but we don’t think it pushes what is mainly a goofball detective film into noir territory. In general, his were a safe pair of hands tasked with churning out movies at high speed. The Time To Kill is a typically perfunctory Leeds effort—one hour and one minute long, meant to be consumed like penny candy. So we don’t think it’s a film noir, but hey—we just run a silly website. What do we know? And does it even matter? The Time To Kill is a decent enough distraction, however you categorize it.

Twentieth Century Fox, The Time To Kill, Lloyd Nolan, Raymond Chandler, Brett Halliday, Herbert Leeds, Doris Merrick, poster art, cinema, literature, movie review

UNHAPPILY CARRIED

For better or worse, in sickness and health, women in pulp don’t have a heck of a lot of choice about it.

Pulp is a place where the men are decisive and the women are as light as feathers. We’ve gotten together a collection of paperback covers featuring women being spirited away to places unknown, usually unconscious, by men and things that are less than men. You have art from Harry Schaare, Saul Levine, Harry Barton, Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, and others.

Jack Woodford, John B. Thompson, Bernard Mara, K.H. Helms Liesenhoff, Bruno Fischer, Verne Chute, Jean de la Hire, Robert O. Saber, Brett Halliday, Robert Martin, John Dickson Carr, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Clyde Allison, Charlotte Armstrong, Victor Hugo, Marcus Miller, Jean Ford, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Richard S. Prather, Saul Levine, Harry Schaare, Keith Vining, S.H. Courtier, Hugh Clevely, Stuart Sterling, Alan Marshall, John Dexter, Barry Perowne, Edgar Wallace, Walker A. Tomkins, Jack Williamson, Norman Saunders, George Gross, Harry Barton, Alain Gourdon, Aslan, cover art, literature, cover collection

HOT FOR EACH OTHER

They got on like a hayloft afire—until the barn burned down.

In pulp, people are careless with cigarettes, as we’ve pointed out before, and above is another example. Originally published in 1937 as Too Smart for Love, Rainbow Books came out with this digest paperback in 1951. The set-up here is simple—bad girl Janet Stang pursues men for their money. Author Kathryn Culver was in reality the prolific Davis Dresser, who also wrote as Brett Halliday, Don Davis, Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, et.al. The art here is by Howell Dodd and it’s top quality work, in our opinion. Dodd had a thing about redheads and made them a staple of his work, so we’re going to gather up a collection of these women and show you more later.

Rainbow Books, Kathryn Culver, David Dresser, Brett Halliday, Don Davis, Asa Baker, Matthew Blood, Don Davis, Hal Debrett, Howell Dodd, cover art, literature

LADY KILLERS

Sexiness is a warm gun (on a book cover anyway).

This cover of Peter O’Donnell’s Sabre Tooth, part of his popular Modesty Blaise series, shows Italian actress Monica Vitti as the title character, and it got us thinking about all the paperback covers that feature photos of women with guns. Of course, we realize that, as far as the gun-crazed U.S. is concerned, thinking of armed people as enticing or artistic may seem a little tone deaf, but we’re talking about book covers, that’s all. So we decided to put together a collection. We should mention that the Blaise series is worth reading if you’re looking for something along the lines of light thrills. It’s breezy and sexy as only 1960s spy literature can be, and Blaise herself is an interesting character, born in Greece, raised by a Hungarian scholar, trained in martial arts, and proficient in piracy, theft, and all around sneakiness. In Sabre Tooth she finds herself trying to thwart an invasion of Kuwait by an Afghan warlord. Below we have a dozen more photo covers featuring heat-packing women. As always with these collections, thanks to the original uploaders, most from Flickr, but particularly Muller-Fokker and Existential Ennui.

Modesty Blaise, Harry Whittington, Gérard de Villiers, Jo Brix, Gavin Black, Chester Himes, James Hadley Chase, James Eastwood, William Haggard, Mickey Spillane, Andrew York, Brett Halliday, Mark Lester, cover art, cover collection, literature

BLIND SIDED

Pull the blinds and turn out the lights.

We’ve explored many cover motifs in pulp art, and another we’ve grown to appreciate is the use of venetian blind shadows or silhouettes. Always a dramatic addition to a cover, we could probably compile fifty of these, at least, but here are twenty examples. The artists—Emilio Freix, Robert Maguire, James Hodges, and others—use them to greater and lesser degrees, and opt for both literal and stylized renderings. For instance, the above cover from Maguire shows vertical shadows, but the sense of venetian blinds remains. As always, thanks to all the original uploaders.

Samuel A. Krasney, William Haggard, Brett Halliday, Charlotte Armstrong, Mark Halloran, Jules Roy, Michael Bryan, A.S. Fleischman, Peter Rofals, Louis Trimble, William P. McGivern, John Dickson Carr, Charles E. Fritch, Olivier Brabbins, Emilio Freix, Robert Maguire, J.D. Salinger, Lou D. Wolfe, James Hodges, Don Elliott, Earl Norman, Christopher Nicole, Carter Brown, cover art, cover collection, literature

AS THE WORLD BURNS

Vintage literature reminds us that murder, deceit, betrayal, lust and greed know no boundaries.

There’s a saying that the world is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page. But on the other hand, if you stay home the danger and mayhem at least happen in your own language. Which is the better course? Pulp authors seem to think it’s the latter. Above and below are twenty-one vintage bookcovers for fiction set in various cities around the globe. The writing spans genres such as romance, sleaze, horror, and espionage, and the art is by Mitchell Hooks, Barye Phillips, Robert McGinnis, et. al. Thanks to all the original uploaders.

Thomas Walsh, John Flagg, John MacPartland, Van Wyck Mason, Jerry Weil, Louis Bromfield, Frank Keith, Thomas Sterling, Jack Waer, Barye Phillips, Mitchell Hooks, Günther Birkenfeld, Glenway Wescott, Emily Hahn, Gardner F. Fox, J.M. Flynn, Edward S. Aarons, Morley Callaghan, Brett Halliday, Richard Collier, Robert McGinnis, Beth Brown, cover art, cover collection, literature
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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1971—Corona Sent to Prison

Mexican-born serial killer Juan Vallejo Corona is convicted of the murders of 25 itinerant laborers. He had stabbed each of them, chopped a cross in the backs of their heads with a machete, and buried them in shallow graves in fruit orchards in Sutter County, California. At the time the crimes were the worst mass murders in U.S. history.

1960—To Kill a Mockingbird Appears

Harper Lee’s racially charged novel To Kill a Mockingbird is published by J.B. Lippincott & Co. The book is hailed as a classic, becomes an international bestseller, and spawns a movie starring Gregory Peck, but is the only novel Lee would ever publish.

1962—Nuke Test on Xmas Island

As part of the nuclear tests codenamed Operation Dominic, the United States detonates a one megaton bomb on Australian controlled Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean. The island was a location for a series of American and British nuclear tests, and years later lawsuits claiming radiation damage to military personnel were filed, but none were settled in favor in the soldiers.

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

  • FEATUREd PULP

DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

Rafael DeSoto painted this excellent cover for David Hulburd's 1954 drug scare novel H Is for Heroin. We also have the original art without text.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.
Argentine publishers Malinca Debora reprinted numerous English language crime thrillers in Spanish. This example uses George Gross art borrowed from U.S. imprint Rainbow Books.

LOVES OF A BLONDE

Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.

INSATIABLE APPETITE

George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

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