 I used to show up with a cloak and scythe, but I learned it's faster to wear a suit and work at the corporate level. 
We should start calling Robert McGinnis Robert McAgainis, because he keeps showing up. According to archivist Art Scott, McGinnis painted covers for 1,068 titles in more than 1,400 editions. He is, quite simply, the king of paperback illustrators. He painted the above effort featuring a tough guy loomed over by a femme fatale on a poster for William R. Cox's 1961 thriller Death Comes Early, the tale of a tough nightclub owner who tries to solve the murder of his best friend. The book has a marvelous tone to it, with a more colorful, grittier feel than most crime novels. The women have mileage, the men are impure, and there are few clear motivations in the book's realm of organized crime and dodgy police. While all the characters are interesting, protagonist Jack Ware and his love/hate interest Lila Sharp stand out. Cox's plot unfolds sensibly, as the murder first seems to be about a gambling debt, then something more sinister. We're already on the prowl for more from him.
 It's not robbery if someone wants you to take it. 
Above is another digest novel from Florence Stonebraker, this time writing as Tom Stone to produce Stolen Love. It was originally published in 1937 as Too Much Love, with this Griffin Books re-issue arriving in 1946 fronted by a cover painted by Glenn Cravath. The book deals with popular New York City radio personality Kay Brinkley—better known as the Voice of Romance—who hosts a lonely hearts call-in show, but is actually cynical about love and thinks her job is a high paying joke.
Her boyfriend asks her to head out to San Francisco to close a business deal for him, and she develops a case of wandering eye before the train even reaches the Rocky Mountains. Once out west she's smitten with the man who's supposed to provide her with important papers, while a couple of other guys, in turn, are seriously smitten by her. Complications arise when her NYC boyfriend unexpectedly flies to San Fran, putting him in direct romantic competition with his business acquaintance.
Kay gets laid with a total of three men as required by most of these digests, and attacked by one, definitely not a requirement, before finally returning to her original boyfriend, a forbearing sort who doesn't begrudge Kay her carnal explorations. The story is a tangled web, written in the usual Stonebraker style, already well in evidence though this was one of her first books. It's no wonder she became such a popular author. She's no Jane Austen, but in the realm of sleazy romance she's about as good as it gets.
 Everyone except me ended up hospitalized, jailed, or married. So yeah, it was pretty wild. 
Above: a Monarch Books paperback, Wild Weekend by Henry Ellsworh, about the throngs that flee New York City during summer weekends to the adjacent wilds, in this case to the Bacchus Inn, and the various intrigues and peccadilloes that result. It was published in 1963, and the art, while it resembles that of Robert Schultz, is uncredited.
 Eclipse Books strips buyer motivations bare. 
We just talked about Bruno Fischer's The Lustful Ape, but we're circling back to it to highlight this cover from Eclipse Books because it's an example of a brief trend in crime and adventure paperbacks of nude models on covers. We shared a few French examples seven years ago, and we have more we may compile into post later. Obviously, the classic painted GGA covers sold sex too, but subtle like. Here Eclipse has stripped away the fig leaf of artfulness—along with everything else. Still, it's a nice bit of erotic photography.
 Well, you both meet the basic requirements, but a job like this also hinges on having a big personality. 
It's been a couple of years since we featured paperback illustrator Gene Bilbrew, so above you see a piece he painted for Hugo Paul's novel Topless Waitress, from Chevron Books in 1967. Paul allegedly wrote as many as 700 sleaze novels under more than forty pseudonyms. That level of output usually makes for rushed and mediocre final results, which was worry enough, along with a thirty dollar price tag, for us to pass on this book. Then we found an electronic copy going for virtually nothing, took the leap, and found ourselves reading the tale of Jody Moran, virginal and headed toward marriage, and her mother Marian, far from virginal and headed toward divorce.
