Now, Captain—try to remember your obligations under international law toward refugees and migrants at sea.
Budget travel brings its challenges for a woman on the cover of Roy Boot’s Girl Stowaway. The idea of women and an all-male crew was actually a minor sub-genre of mid-century fiction. Most were along the sleazy lines you see here—including two we own, both titled Hot Cargo—but we’ve come across at least one high-minded effort that featured women rescued from a torpedoed ship during wartime. The multiple-boys-one-girl-at-sea concept even made it into cinema. We’re thinking of 1957’s Stowaway Girl with Elsa Martinelli. There are surely others. The art here is by Bernard Safran, and the book, number fifty-three in the Intimate Novels line, came in 1953.
It's one thing to know she'll say it. It's another thing entirely to know when she'll say it.
Being in the right place at the right time is an art. The three guys on the cover of Amanda Moore’s 1964 sleaze novel The Yes Girl hope to have mastered it, but we didn’t buy the book to find out. We’ve read a fair number of Midwood paperbacks now and, though we love the covers, as a rule the writing is pretty bad. That said, we have a few Midwoods sitting on our shelves awaiting attention. You’ll see those later.
Are those my only two choices? Seems like a third or even fourth option would be useful here.
Above: another great cover from Italian illustrator Giovanni Benvenuti. The lucky recipient of his talent this time was British author Gordon Ashe, aka John Creasy, who published Kill or Be Killed originally in 1949, with this edition sold in all parts of the British Commonwealth beginning in 1959. Benvenuti, who is not nearly discussed enough in vintage paperback circles, was a genius. Full stop. The Alec Baldwinesque look of his armed tough guy is an interesting coincidence, all things considered. Maybe choice three would be a manslaughter charge and dismissed case. See a selection of some of Benvenuti’s unique work here, here, and here.
We don’t often run across paperback covers by French artist Jean David, so when we do it’s an actionable event. Today we’ve posted his effort for Fille de l’amour, written by Stephane Lauran and published by Paris based E.D.I.C.A. for its Collection Audacieuse. That means “bold,” and it’s the right word. This is beautiful. There’s no copyright date inside, but David was working with E.D.I.C.A. in the early- to mid-1950s, so figure it’s from around then.
Look! He just stabbed that guy! Quick—get me another rum punch before I start to care!
British author Andrew Garve’s No Mask for Murder, an excellent thriller, is also by chance a pointed tale for the current moment in U.S. history, though we had no idea when we decided to buy it. We just liked the price and cover. It’s colonial fiction set in a British colony in the Caribbean, which we took to be either Jamaica or Trinidad, but decided was the former because of its capital city Fontego—which rhymes with Montego, and rhyming is conclusive evidence, right?
So let’s get this out of the way—and delicate types can skip this next part. The Spanish and British enslaved more than two million humans on Jamaica, and every year for more than three hundred years these stolen souls died of diseases, punishment, and overwork, all to enrich masters who pontificated about their own brilliant work ethic and superior morals. Therefore, the underpinning of all colonial fiction is this: murder and/or trafficking of people; establishment of a rigid caste and control system; and cruel punishment for failing to obey the system. Those are facts. To the comfort of many in the U.S., they might not be taught for a while, as the latest doomed attempt to suppress equal history grinds away.
In No Mask for Murder, when a graft scheme lures colonial administrator Dr. Adrian Garland into accepting illicit money, he’s willing to kill to protect his position. In his way stand an ambitious assistant and an oblivious witness to his bribery scheme. They’re both black, so must both go. Garland has virtually no pangs of guilt about it. But those murders soon may require more. Subsequent victims would be white. That’s when the pangs start.
Garve achieved exactly what he intended. Every white character here save central couple Martin West and Susan Anstruther is virulently, irredeemably racist. Every black character is imperfect as seen through colonial eyes, therefore unworthy of consideration or survival. A challenge for Garve to write this? You bet. But he kills it by constructing a story of ambition, greed, bribery, and colonial manners in which white characters turn their keen gazes upon everyone but themselves.
The book is seepingly atmospheric, moving from the capital, to majestic coastal homes, to a leper colony, and weathering a mid-narrative hurricane (which you know we always enjoy). Garve sets the main action around his fictive island’s yearly fiesta, which we took to mean Jamaican carnival. During this orgiastic celebration with masks and music the villain just might be able to succeed in his crimes. Other set-pieces resonate too. The chapter where a klatch of cocktail swilling colonials discuss the deficient culture and rampant crime of the island without a single reference to the humans they’ve slain over centuries to allow for their veranda idyll is so cringeworthy it’s nearly comical.
