Vintage Pulp

June 17 2023

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

Vintage Pulp

January 13 2017

TROUBLE AT THE DOOR

If someone knocks, don't answer.

It’s a good thing the real world isn’t like the worlds of pulp and mid-century crime fiction. In those realms, when a woman receives an unexpected visitor the result is often disastrous. Bad cops, evil crooks, ruthless blackmailers, lecherous uncles, and all sorts of nasty characters usually await on the other side of the door. Above and below you see a collection of mid-century paperback fronts showing those fraught moments just after a woman opens her door to trouble, or trouble takes matters into its own hands and busts its way in. Our recommendation: in the event of an unexpected knock just go out the window.

Vintage Pulp

July 10 2015

GIRL MEETS CORPSE

What do you call forty dead men? A good start.

Two years ago we shared five covers of women standing over men they had just killed and mentioned that there were many examples in vintage cover art of that particular theme. Today we’ve decided to revisit the idea in order to reiterate just how often women in pulp are the movers and shakers—and shooters and stabbers and clubbers and poisoners and scissorers. Now if they do this about a billion more times they’ll really be making a difference that counts.

French publishers, interestingly, were unusually fond of this theme—so egalitarian of them. That’s why many of the covers here are from France, including one—for which we admit we bent the rules of the collection a bit, because the victim isn’t dead quite yet—of a woman actually machine gunning some hapless dude. But what a great cover.

We also have a couple of Spanish killer femmes, and a Dutch example or two. Because we wanted to be comprehensive, the collection is large and some of the fronts are quite famous, but a good portion are also probably new to you. Art is by the usual suspects—Robert Maguire, Barye Phillips, Alex Piñon, Robert Bonfils, Robert McGinnis, Rudolph Belarski, et al. Enjoy.

The Naked City, Vintage Pulp

February 16 2012

BAD ALBERT

Albert Nussbaum was good at almost everything—but what he really enjoyed was crime.

Above is an Inside Detective published February 1963, containing a feature on Albert Nussbaum and Bobby Wilcoxson, a pair of armed robbers who were among the most sought after fugitives of their time. Nussbaum was the brains of the operation, and was adept at chess and photography, and was a locksmith, gunsmith, pilot, airplane mechanic, welder, and draftsman. With his spatial and mechanical aptitude, many careers would have been available to him, but he chose instead to become a bank robber. Predictably, he was good at that too.

Nussbaum and Wilcoxson knocked over eight banks between 1960 and 1962, taking in more than $250,000, which back then was the equivalent of more than two million. During a December 1961 Brooklyn robbery, Wilcoxson got an itchy trigger finger and machine-gunned a bank guard. The killing landed him on the FBI’s most wanted list. But even after the Feds distributed more than a million wanted posters and involved upwards of 600 agents in the case, they could locate neither him nor the elusive Nussbaum. The pair were just too smart.

But brains are not the same as intuition. Nussbaum was clever enough to arrange a meeting with his estranged wife right under the authorities’ noses, but apparently had no clue his mother-in-law was capable of dropping a dime on him. What followed was a 100 mph chase through the streets of Buffalo that ended only after a civilian rammed Nussbaum’s car.

Wilcoxson was arrested soon afterward in Maryland, and both robbers were convicted of murder. But where Wilcoxson got the chair (a sentence which was commuted to life upon appeal), Nussbaum got forty years, which made him eligible for parole.

Before being arrested Nussbaum had begun corresponding with mystery author Dan Marlowe, who encouraged him to put his experiences into fiction. He suddenly had plenty of time on his hands, so he wrote some short stories, and of course, he had an aptitude for that, too. With Marlowe’s help, he scored a gig writing film reviews for the Montreal magazine Take One, and after being paroled years later, wrote fiction that appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchock’s Mystery Magazine, and other places. He and Marlowe eventually lived together, with Nussbaum acting as a sort of caretaker for his mentor, who was in failing health and suffering from amnesia. Marlowe died in 1987 and Nussbaum continued to write, as well as host workshops, and get himself elected president of the Southern California chapter of the Mystery Writer’s Association.

Truly, Albert Nussbaum’s story is one of the most interesting you’ll ever run across, and there’s much more to it than we covered here. Perhaps a suitable summation would be to say that before there was such a term as “street cred” Nussbaum had it in spades. His crimes resulted in a man’s death, and his later fame traded on the very experiences that led to that tragic event—unforgivable, on some level. But still, he proved that, given a second chance, some people are capable of making the most of it. Albert Nussbaum died in 1996, aged 62.

Canada, Montreal, Maryland, Buffalo, Brooklyn, FBI, Inside Detective, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchock’s Mystery Magazine, Albert Nussbaum, Bobby Wilcoxson, Dan Marlowe, robbery, literature, true crime magazine

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

December 13

1944—Velez Commits Suicide

Mexican actress Lupe Velez, who was considered one of the great beauties of her day, commits suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. In her note, Velez says she did it to avoid bringing shame on her unborn child by giving birth to him out of wedlock, but many Hollywood historians believe bipolar disorder was the actual cause. The event inspired a 1965 Andy Warhol film entitled Lupe.

December 13

1958—Gordo the Monkey Lost After Space Flight

After a fifteen minute flight into space on a Jupiter AM-13 rocket, a monkey named Gordo splashes down in the South Pacific but is lost after his capsule sinks. The incident sparks angry protests from the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but NASA says animals are needed for such tests.

December 12

1968—Tallulah Bankhead Dies

American actress, talk show host, and party girl Tallulah Bankhead, who was fond of turning cartwheels in a dress without underwear and once made an entrance to a party without a stitch of clothing on, dies in St. Luke’s Hospital in New York City of double pneumonia complicated by emphysema.

December 11

1962—Canada Has Last Execution

The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, â€œSome consolation.â€

December 11

1964—Guevara Speaks at U.N.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing the nation of Cuba, speaks at the 19th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City. His speech calls for wholesale changes in policies between rich nations and poor ones, as well as five demands of the United States, none of which are met.

December 11

2008—Legendary Pin-Up Bettie Page Dies

After suffering a heart attack several days before, erotic model Bettie Page, who in the 1950s became known as the Queen of Pin-ups, dies when she is removed from life support machinery. Thanks to the unique style she displayed in thousands of photos and film loops, Page is considered one of the most influential beauties who ever lived.

December 10

1935—Downtown Athletic Club Awards First Trophy

The Downtown Athletic Club in New York City awards its first trophy for athletic achievement to University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger. The prize is later renamed the Heisman Trophy, and becomes the most prestigious award in college athletics.