Vintage Pulp

July 12 2025

SLAM DANCE

Every open door is an opportunity. Every closed door too—if you're on the right side of it.

This Gold Medal edition of John D. MacDonald’s 1960 novel Slam the Big Door has awesome Charles Binger cover art that simply demanded a purchase. Plus, MacDonalds are cheap. It’s easy to set yourself a ten dollar ceiling and still be able to buy most any novel he wrote. The book is a Florida real estate drama about a guy named Troy Jamison who’s in over his head in a land development scheme, but receives a visit from old friend Mike Rodenska, who may have the means to help. There’s a group of men in town counting on the deal falling through, and the possibility that Rodenska may blow up the conspiracy sends this cabal into action. Jamison is an easy taget not only because he’s broke, but because he’s unstable.

We gather that this is a less popular MacDonald. If so we can see why. There isn’t much physical action. There aren’t really any by-the-book criminals in the story. The plot is unusually psychological in nature. By psychological, consider as an example that one of MacDonald’s go-to devices is the character that needs to be shaken from their stupor or arrogance. To that end, Rodenska isn’t very nice to Jamison, yet Jamison turns out to be grateful for the mistreatment: Thanks for waking me up, ole buddy! MacDonald really flogged this idea, especially in his Travis McGee series. We find it off-putting because he tended to use the device on women: You made me furious and I cried all night, but then I realized you did it on purpose and I needed it.

He also indulges in some of his usual social judgements. For example, he channels this tidbit through a minor character: “Not as messed up, honey, as the [sixteen-to-twenty year-old] group, the children of these people. Charge accounts, club memberships, no obligation to go get an education. They knock themselves off on the highways with miraculous efficiency, and the drama of mourning is intense but short, because when you’ve ceased feeling very much of anything else except the sensations of self-gratification, it’s tough to summon up legitimate grief.”

Geez, superior much? Aging can mix toxically with cultural change if you let it, and as MacDonald aged, hell-in-a-handbasket ravings came increasingly to fore of his fiction. It’s interesting that the very people he wrote about scathingly are now lodging similar complaints. Don’t get us wrong—an ironclad argument exists that the U.S. is getting worse, but not because of self gratifying slackers. Motivated, educated, ambitious, connected people are the ones ruining it. They sent the jobs away, cut healthcare, stole pensions, and built a carceral state. But misdirected complaints are part of the package with MacDonald. In the end the book was fine. At this stage, he was not capable of failing to deliver a quality outing. Or as they say in baseball: aces gonna ace.

Fawcett Publications, Gold Medal Books, John D. MacDonald, Charles Binger, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 2 2024

A LONG KISS GOODBYE

I see. So we'd be like good cop-bad cop, except one of us has sex with them and the other murders them. Can I be the good cop?

Charles Binger, whose work we don’t see often enough, created this great cover for Richard Deming’s 1960 novel Kiss and Kill. The book is about a couple of grifters who graduate from bunco scams to serial murders, first luring lonely women into marriage before offing them for their money. The two then skedaddle to other parts, rinse, and repeat. They never get too greedy in choosing their victims, as that would draw attention. They garner maybe $10,000 profit per murder. Actually, at one point they score $67,000, which would last normal people in 1960 half a lifetime, but they lose most of the money in Monte Carlo. Their fatal flaw—other than being murderers—is that they like to live high, so cash goes fast, which means they generally need to kill every three or four months. This goes on for five years, from Los Angeles to Miami Beach and points between, before complications arise. The main complication? Love. This is our second Deming, and our second success with him.

Digit Books, Richard Deming, Charles Binger, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

January 24 2022

PARADISE FOUND

What a perfect day. It's days like this that make me glad we invested early in cryptocurrency and retired before thirty.

Above is a Charles Binger cover for John D. MacDonald’s 1959 novel The Beach Girls. At this point, we know anything he wrote pre-Travis McGee is going to be good, and even the McGee books are mostly entertaining despite the main character’s off-putting social judgments. The Beach Girls is a bit different from other MacDonalds we’ve read, largely written in a sort of round robin style where the final words of each chapter lead mid-sentence into the first words of the next, but with a change in first person point-of-view. The book cycles through numerous characters via this interesting trick before settling into standard third person narration for the finish.

The story deals with the inhabitants of a marina in fictional Elihu Beach, Florida, some of whom are friends, others enemies, some longtime residents, others newcomers, and how jealousy and resentment lead to a shocking act of violence. From the earliest pages you know this event is coming, and as the book wears on you become pretty sure who’s going to be the unfortunate though deserving recipient, and who’s going to be the giver. The main question becomes whether MacDonald will subvert these expectations and throw readers a curve. We’ll just say it wasn’t a predictable tale.