Some vintage authors delved into this genre with no sense of irony or history. They pretended not to get it because they were propagandists for colonial invasion. Not Garve. He doesn’t deal in literalism—at least not here. No Mask for Murder is blunt and demanding, but you can tell that he expected readers understand the extra he’d woven through what could have been a desultory murder tale. Readers that didn’t understand derived nothing from the book, we’re sure. It was first published in 1950, and this Dell mapback edition came in 1952 with art by Robert Stanley.
No, I'm not free after work. What are you, some kind of cheapskate?
Above: a cover for The Price Is Right, written by Jerome Weidman, who dipped into themes of big city cynicism in this and other books, such as 1937’s I Can Get It for You Wholesale and 1938’s What’s in It for Me? This one came in 1949, with the Avon paperback hitting shelves in 1950 with Ray Johnson cover art.
Give them an inch, pretty soon they'll suppress your wages and come for your pension.
When Never Give a Millionaire an Even Break was written in 1963 there were plenty of American millionaires. Now there are literally millions of them, and tons of multi-millionaires, which means Henry Kane’s fun title is more relevant than ever. It made us eager to read the book, but when we did a while back we thought it was average. We circled back to it today, though, because we like the purple and red color palette on this minimalist cover. It’s uncredited from Lancer Books, 1963. You can read more about this here.
There's never anyone trying to cut in line when you need them.
Above you see two paperback covers of similar style. The first is for Adam Knight’s 1954 novel I’ll Kill You Next, with art that was used on William R. Cox’s Murder in Vegas in 1960. You can see that here. The second is for Peter Rabe’s Benny Muscles In. The art on the first cover is by Jerry Allison, while the second is unattributed. We enjoy identifying artists and have had some successes over the years. We’re wondering if the unattributed cover is by Allison too. The resemblances are striking, but in this case we can’t say with 100% certainty. It’s just a thought for this fine day. We talked about Benny Muscles In a while back. Check here.
Not long ago we took a look at the 1977 post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick Damnation Alley, ended up checking out the source novella’s cover art, and were reminded about illustrator Chris Foss. That was a good thing. Foss is a British artist who burst onto the sci-fi scene in the 1970s with conceptual paintings of a different style than had been seen before. His partly airbrushed, curvilinear creations were hardware oriented yet organic, bulbous yet seemed imbued with great power, and were often asymmetrical yet seemed realistic in terms of how future engineering might appear. We think, looking at his art now, his usage of numbering and logos was one trick that helped anchor it in something resembling reality. The occasional high visibility color schemes, like you find on industrial equipment, didn’t hurt either. We’ve loved his work since we first saw it, so we thought we’d put together a small collection focused on his specialty—vehicles, both terrestrial and celestial. Foss has a website here.
From the moment a man meets her nothing goes right again.
We thought we’d take another trip through the sinister brain of Sax Rohmer. His phantasmal criminal mastermind Sumuru, aka the Madonna, intrigued us in 1950’s Nude in Mink. In 1951’s sequel Sumuru (you see a Gold Medal edition above with Barye Phillips cover art) she’s fled London for New York City, where she’s once again orchestrating a global reordering that requires the downfall of men from positions of power. This time Rohmer’s protagonists are special agent Drake Roscoe and newspaperman Tony McKeigh, though the first book’s Mark Donovan and Claudette Duquesne—now married—also put in an appearance, and come to believe Sumuru wants to abduct their toddler daughter for eventual indoctrination into the evil Order.
But it’s mainly Roscoe and McKeigh’s show, as the cat-and-mousing crisscrosses Manhattan, and detours to Fort Lauderdale, before Sumuru once again—no spoiler here since the series went five books—gives her pursuers the slip and leaves them angry, baffled, a bit admiring of her brilliance, but frightened too. We love how they call Sumuru “a greater menace than the atom bomb.” There’s a good lesson there—Rohmer thinks it’s better for men to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. That’s a catchy line. Wonder who said that? Doesn’t matter. Global peace is not an aspiration if men can’t run the show. We don’t think Rohmer meant for these books to be an indictment of the patriarchy, but if you squint they read that way. We managed to get the first three books of this series, so we’ll get around to the next entry later.
During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia’s Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden.
1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon.
1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki
Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.
1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident
After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.
1945—Mussolini Is Arrested
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.
1933—The Gestapo Is Formed
The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond.
1937—Guernica Is Bombed
In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced.
