NEXT OF KIN

You might as well stop lurkin' and join the party. We already cousins—no harm bein' kissin' cousins too.

Actually, this book has nothing to do with cousins, but the art spoke to us that way. Guess we’ve read too many Midwood sleaze novels. Ace Books is generally a bit more highbrow. The main character in 1957’s Desire in the Ozarks is Shoog Dawkins, a happy-go-lucky hillbilly stereotype who, after some years of matrimony to his sweetheart Docey and the birth of a son, has his head turned by a girl named Genevy Trone. He’s constitutionally unable to resist the basic pleasures of life, so trouble soon results. This was marketed as an authentic slice of rural life in the vein of Erskine Caldwell—unsuccessfully it seems, because though Steger authored numerous short stories, this seems to have been his/her only novel. Turning to the art, it’s uncredited. We did a little digging and found that the original painting for this recently went up for auction and the sellers confirmed that it’s unsigned. We figure if they can’t identify the artist, nobody can, so this one will likely remain unattributed.  

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1940—The Battle of Britain Begins

The German Air Force, aka the Luftwaffe, attacks shipping convoys off the coast of England, touching off what Prime Minister Winston Churchill describes as The Battle of Britain.

1948—Paige Takes Mound in the Majors

Satchel Paige, considered at the time the greatest of Negro League pitchers, makes his Major League debut for the Cleveland Indians at the age of 42. His career in the majors is short because of his age, but even so, as time passes, he is recognized by baseball experts as one of the great pitchers of all time.

1965—Biggs Escapes the Big House

Ronald Biggs, a member of the gang that carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963, escapes from Wandsworth Prison by scaling a 30-foot wall with three other prisoners, using a ladder thrown in from the outside. Biggs remained at large, mostly living in Brazil, for more than forty-five years before returning to the UK—and arrest—in 2001.

1949—Dragnet Premiers

NBC radio broadcasts the cop drama Dragnet for the first time. It was created by, produced by, and starred Jack Webb as Joe Friday. The show would later go on to become a successful television program, also starring Webb.

1973—Lake Dies Destitute

Veronica Lake, beautiful blonde icon of 1940s Hollywood and one of film noir’s most beloved fatales, dies in Burlington, Vermont of hepatitis and renal failure due to long term alcoholism. After Hollywood, she had drifted between cheap hotels in Brooklyn and New York City and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. A New York Post article briefly revived interest in her, but at the time of her death she was broke and forgotten.

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.
George Gross art for Joan Sherman’s, aka Peggy Gaddis Dern’s 1950 novel Suzy Needs a Man.

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