Vintage Pulp

June 21 2025

SUN BLINDNESS

How do you defend yourself when you can't see what's coming?

As planned, we followed up Mark Derby’s excellent Womanhunt with more, pretty much anything we could find. It turned out to be this Collins hardback of 1958’s Sun in the Hunter’s Eyes. The title suggests the book is a jungle adventure but it’s mostly a missing persons tale. Struggling dramatist Robert Avery happens to have spent some time in Asia during military service, so he’s sent by his family to Singapore to determine the disposition of a missing relative. Alive or dead, the truth must be ascertained before a sizable estate can be disbursed, but he has virtually no idea where to look.

Derby channels South Asia better than many of the scores of writers who’ve tackled the colonial-in-Asia trope. His main character Avery has specific but limited knowledge of the region. He’s a guy in over his head, trying to do right by his family. He can fight a little, and think on his feet, and those qualities help him immensely. Later we see his skills in the jungle, but again, he’s no magician out there. He credits his Malayan guides from previous years for instructing him, but he’s nowhere near their level. Derby would use this same man-of-limited-experience gimmick again in Womanhunt.

This tale isn’t as good as Womanhunt, but then how could it be? Its main problem, if we want to call it that, is the moments that make you lower the book and go, “Wow,” don’t come until the final fifth. A less important issue is that the primary supporting character—love interest and walking conundrum Nona Nicholas, who was once married to the missing man—is mostly nerves, tears, and cryptic statements. There’s a reason for it, and she changes in that final fifth we mentioned. The question is whether Derby makes the wait worthwhile. We think so. When the puzzle finally fits together, Avery hits the jungle and the story hits great heights.

Some fine authors have an indisputably best book, an apex they never reach again. The subject makes for some of the most passionate debates to be had amongst literature fans. Try it discussing Hemingway, or Vonnegut, or John D. MacDonald, or Cormac McCarthy, and see if everyone makes it out of the room alive. Was Womanhunt that best book for Derby? It was better than Sun in the Hunter’s Eyes, so perhaps he spoiled us. But he’s still two-for-two. We’re encouraged enough to try reading everything we can obtain. At that point we’ll be able to answer the question of which effort sits on top.

Malaysia, Singapore, William Collins Sons & Co., Mark Derby, Harry Wilcox, John Rose, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

October 5 2024

A DEEP SENSE OF LOSS

Disappearing is easy. Staying disappeared takes luck and determination.

Searching for a woman who’s disappeared is a standard plot in vintage fiction. John Boswell’s 1959 novel Lost Girl, the sequel to the previous year’s entertaining The Blue Pheasant, takes a swipe at the theme with professional photographer Chris Kent starring again. He meets a beautiful woman with a haunted past in a London painting studio, but right when they begin to take an interest in each other she vanishes. He’s inclined to forget her. She appears to have moved away, though the circumstances are unusual. But maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Who is he to ruin that ambition for her?

But others want answers, including the owner of the art studio, and a random acquantaince of the missing woman. Still, Kent remains blasé about the entire affair until a wealthy man offers to hire him to find the woman because she supposedly owns stock he wants to buy from her. Photographic proof is required, and Kent already knows her, so the rich guy considers him perfect for the job. Plus, the pay is quite good, and every photographer needs extra money. Kent accepts, and ultimately—no spoiler—traces his target all the way to Australia and into a twisted and sinister caper.

This was a good book. It made us curious about Boswell, but information on him is scarce. Well, we shouldn’t say scarce, exactly. Maybe he’s just tricky to isolate online because of other famous John Boswells that have lived. We suspect he was Australian, but don’t quote us on that. It’s possible he wrote only two books, but again, don’t quote us. You’d think two reasonably adept novels would lead to more output, but it’s never a guarantee. We’ll keep looking for info, and in due course we’re sure we’ll solve the mystery.

Australia, London, William Collins Sons & Co., John Boswell, John Rose, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 25 2024

A TIGER’S TALE

I'm starting to get a very bad feeling about this.

