The art on this Handi-Book edition of Edward Ronn’s, née Edward S. Aarons’ 1950 thriller Dark Memory isn’t what you’d call masterfully executed (we’ve never see a foot that had a straight little toe), but it sure makes you look twice, and that’s really the point. It was painted by Mike Privitello. The art on the other editions is interesting too, and we’ve uploaded those for the sake of comparison.
Also published as The Art Studio Murders, the novel opens with a man pushed in front of a subway train. He survives only to endure a blow to his art career when the paintings he’s been toiling over for years are destroyed days in advance of a big exhibition. This atrocity is followed by the murder of a friend. At that point he flees to a bucolic island, but quickly learns that whoever is after him is not someone he can shake with a mere change of area code.
Aarons authored more than 80 novels during a long career spanning the 1930s through 1970s. Six more novels appeared after he died in 1975, but these were built from partial manuscripts and were ghost written by Lawrence Hall. We haven’t actually read any Aarons, but considering his output we’ll almost certainly run across him in our local used paperback outlet at some point. When we do we’ll report back.
