Above: Lou Marchetti art for Scott Laurence’s Georgia Hotel, for Pyramid Books, copyright 1957. This one was tempting, but we took a pass.
You're a salesman? What a coincidence. We're in the same profession. I sell human fulfillment.
You have a filthy mind. I like that in a man.
Harry Whittington wrote an absolute raft of novels, under his name and more than fifteen others, producing them at a pace we suspect damaged their potential quality. 1960’s Nita’s Place, one of ten books he published that year, could have been excellent if he’d had perhaps more time to focus on it. As a concept it’s fascinating. It tells the story of Jay Wagner, forty-four but with a bad heart his doctor says will soon kill him. He’s packed up his life and moved to fictional Cape View, Florida, taking up residence at the Cape View Motel, within site of the Launch Operations Directorate on Cape Canaveral, where he and other residents, all of whom have issues, drink, swim, and watch test rockets lift off.
The mood of the book is captured by the title of the first section: “The Rim of Space.” As in a dying man on the edge of the unknown. We’d almost say Whittington was channelling “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” if his style weren’t so dissimilar. The Cape View Motel, its bar, and its pool all draw passing travelers, scientists from the launch center, and pilots from nearby Patrick Airbase. With such a mix, Wagner’s frail heart is tested by regular intrigues—but most importantly by Nita Miller, beautiful owner of the place, and Callie, her sexually voracious younger sister.
Wagner’s resigned demeanor presents as calmness and wisdom to others, and he becomes a source of advice and help. Simultaneously he allows himself—as a man with no future very well might—to be moved without resistance whichever way the wind blows. A pointless fight with a bully? Sure. A night or two in bed with Callie? Why not? But he really sees something like redemption in Nita. Whether he’ll find what he’s seeking or thinks he needs before he dies is the question. As we said, the book could be better, but through mood and setting Whittington managed to produce something okay here. We liked it. Its cover art, which is excellent, is uncredited.
Chinese espionage cabal sleeps with one spy open.
A while back, when we read Holly Roth’s 1954 Cold War novel The Shocking Secret, we said we suspected she’d done better work. Well, we found it. 1955’s The Sleeper is also an anti-communist thriller, but Roth course-corrected after her middling previous effort by making the main communist agent in this story intellectually and tactically brilliant. That’s been a regular complaint of ours, that mid-century writers cheat by making Cold War antagonists too hapless to realistically worry about. They rarely took the easy way out with other types of villains, so we wonder if, considering the anti-commie hysteria of the period, they were afraid of seeming sympathetic. But The Sleeper features an agent who’s smart, charming, and determined to a level nobody else in the story can match.
This spy, an all-American boy type, is introduced to the reader while already in jail. A journalist named Robert Kendall has interviewed him for a profile in a prestigious magazine, but comes to believe—as does the U.S. government—that messages to other spies have been seeded into the article. Quaint ideas about press freedom prevent the Feds from killing the piece. And there’s no proof anyway. Nobody can figure out the embedded message, but time is a factor—the piece is to be published in a few weeks. Drawn into the turbulence is an acquaintance of the jailed spy, Marta Wentwirth. Is she in on the plot? Maybe, but Kendall likes the cut of her jib, and decides she isn’t. How else can he get laid?
As in The Shocking Secret, the protagonist here is just a regular guy and journalist, and Roth is again interested in the Chinese more than the Russians, which is no surprise with the Korean War just ended. She smartly kept her chapters short, and the overall narrative compact. The gimmick of a sleeper agent being able to carefully load an interview with crucial information may seem unlikely, but it ends up believable the way Roth works it. We have a feeling the concept was used previously. If not, it was certainly used afterward. It’s too good not to recycle. We’ll probably try Roth once again at some point. As Cold War focused authors go, this one makes clear that she’s no sleeper.
Why do I get the feeling that when you make me disappear every night you don't want me to come back?
Covers like these can be interpreted just about any way. We were going to go with something like, “Ooooo… the great Balsamo. After last night we know you aren’t so great at everything, don’t we?” There were other options too. The book is about a Brooklyn punk and petty thief who rises to become a world-renowned magician. Maurice Zolotow is more famous that you suspect. In addition to being an author he was a journalist for Billboard magazine and a writer of biographies, and when he died in 1991 he was eulogized in the New York Times. The Great Balsamo is from 1964 with cover work from an unknown artist.
Wow, it's unusually bloody out tonight. There's always been some slaughter, but lately the neighborhood's really gone downhill.
Victor Kalin painted this cover for Louis Falstein’s 1953 novel Slaughter Street, published by Pyramid Books. It’s excellent art, and this was an interesting book. It’s about a regular guy named Johnnie Constable who snitches the whereabouts of a wanted organized crime figure and experiences two negative results. First, the two detectives who later arrest the crook try to claim the $10,000 reward for themselves; and second, Constable comes increasingly under threat by unknown figures, presumably avatars of the mob boss, until his life, his pregnant fiancée’s life, his parents’ lives, and even those of his neighborhood friends are all at risk. He can’t even escape his block without coming under attack, and wouldn’t be able to go far without the reward money. He buys a gun, holes up in his apartment, and prepares for the worst. The narrative mostly operates as a family drama, and keeps the mob figure and police in the far background. The dual moral offered by Falstein is clear: never stick your neck out; never help the cops. This is a good, well written tale.
I have nothing left to prove as one of the world's worst women. Maybe I can move up to the men's division.
Again with this book of incredibly mean women? You betcha. Bernard O’Donnell’s The World’s Worst Women had three paperback printings, which has given us three opportunities to riff on it. This one came in 1956 with Lou Marchetti art of someone who almost seems to be pondering whether she wants to continue on her terrible path. Baby, don’t change a thing. Find out what the book is about here and here.
