INSURE TO PLEASE

Well, your health coverage looks comprehensive, so I've decided to give you top notch care.


Yet another medical cover today, this one for 1967’s The Doctor’s Decision by Kerry Mitchell. The art is credited to someone named only Kalin. We think it’s safe to conclude that’s Victor Kalin, the veteran Dell Publications illustrator behind such classic fronts as Somerset Maugham’s Rain and John D. MacDonald’s Soft Touch. The author, Kerry Mitchell, was a pseudonym used by several writers, including Lee Pattinson, Ray Slattery, and Richard Wilkes-Hunter, and this tale deals with a plastic surgeon named David Barron who pioneers a radical new surgery, while simultaneously seeing his reputation threatened by scandal. We’ve run across Mitchell before. Remember Bush Nurse? That’s our fave. 

Nurse, just think of what we're doing as a form of alternative medicine.

Aussie writer Shane Douglas may win the all time pseudonym prize. He was really Richard Wilkes-Hunter, but besides writing as Douglas, he wrote as Kerry Mitchell, Michael Owen, Leslie Wilkes, Shauna Marlowe, Sheila Garland, R.W. Hunters, James Dark, Tod Conrad, Tod Crane, Ted Conway, Caroline Farr, Diana Douglas, Adrian Gray, Alison Hart, Lucy Waters, and so forth. Under his Douglas pseudonym, he wrote a lot of doctor and nurse novels, so we thought we’d share some of those amusing covers today. Above and below you see five, all from the early 1960s, with art by unknown. 

Boy, are we glad you're finally here. Our women have gotten really hairy.

Bush Nurse, written by medical novel specialist Kerry Mitchell, aka Richard Wilkes-Hunter, Ray Slattery, and Lee Pattinson, has nothing to do with women’s bushes, but it’d be cooler if it did. What you actually get is the story of a pretty nurse who takes an assignment in the remote Aussie outback to heal from a broken heart, but finds herself in a love triangle with two doctors who have their own difficult histories. The action eventually centers on rains, floods, and a wave of medical cases that threaten to overwhelm the little clinic. The above paperback appeared in 1962 with uncredited art, and as you can see at right, there was another version, which is actually from two years earlier (and shows how the nurse’s horse was replaced by an automobile), also uncredited art-wise.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1989—Anti-Feminist Gunman Kills 14

In Montreal, Canada, at the École Polytechnique, a gunman shoots twenty-eight young women with a semi-automatic rifle, killing fourteen. The gunman claimed to be fighting feminism, which he believed had ruined his life. After the killings he turns the gun on himself and commits suicide.

1933—Prohibition Ends in United States

Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to overturn the 18th Amendment which had made the sale of alcohol illegal. But the criminal gangs that had gained power during Prohibition are now firmly established, and maintain an influence that continues unabated for decades.

1945—Flight 19 Vanishes without a Trace

During an overwater navigation training flight from Fort Lauderdale, five U.S. Navy TBM Avenger torpedo-bombers lose radio contact with their base and vanish. The disappearance takes place in what is popularly known as the Bermuda Triangle.

1918—Wilson Goes to Europe

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails to Europe for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, France, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.

1921—Arbuckle Manslaughter Trial Ends

In the U.S., a manslaughter trial against actor/director Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle ends with the jury deadlocked as to whether he had killed aspiring actress Virginia Rappe during rape and sodomy. Arbuckle was finally cleared of all wrongdoing after two more trials, but the scandal ruined his career and personal life.

1964—Mass Student Arrests in U.S.

In California, Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest at the UC Regents’ decision to forbid protests on university property.

1968—U.S. Unemployment Hits Low

Unemployment figures are released revealing that the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 3.3 percent, the lowest rate for almost fifteen years. Going forward all the way to the current day, the figure never reaches this low level again.

Cover art by the great Sandro Symeoni for Peter Cheyney's mystery He Walked in her Sleep, from Ace Books in 1949.
The mysterious artist who signed his or her work as F. Harf produced this beautiful cover in 1956 for the French publisher S.E.P.I.A.
Aslan art was borrowed for many covers by Dutch publisher Uitgeverij A.B.C. for its Collection Vamp. The piece used on Mike Splane's Nachtkatje is a good example.

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