The heart attack death of their father/husband followed by financial need brought on by a business scam sends mother and daughter into the San Francisco nightclub scene, with mom eventually taking a job as the topless waitress of the title, and daughter becoming a topless “a-go-go dancer” in the same club. Along the way they deal with many opportunistic men, including one nightclub owner who manages to bed down both women, pitting them as rivals. Does decadent San Francisco ruin the pair? We won't say. They're sufficiently taken advantage of to satisfy prurient readers. Paul goes lyrical rather than graphic with his sex scenes, which is fine we guess. He's a competent storyteller. In the end, though, we wouldn't say Topless Waitress is anything more than a typical mid-century sleaze novel built on various sexual (and a few sexist) tropes.
The cover art, on the other hand, is far from typical. It features one of Bilbrew's more striking scenes, with his trademark pneumatic women and almost comic book-style execution. He had a singular vision—clearly, considering one woman has a beehive and the other a bucket hat—and was, significantly, one of the only black paperback illustrators during the mid-century period. Since we've seen books with his art go for a hundred dollars, pricewise thirty is actually okay, even enticing, if we were inclined to resell one day. But somehow we never get around to reselling, so we think the cheap e-book route was a good decision. You can see more Bilbrew by clicking here.
 Not to complain, oh great master thief, but all you've stolen lately has been booze money out of my purse.  
The thieving business runs hot and cold, and it reaches freezing depths when your girlfriend starts giving you a hard time about your earnings. Actually, let's not restrict that to thieving. It's true whatever your chosen field happens to be. John Trinian's Scratch a Thief was published in 1961 as an Ace Double Novel with Chester Warwick's My Pal, The Killer. Scratch a Thief later became a movie with Alain Delon and Ann-Margret in the leads, and at that time was retitled Once a Thief and credited to Trinian's pseudonym Zekail Marko. In reality, he was neither Trinian nor Marko, but Marvin Schmoker. So, you can understand the name changes. High school must have been hell for the guy. We haven't read him yet but we'll get around to it. And maybe to Chester Warwick too. You never know. But we'll for sure get around to the movie.
 I take it from the way you're sprawled across the front seat that dinner and a movie is no longer the plan. 
April Evil is a book that showcases John D. MacDonald on literary cruise control, as he confidently weaves together the tale of an elderly, widowed ex-doctor whose has a safe in his study filled with cash, the greedy relatives that hope he leaves his loot and property to them, and how, because rumors of the money have spread, three criminals decide to rob his house. Matters are even more complicated because the doctor has taken in a young married couple, and while the wife is not scheming to get his fortune, the husband is, and he has a big mouth. That mouth entices a psychopathic killer into hijacking the robbery scheme, with the ultimate plan of killing both his partners and—probably—everyone living in the house. For people acquainted with MacDonald but who haven't read April Evil, the approach will be familiar, particularly the character crosscurrents and fateful timing. It's well written, enjoyable, and free of pseudo-sociological content, which we consider to be a problem with McDonald's Travis Magee novels. We recommend it, even more so if you can score Dell's 1956 edition with Robert McGinnis cover art.
 You can't build an empire without breaking a few civilizations. 
The Empty Quarter from 1962 is Lou Cameron's second novel, after his scintillating music and radio business drama Angel's Flight. Surprisingly, he leaves Southern California in the dust for the southern Arabian peninsula and the mid-century oil business, and the result is an excellent adventure dealing with a seismic surveyor who uses dynamite and aerial reconnaissance to pinpoint oil deposits. He's sent into Saudi Arabia's empty quarter to find what his backers hope is the motherlode of all gushers. Once out in the desert he deals with tough conditions and interpersonal conflict, while simmering in the background are religious zealotry, Sunni versus Shia rivalry, a race against looming war in the region, and much more. The scene of an oil worker running across the desert aflame stuck with us. Cameron can really weave a tale.
This is also a book with racial content that will make some readers cringe, with offensive slurs used possibly a hundred times by protagonists and antagonists alike. Of course, the attitudes reflected are certainly accurate for the time, but it's still hard to read these privileged characters viciously denigrating Arabs and Africans while hailing from countries that shattered the world as a result of unconscionable greed and disregard for human life. As fans of vintage literature you can guess where we stand on censorship. However, we also don't dismiss offended groups as simply thin-skinned. The language contained here, while giving the characters verisimilitude, also echoes centuries-old myths that were foundational to the genocides and slavery that killed hundreds of millions of human beings and led to the looting of entire lands.
