 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.
 Hi there, convict. How'd ya like to perform a cavity search for a change?  
We've been eyeing a Russell Trainer novel called His Daughter's Friend for a while. It has one of illustrator Paul Rader's best covers. But since it's a pretty empty feeling to buy a book with a nice cover that turns out to be terribly written (often the case with sleaze novels), we wanted to sample Trainer's prose. With the price of His Daughter's Friend running as high as $200.00, a trial run was needed on cheaper books. Incidentally, we'd never pay that for a book anyway, but if Trainer can write, we'd probably go as high as $30.00, if we ever found a copy at that price. We ended up buying two Trainers, both at around fifteen bucks. You see the first above—Jail Bait. It's an Australian edition published by New Century Press without a copyright date or cover artist attribution. Originally it appeared in the U.S. and Canada in 1962 as The Warden's Wife.
That title pretty much sums up the idea behind the book, as a felon named Eddie Koski, after three years in max, is made a trustee and given a form of freedom as he works around the prison for the warden and other high ranking corrections officials. Unfortunately, the warden's smoking hot wife Thelma is keenly interested in working Eddie's shlong, which, of course, can only lead to trouble, if not more jail time. Things become doubly complicated when Eddie falls for a beautiful sociologist who comes to the prison to work on a dissertation. Can he escape the clutches of the dangerous Thelma and find love and freedom? Perhaps. The book is fun for the most part, but we'd have preferred the story to conclude without its late turn toward vicious homophobia. We weren't surprised when it happened, though. Consider yourselves forewarned.
Overall, we wouldn't say Jail Bait is either great or awful, which means Trainer probably will fail to add value to His Daugher's Friend. While we often buy books entirely for the cover art, we never buy expensive ones for that reason. What we love is a book that surpasses our expectations, like, for example, Val Munroe's surprisingly good 1952 sleazer Carnival of Passion. We suppose requiring decent writing skill with the cover art makes us amateurs at the book collecting game, but we're not really collectors anyway. We'll never sell them, in all likelihood. Nearly all the buyers would be in the U.S., and mailing them overseas, even at a profit, is too much work to even contemplate. So we'll give up our quest for His Daughter's Friend unless Trainer knocks book two—1963's No Way Back—completely out of the park. We'll read it in a bit and see where matters stand. 
 Darlin', that what happens here stays here stuff is baloney. What happens next—I guarantee—will stay with you forever. 
Above: uncredited sleaze cover work from Nite Time Books for Scott Rainey's 1964 alternative lifestyle romp Las Vegas Lesbian. The back says: She was a beautiful desirable woman in a gambling town loaded with women. But there was a difference. She wanted to destroy every man—and woman—who wouldn’t play the game her way! Our advice: play the game exactly as she wishes. It would be the only game in Vegas where both sides win.
 Waugh elevates missing person procedurals to a new level. 
Reading mid-century crime and adventure novels has been a great journey for us. We can imagine those who've already read them smiling (or smirking) as we discuss the books as revelations. “These pulp guys. *eye roll* ’Bout seventy years late with their stunning insights.” But that's the way it goes—you have start sometime. Over the years we've gone from novice to slightly-less-novice in this realm.
We say all that because, though Hillary Waugh is a well-known novelist, up to this week we'd read only one of his books—1960's The Girl Who Cried Wolf. It's a personality-driven, occasionally cute tale, about a tough P.I. and the collegiate client who has a massive crush on him. The book is pretty much a total success. There was no logical reason for us think that single effort defined Waugh's style, but experience has shown that a good novel tends to sits in the sweet spot of an author, and they hit those notes again and again.
Imagine our surprise, then, when we read 1954's Last Seen Wearing and discovered that it's a stark police procedural allegedly inspired by the true 1946 disappearance of 18-year-old Bennington College student Paula Jean Welden. What Waugh produces is basically impossible to put down. If you like police procedurals, read this one. Waugh wows. Also wow is the cover art on the 1960 Great Pan edition. Uncredited though.
 I want this to be good, you two. So take one more look over here to remind yourselves what you're fighting about. 
Last time we read a novel by the globetrotting Ed Lacy, we said afterward we'd travel anywhere with him. In 1961's The Freeloaders, for which you see a beautiful but uncredited cover above, he once again conducts readers to an exotic place—the Côte d'Azur, in the company of a small clan of Americans trying to survive without work visas in and around Nice. Freelance writer Al Cane, the most recent addition to the group, has occasional gigs and makes enough money to live. Ex-boxer/ex-cop/ex-advertising man/constant enigma Charley Martins has savings that keep him in a nice seafront apartment. But painter Gil Fletcher and inveterate schemer Ed Jones struggle daily. The women within the group are diverse. Charley's girlfriend Pascale is young, beautiful, and precocious; Gil's partner Simone is opportunistic and fickle; Ed's girlfriend Daniele is industrious and kind.