I have a great idea. Since we met by chance on the same discount package tour, let's invite our travel agents to the wedding.
Above: an uncredited cover for Dale Wilmer’s 1954 novel Jungle Heat. As we mentioned last year, this was the original edition of the 1960 book of the same title, which was credited to Wade Miller, who was really a shared pseudonym for Bob Wade and Bill Miller. Got all that? You can learn a bit more about the book here.
I got shit here that'll blow your minds. Dented saucepans, frayed towels, old keys. I'm talking grade-a junk.
Robert W. Taylor’s 1954 novel The Junk Pusher is one of numerous mid-century drug scare books. Many of them deal in an unintentionally hilarious way with marijuana. This one, though, is about heroin, and we think Taylor is on safe ground here in saying it can be very dangerous. The cover art is by Frank Cozzarelli, who we’ve seen around these parts before. Check here.
If you're in the fashion business—everything.
Ed Spingarn’s NYC garment district tale Perfect 36 was first published in 1957 by Pyramid Books with cover art by Robert Maguire. In 1960 Pyramid re-issued the novel in the form above, giving Lou Marchetti a shot at the cover, and of course he did a nice job. This yarn (see what we did there?) was entertaining and different. Our detailed thoughts are here.
That bimbo has no idea she can't get hair dye here. When her roots grow out we'll see if men still think she's so amazing.
We have other Wade Miller books to read, but we picked up this copy of 1960’s Jungle Heat and moved it to the head of the line because the story is set in Malaya (now Malaysia), and the last book we read that the authors (Bob Wade and Bill Miller writing together under a pseudonym) set in an exotic country was phenomenal. Jungle Heat was originally published in 1954 under the name Dale Wilmer, with this reattributed Pyramid edition coming a bit later, and it finds Miller taking on the unexpected challenge of writing in first person from a woman’s point-of-view. The lead character is Hollywood b-actress Roxy Powell, who is sent to Malaya with a small crew to shoot background footage for an upcoming jungle adventure. Never mind that a communist revolution is brewing. What Hollywood wants, Hollywood gets.
Plantation boss Llewelyn Kirk, under whose roof Roxy and the crew are residing, is one of those characters who’s colonial through-and-through but thinks that because he’s been in Malaya for twenty years he isn’t an invader and knows what’s best for locals. Since the authors agree with this paternalistic sentiment, the narrative is steered—to an almost ludicrous extent—toward Kirk being correct. We won’t get into any of it except to say that, generally, anti-communist fiction from the mid-century era was unavoidably propagandist. In this case the authors are basically correct in their regional political analysis, but gloss over important details and whiff on overarching points. For example, there’s an interesting scene where a Malayan tells Kirk that he’d heard blacks in America are unjustly killed by whites. Kirk assures him it isn’t true. We almost did a spit-take on that one.
Roxy first hates, then by a circuitous path, comes to adore Kirk. She’s initially driven by her need for “respect,” which here doesn’t mean respect as normally understood, but is instead code for sexual desirability. Because Kirk ignores her, she hates him. Therefore she embarks on a campaign to discover his humanity—i.e. his sexual attraction to her. Even if you didn’t know the author, that’s when you might suspect a guy—or two—was in the driver seat. Okay, so if the politics take liberties and the justification for romance is male fantasy in disguise, is the book any good? Well, sure. There’s a nice jungle setting, a fun Hollywood sidebar, a backdrop of war in which enemies circle ever closer, a traitor hiding in the fold, and love blossoming amid chaos. With all that going for it, the book has to be good. But that said, Wade/Miller definitely wrote better.
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HISTORY REWIND
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1925—Mein Kampf Published
While serving time in prison for his role in a failed coup, Adolf Hitler dictaes and publishes volume 1 of his manifesto Mein Kampf (in English My Struggle or My Battle), the book that outlines his theories of racial purity, his belief in a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, and his plans to lead Germany to militarily acquire more land at the expense of Russia via eastward expansion.
1955—Disneyland Begins Operations
The amusement park Disneyland opens in Orange County, California for 6,000 invitation-only guests, before opening to the general public the following day.
1959—Holiday Dies Broke
Legendary singer Billie Holiday, who possessed one of the most unique voices in the history of jazz, dies in the hospital of cirrhosis of the liver. She had lost her earnings to swindlers over the years, and upon her death her bank account contains seventy cents.
1941—DiMaggio Hit Streak Reaches 56
New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio gets a hit in his fifty-sixth consecutive game. The streak would end the next game, against the Cleveland Indians, but the mark DiMaggio set still stands, and in fact has never been seriously threatened. It is generally thought to be one of the few truly unbreakable baseball records.
1939—Adams Completes Around-the-World Air Journey
American Clara Adams becomes the first woman passenger to complete an around the world air journey. Her voyage began and ended in New York City, with stops in Lisbon, Marseilles, Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Wake Island, Honolulu, and San Francisco.
1955—Nobel Prize Winners Unite Against Nukes
Eighteen Nobel laureates sign the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, which reads in part: “We think it is a delusion if governments believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of [nuclear] weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. Similarly it seems to us a delusion to believe that small conflicts could in the future always be decided by traditional weapons. In extreme danger no nation will deny itself the use of any weapon that scientific technology can produce.”
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Uncredited art for Poker de blondes by Oscar Montgomery, aka José del Valle, from the French publisher Éditions le Trotteur in 1953.
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.
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.
Uncredited cover art for Orrie Hitt's 1954 novel Tawny. Hitt was a master of sleazy literature and published more than one hundred fifty novels.