This beautiful dust jacket for Mark Derby’s The Tigress was painted by the very talented British artist John Rose for William Collins Sons & Co. in 1959. You’ll remember that we already did a deep dive into Mark Derby’s Womanhunt a bit ago. This is the same novel under its original title. Interesting, isn’t it, that for U.S. readers the decision-makers at Ace Books thought Womanhunt was a better title? In any case, it’s a very good novel.

Britain, William Collins Sons & Co., Mark Derby, Harry Wilcox, John Rose, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

July 6 2024

LITTLE GIRL BLUE

She makes sure a Pheasant time is had by all.

We were attracted to the 1958 John Boswell thriller The Blue Pheasant not only because of the lovely cover art, and the tale’s setting in East Asia and New Zealand, but because the title suggests that a bar plays a central role. We always like that, whether in fiction or film. The teaser text confirms it. The title refers to a fictional bar in Hong Kong. Irresistible.

The book stars professional photographer, amateur painter, and rolling stone Chris Kent, who’s at desperate ends and takes a job to travel from Hong Kong to far away Auckland to recover two Chinese scrolls that are the keys to a vast inheritance. Needless to say, there are other interested—and ruthless—parties. In addition there are three femmes fatales: Sally Chan, the bar dancer who puts Kent onto the job; Sonya Sung, whose family are the rightful owners of the misplaced scrolls (or are they?); and Ann Compton, mystery woman who becomes Kent’s reluctant partner.

We were amused by how easily Kent’s head was turned by all three women. He’s tough, but he’s also an all-day sucker. In trying to sort out why women are so confounding to him, there are numerous moments of, “Well, what’s a guy to do when women are ________” By the end, though, he starts to wonder if he’s the problem. Spoiler alert: pretty much. The actual caper is well laid out, with a lot of sleuthing and surveillance, a few moments of swift action, a suspicious Kiwi cop, a love/hate dynamic between Kent and Compton, and precise local color in both Hong Kong and Auckland.

We consider The Blue Pheasant to have been a worthwhile purchase. That was actually almost a given, considering the low price for the book (Seven dollars? Sold!). But our point is that you never know what you’ll get with a writer as obscure as Boswell. Well, now we do. And we have his sequel, 1959’s Lost Girl. We’ll get around to reading that later.

Turning back to the cover for a moment, the example at top is one we downloaded from an auction site because the William Collins Sons & Co. edition, which is a hardback with a dust jacket, shows the wonderful art painted by British talent John Rose to best advantage. The edition we actually bought is a paperback from Fontana Books, and our scans of that appear below. They’re fine, but the cleaner Collins version is frameworthy. We have another Rose cover at this link, and we’ll be getting back to him again shortly.

New Zealand, Australia, China, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Auckland, Sydney, Fontana Books, John Boswell, John Rose, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

January 9 2021

EXTREME CAUTION

Lemmy put it to you as directly as possible.

Peter Cheyney debuted as a novelist in 1936 with the Lemmy Caution novel This Man Is Dangerous, and true to the title, his franchise character is one bad mutha-shut-your-mouth. We like the scene where he leg locks a guy around the neck, then proceeds to lecture him for two pages about how he’s going to kill him and enjoy it, before actually breaking his neck. The crux of the story involves a plot to kidnap an heiress in London. Cheyney details Caution’s wanderings around the dark recesses of the Brit underworld and slings the slang like few writers from the period. Much of it is amusing, though he never quite makes it to the level of “moo juice.”

But here’s the thing about loads of slang in vintage literature—it can wear on you after a while. And when paired with a storyline that doesn’t exactly sprint like Usain Bolt, it can really wear on you. You have to give Cheyney credit, though. He was unique. And successful. This Man Is Dangerous was adapted to the screen as the French film Cet homme est dangereux in 1956, and numerous other novels of his made it to the moviehouse as well. We weren’t thrilled with this tale, but it’s significant in the crime genre, and objectively we think many readers will love it. The Fontana edition you see above has amazing cover art by John Rose and was published in 1954.

Fontana Books, Cet homme est dangereux, Lemmy Caution, Peter Cheyney, John Rose, 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