The only thing we don’t get is why it’s called The Beach Girls. The nearby beach area of the town is mentioned only a few times, no scenes are set there, and the book has an ensemble cast, with the women no more important than the men. There are groups of tourist women that pop up here and there, but they don’t impact the story at all. Oh well. The title is a mystery, but an unimportant one. We’ll get back to MacDonald a bit later. These 1950s efforts of his have been very worthwhile.

Florida, Fawcett Crest, Gold Medal Books, John D. MacDonald, Charles Binger, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

November 17 2021

DAMNED GOOD

Binger understates the obvious.

Above: a 1960 cover from Gold Medal Books for Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams. This was painted by Charles Binger and it’s a beautifully simple watercolor composition, a very different approach from the almost fiery 1953 Barye Phillips cover. Of course, there’s a good possibility that this is a random Binger not actually inspired by the book, but if so it’s still interesting that Gold Medal would choose it. This is a reminder to track down more of Binger’s work, and it’s also a reminder that we’re overdue to read another Williams. The cover says he was, “one of the best of all specialists in paperback-original suspense stories,” and it’s true.

Fawcett Publications, Gold Medal Books, Charles Williams, Charles Binger, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

February 3 2021

WAYS AND MEANS

Can I not die? No? Then I'll take: in bed, very elderly, after earth shattering sex with my 25-year-old boytoy.

This Pocket Books edition of John Ross MacDonald’s The Way Some People Die features the first cover we’ve acquired by British illustrator Charles Binger, and quite a nice one it is. It reminds us of Ernest Chiriaka’s work, this one for instance. This is a Lew Archer thriller, third of eighteen, and as we mentioned before, this series is said to improve as it goes. We’ll see about that. This one is a standard caper that starts when a mother hires Archer to find her missing daughter, who’s gotten mixed up with the proverbial bad crowd. We’re talking the worst of the worst—hustlers, gangsters, heroin addicts, and, most terrifying of all, failed actors. Archer beats down a few tough guys, gets hit over the head in classic detective novel fashion, has beautiful women express their romantic interest, and in the end is shotgunned in the face, dismembered, and incinerated in an industrial kiln. Oh, wait—that’s not correct. Actually, he comes out on top again, bruised but triumphant. Not bad, but not great yet. Onward to book four.

Britain, Pocket Books, John Ross MacDonald, Ross MacDonald, Charles Binger, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

December 19 2016

PRACTICING MEDICINE

Alrightee nurse, I guess that's enough warm-ups with Donnie the Delivery Doll. Let's try the real thing now.

That None Should Die was Frank G. Slaughter’s first book, published in hardback in 1941 and in this Perma paperback edition in 1955. Slaughter was a doctor and wrote mostly—but not always—about his own field. This particular book focuses strongly on treatments, ethics, and the pro forma central love story between young doctor and young nurse, but it’s most curious for its firm opposition to government involvement in health care. Of course, government run health care works like a charm in so many places, but the key to its success is the understanding that citizens aren’t just profit sources, therefore they shouldn’t die for being poor, shouldn’t sacrifice their life savings for cures, and shouldn’t pay through the nose for insurance. Since those foundational concepts weren’t widely accepted in the U.S. in 1941 (or now, for that matter), it’s no surprise how Slaughter feels about the issue. The book was well reviewed, and helped him establish a literary career that quickly supplanted medicine for him and lasted for decades. No surprise—there’s no government bureaucracy in literature.

Perma Books, Frank G. Slaughter, Charles Binger, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

September 23 2016

MR. FIX IT

To a hammerer every problem looks like a nail.

In Dorothy Salisbury Davis’s A Gentle Murderer a man visits a confessional and reveals murdering someone with a hammer and flees into the night before the priest knows what to do. The dismayed padre decides to search for the mysterious man who burdened him with this terrible knowledge, thus taking on the role of detective in the story, though the police are on hand to conduct a parallel investigation. Naturally, another murder will soon occur if the killer isn’t caught.

The plot is similar to that of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1953 film I Confess, but appeared in hardback two years earlier. However, the Hitchcock movie was actually based on Paul Anthelme Bourde’s 1902 play Nos deux consciences, so perhaps Davis was also inspired by the play. Whatever the genesis, the result was a highly regarded mystery, considered by some to be among the best of the era. The cover art on this Bantam paperback edition is by Charles Binger, and dates from 1953.

Bantam Books, I Confess, Nos deux consciences, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Alfred Hitchcock, Paul Anthelme Bourde, Charles Binger, cover art, literature, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

July 12

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.

July 11

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.

July 11

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.

July 10

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.

July 9

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.

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