A RUN FOR IT

I knew I should have bought that condo in South Beach!

We love this cover for Anne Maybury’s 1968 novel The Minerva Stone. Maybury is also known as Edith Arundel (her birth name) and Katherine Troy, whereas the cover artist is also known as nobody, because this brilliant piece is unattributed. Sad. Moving on to the ficrtion, we’ve mentioned how vintage mysteries and sleaze novels can be romance-adjacent, but having never actually read an official romance, we were making an assumption. In the end our hypothesis about the similarity was confirmed. In both cases love and desire are handled explosively, if clumsily, with similar unbridled emotional progressions and interior musings that can make you cringe. The main difference is that vintage romances—this romance at least—doesn’t enter the bedroom, while male-oriented vintage fiction always gets through the door, and in many cases between the sheets.

The Minerva Stone is a gothic romance, a popular subset of the whole. On a mossy old castle estate called Guinever Court, in a village called Azurstone, fictively located in Dorset, England, a woman named Sarah Rhodes languishes in a loveless marriage with television star Niall Rhodes, but pines for her adventurous former lover Luke Ashton who’s just come back from the Far East. Shortly after she begins to think naughty thoughts about Luke, someone almost runs Sarah down with a car, then someone takes a potshot at her hubby. Niall thinks someone wants to ruin his show business career with bad publicity, but Sarah suspects there’s a deeper secret. She’s right, of course. And it may all have to do with her husband’s past, of which she knows little to nothing.

Sounds fun, right? But the book left us a bit cold. Sarah’s marriage to the distant and career-minded Niall never made sense, nor did her gravitation toward her former lover Luke. He’s alright, but he ain’t all that. In observing Maybury try to sort out this dilemma, we saw a little more clearly why hard-boiled fiction usually ditches deep emotion and relies upon women whose sexual availability is a given. Writing insightfully about love in non-eyerolling ways isn’t easy for most authors. So who can fault those who keep it simple? The women always want the hero, and he’s always drawn by beauty. Easy as can be. We’re glad we read The Minerva Stone, though it’ll probably be our last official romance. It may not have been great, but it was atmospheric—plus, just take another look at that cover.

Update: the cover is by Harry Barton.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1938—Seabiscuit Defeats War Admiral

At Pimlico Racecourse in Baltimore, Maryland, the thoroughbred stallion Seabiscuit defeats the Triple Crown champion War Admiral in a match race that had been promoted as “The match of the Century” in horse racing. The victory made Seabiscuit a symbol of triumph against the odds during the dark days of the Depression, and his story became the subject of a 1949 film, a 2001 book, and a 2003 film, Seabiscuit, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

1984—Indira Gandhi Assassinated

In India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by two of her own Sikh security guards in the garden of the Prime Minister’s Residence at No. 1, Safdarjung Road in New Delhi. Gandhi had been walking to meet British actor Peter Ustinov for an interview. Riots soon break out in New Delhi and nearly 2,000 Sikhs are killed.

1945—Robinson Signs with Dodgers

Jackie Robinson, who had been playing with the Negro League team the Kansas City Monarchs, signs a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers to become the first African-American major leaguer of the modern baseball era.

1961—Soviets Detonate Super Nuke

The Soviet Union detonates an experimental nuclear weapon called Tsar Bomba over the Arctic Circle, which, with a yield of 100 megatons of TNT, was then and remains today the most powerful weapon ever used by humanity.

1901—William McKinley's Assassin Executed

Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed at Auburn State Prison in Auburn, New York by means of the electric chair. Czolgosz had shot McKinley twice with a cheap revolver and the President had lingered for several days before dying. After Czolgosz is executed, he is buried on prison grounds and sulfuric acid is thrown into his coffin to disfigure his body and result in its quick decomposition.

1982—Lindy Chamberlain Convicted of Murder

In Australia, Lindy Chamberlain is found guilty of the murder of her nine-week-old daughter. The baby was killed during a camping trip in the Australian interior. Chamberlain claimed a dingo had taken the baby, but a jury decided Chamberlain cut the infant’s throat and buried her. The body was never found, but forensic experts played a large role in the conviction. Four years after the trial the baby’s jacket is found inside a dingo lair, backing up Chamberlain’s claim, and she is released from prison.

T’as triché marquise by George Maxwell, published in 1953 with art by Jacques Thibésart, also known as Nik.

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