So that's the elephant in the room concerning The Empty Quarter, and we wanted to address that. The killing and theft that fueled Western empires are hard for some to face, but it happened, and since this isn't Florida the facts can't be hidden or made illegal. We buy books with no detailed knowledge of what's in them. That would definitely spoil the fun. We don't even read the rear teaser text, for the most part. We buy books—only if the price is right—when we like the cover art, when the general opinion in the vintage book community is that it's a mandatory read, or when we've enjoyed previous efforts by the same author. We loved Angel's Flight, so another go-round with Cameron was on the cards. But because Angel's Flight was a bit saucy along racial lines, we weren't terribly surprised what was in The Empty Quarter. All in all, it's quite a book—for better and worse.
 It's a must-have item for the fashion forward femme fatale. 
Caviar et vodka, which is credited to Bob Toomey and is the first entry in French publisher SEF's Police Sexy series, came in 1978. That's late for our website, and we also tend to avoid photo covers, but the black-coated killer lady wearing nothing beneath her fur but some heavy steel makes it an appropriate share. The story is less police than espionage, having to do with a trio of Russian spies (interestingly named Elvire, Debrisse and Natacha) up to dastardly doings during the hottest period of the Cold War. Bob Toomey, a far less interesting name, was a pseudonym, but we can't trace it to its origin. There's a review of the book online and it isn't flattering, so maybe “Toomey” had only this one shot before being flushed out of the bottom of French publishing. In any case, cool cover.
 I'm sorry to say it, but this has to end. I mean for today. I'll see you here tomorrow same time. 
Does Hell Is a Woman look like a crime novel to you? Us either, but it is. Beacon Books decided to market this effort from Garrett W. Deas as sleaze, and used cover art from Jack Thurston to implant the idea into book rack browsers' heads. Beacon also wrote cover text in that vein, though it's wildly inaccurate. Protagonist Sheriff Ben Randall's wife Helen loved other men behind his back? Not true. She has an affair with one man. Mary Ann, according to the cover, loved other men in front of Ben? Not true. She starts the novel as a corpse. Lorna loved in very special ways? Maybe. She pines for the sheriff and ignores other men. Also, Helen's cheating is meant by Deas to be a suspicion followed by a revelation. Beacon spoiled that. You take your chances with cover blurbs. But all that aside, as a crime novel Hell Is a Woman is pretty good, with a rural setting that works, and Sheriff Ben as a likeable sort who doggedly tries to solve three murders while the county bigwigs want everything swept under the rug. The main flaw of the book is that the identity of the killer becomes obvious well before we think Deas means it to, but overall he did decent work. It seems to have been his only novel, though, which is too bad.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1934—Queen Mary Launched
The RMS Queen Mary, three-and-a-half years in the making, launches from Clydebank, Scotland. The steamship enters passenger service in May 1936 and sails the North Atlantic Ocean until 1967. Today she is a museum and tourist attraction anchored in Long Beach, U.S.A. 1983—Nuclear Holocaust Averted
Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov, whose job involves detection of enemy missiles, is warned by Soviet computers that the United States has launched a nuclear missile at Russia. Petrov deviates from procedure, and, instead of informing superiors, decides the detection is a glitch. When the computer warns of four more inbound missiles he decides, under much greater pressure this time, that the detections are also false. Soviet doctrine at the time dictates an immediate and full retaliatory strike, so Petrov's decision to leave his superiors out of the loop very possibly prevents humanity's obliteration. Petrov's actions remain a secret until 1988, but ultimately he is honored at the United Nations. 2002—Mystery Space Object Crashes in Russia
In an occurrence known as the Vitim Event, an object crashes to the Earth in Siberia and explodes with a force estimated at 4 to 5 kilotons by Russian scientists. An expedition to the site finds the landscape leveled and the soil contaminated by high levels of radioactivity. It is thought that the object was a comet nucleus with a diameter of 50 to 100 meters. 1992—Sci Fi Channel Launches
In the U.S., the cable network USA debuts the Sci Fi Channel, specializing in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal programming. After a slow start, it built its audience and is now a top ten ranked network for male viewers aged 18–54, and women aged 25–54.
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