Eventually, Gil, desperate to stay in Nice and in need of money for he and Daniele, cooks up a foolproof robbery scheme. But to quote Mickey Rourke in Body Heat, "Any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius." Gil is no genius. The rest of the story deals with the aftermath of the crime on the Nice guys, the unraveling of the mystery of who the mysterious Charley really is, and Al's growing lust toward Pascale. As with other Lacy novels, the flavor is as important as the plot, and he dishes up the South of France (with sides of Italy) in satisfying fashion. There are always a few nits to pick with him. Any time you write a novel there are at least fifty ways to fuck up. Lacy is no genius, but he always entertains. That's travail numéro un.
 Murder hates company. 
Rudolph Belarski, whose work is always instantly recognizable, painted this cover for Rufus King's 1944 mystery Never Walk Alone, earlier known as The Case of Dowager's Etchings. The change tells you that Popular Library thought a less old-fashioned title would boost sales for this 1951 re-issue. But the old-fashioned nature of the story is a feature, not a bug. What you get is intrigue at the residence of Carrie Giles, who's opened her large home up as a boarding house called River Rest and had the rooms filled by workers in an arms factory.
Giles is a throwback who's still driven around by horse and carriage in an era of cars and planes. The tale is told from her point of view, and never has a more self-contained observer been committed to the printed page. This derives from her belief in politeness and decorum. Even if you're a bit nosy, as she is, you don't make a fuss. When she finds a body on her grounds she simply leaves it there for someone else to stumble across the next afternoon. Maybe she's not such a throwback after all—we can see that happening even today, so she's an interesting figure created by King.
Her genteel nature is summed up in a passage about Humphrey Bogart. Don't forget that Bogart was a famous film villain before he altered the trajectory of his career. Giles knows only the early Bogart, and is horrified when someone compares one of her boarders to Humphrey: Mrs. Giles shut her eyes. She was fairly familiar with Mr. Bogart's characterizations on the screen, and to have any one of those blood-throttling roles in the house was the last straw.
Can a mystery be fun when told from the point of view of a hidebound busybody? Turns out it can. While other elements of the story are interesting too (she thinks the murder has to do with wartime spies, and particularly suspects an outspoken and modern-minded female guest), Mrs. Giles is ultimately such a fascinating and delicate creation that it was her who kept us turning pages. Never Walk Alone isn't for readers seeking fireworks and sexual intrigue, but as an example of a character-driven mystery, it worked fine.
 Look at that view, men! Just think how much money a trip like this would cost us if we were civilians! 
Donald Downes' World War II combat and espionage novel The Scarlet Thread originally appeared in 1953, with this Panther Book edition coming in 1959, adorned with cover art from an unknown. Like many mid-century war novelists, Downes saw it all firsthand. He was in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the British Security Coordination (BSC), and the OSS (we don't need to decipher that one, right?), and saw action against the fascists in Italy and Egypt. This novel, his first, draws on those experiences in telling the story of an aviator sent on a mission to eliminate a suspected double agent. Its French translation won Downes the 1959 Grand Prix de Littérature policière. Mission accomplished.
 I really shouldn't be letting you fondle them this way. Any spike in your blood pressure could be fatal. 
Above: classic sleaze from Kimberly Marchand, her 1966 medical romp Sex in White. The rear cover is unusually descriptive, a perfect entry for our burgeoning teaser text-as poetry collection:
His hands moved so gently and then as he pressed to her a searing and deep ecstasy took over. From the depths to the stars, again and again her body came alive and reached for him clung and caressed him. Paul felt the depth of her thrill and she trembled and shook as if ill. He'd never experienced such complete abandon in a woman such complete giving without rudeness or excuse. The result was music— a symphony...
Love it. It even rhymes a little. Do you need to read the book now? Neither do we. The cover is by the great Bill Edwards, king of absurd erotic paperback art. You can find proof here, here, here, here, and here.
 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.
 
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Churchill Given the Sack
In spite of admiring Winston Churchill as a great wartime leader, Britons elect
Clement Attlee the nation's new prime minister in a sweeping victory for the Labour Party over the Conservatives. 1952—Evita Peron Dies
Eva Duarte de Peron, aka Evita, wife of the president of the Argentine Republic, dies from cancer at age 33. Evita had brought the working classes into a position of political power never witnessed before, but was hated by the nation's powerful military class. She is lain to rest in Milan, Italy in a secret grave under a nun's name, but is eventually returned to Argentina for reburial beside her husband in 1974. 1943—Mussolini Calls It Quits
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini steps down as head of the armed forces and the government. It soon becomes clear that Il Duce did not relinquish power voluntarily, but was forced to resign after former Fascist colleagues turned against him. He is later installed by Germany as leader of the Italian Social Republic in the north of the country, but is killed by partisans in 1945. 1915—Ship Capsizes on Lake Michigan
During an outing arranged by Western Electric Co. for its employees and their families, the passenger ship Eastland capsizes in Lake Michigan due to unequal weight distribution. 844 people die, including all the members of 22 different families. 1980—Peter Sellers Dies
British movie star Peter Sellers, whose roles in Dr. Strangelove, Being There and the Pink Panther films established him as the greatest comedic actor of his generation, dies of a heart attack at age fifty-four.
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