Pulp International

vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news

LOU LOU OF A PROBLEM

As detective capers go, this one is a real Honey.


Victor Kalin painted this beautiful cover for Thomas B. Dewey’s Go, Honeylou, published by Dell in 1962. The blurb describes the book as a “swift new caper,” and that’s true. Private eye Pete Schofield is hired to drive a beautiful 6-foot bumpkin named Honeylou from L.A. to San Francisco. It’s a strange request, considering a detective’s high rate of pay, which is probably why Schofield doesn’t seem surprised when he’s immediately tailed, soon harassed, eventually beaten, and finally robbed of his human cargo. He next finds that all along he was delivering Honeylou to a whorehouse, that her guardian aunt has been murdered, and a massive cache of her money is in the wind. It all worked fine for us, however Go, Honeylou was written well into a Pete Schofield series, and we’d have preferred to start with book one. But whaddaya gonna do? We’ve since noticed a couple of earlier entries out there at good prices. Since this one was good, we might buy those and report back.

Dell Publications, Thomas B. Dewey, Victor Kalin, cover art, literature

CALLING HER SHOT

Yes, I'd like to report a murder. A man murdered every last bit of my patience.


Above, a nice cover for Day Keene’s 1954 thriller Death House Doll, with excellent art credited to Bernard Barton, who’s aka Harry Barton (Bernard was his middle name).

In the story, a Korean War vet has promised his fatally wounded brother he’d look after his wife and baby daughter, but when he gets back to the world (Chicago) he’s stunned to find that she’s sitting on death row for murder, and unwilling to spill the truth even if it saves her.

The attraction with this one is watching a decorated war hero run riot on hoods and thieves, while up against the always effective ticking clock gimmick—an execution date, which in this case is five days hence. The book was an Ace Double with Thomas B. Dewey’s Mourning After on the flipside, and the art on that one, just above, is by Victor Olson. We put together a nice collection of Harry Barton’s work back in May that we recommend you visit at this link. 

Korea, Korean War, Ace Books, Ace Double Novels, Day Keene, Gunard Hjerstedt, Thomas B. Dewey, Harry Barton, Bernard Barton, Victor Olson, cover art, literature

SHADOW AND FRIGHT

The shape of bad things to come.

Above and below are assorted covers featuring yet another fun mid-century paperback art motif—the looming or threatening shadow. The covers are by the usual suspects—Rader, Phillips, Gross, Caroselli, Nik, as well as by artists whose work you see less often, such as Tony Carter’s brilliant cover for And Turned to Clay. That’s actually a dust jacket, rather than a paperback front, but we couldn’t leave it out. You’ll also notice French publishers really liked this theme. We’ll doubtless come across more, and as we do we’ll add to the collection. This is true of all our cover collections. For instance, our post featuring the Eiffel Tower has grown from fifteen to twenty-two examples, and our group of fronts with syringes has swelled from thirteen to twenty-six images. We have twenty-four twenty-six—see what we mean?—more shadow covers below, and thanks to all original uploaders.

Jay Barbette, Richard Deming, James Eastwood, Geoffrey Homes, E. Howard Hunt, Gordon Davis, Ovid Demaris, Anne Chamberlain, Tony Carter, Paul Rader, Barye Phillips, Lenore Glen Offord, George Gross, Carl G. Hoges, Benedetto Caroselli, Louis de la Hattais, Roy Huggins, Erle Stanley Gardner, Francis Beeding, Jon Cleary, Jannet Mills, Lesley Egan, Leslie Charteris, Lionel White, John Eugene Hasty, Vivian Marcy, Samuel Rogers, Joan Ellis, A.A. Fair, Thomas B. Dewey, Claude Ferny, Richard Craig, Richard Craig, Salva, Jean Salvetti, Mik, Jacques Thibésart, Gerald Brown, Milton K. Ozaki, Duke Linton, cover art, cover collection, literature

TOP SHELF PULP

Does this look like one of the top sixty pulp book covers of all time to you?

No, it doesn’t look like that to us either. Don’t get us wrong. It isn’t bad. But top sixty? Ever? Yet we found it on a site that included it in its top sixty, along with a collection of other covers of which we can honestly say only three were excellent. There was not one Fixler or Aslan to be found. Nary a J. David, nor a Peff, nor even a hint of a Rader. Clearly, whoever put the feature together took sixty random images off Flickr (yet watermarked the art they borrowed) and called it a day.

This highlights one of the main problems with the internet: it’s difficult to know which sites are primarily focused upon providing information, and which exist solely to generate traffic revenue. A site can do both (as we try to do here with our very minimal ad presence), but when some corporate pulp site that possesses endless resources somehow misidentifies the pulp era as lasting from the 1950s to 1970s, and asserts that the term “pulp” was popularized by the movie Pulp Fiction, it’s clear that information has not only taken a back seat to traffic revenue—it’s being dragged 100 feet behind the car on a rope.

We would never presume to do something as subjective as select the best covers of all time, because who the hell are we? But we have, we hope, earned some credibility over the last three years. So on this, our official third anniversary, we’re going to do a pulp cover collection of our own. We don’t claim these are the best—only that we like them very much. We’re posting twenty-four because we’re too lazy to do sixty, but we think all of them are winners. A few have already appeared on our site; most have not. So here we go. And thanks to the sites from which we borrowed some of these.  

Bob Abbett, Robert McGinnis, Robert Hilbert, Aslan, Jacques David, Sam Peffer, Frank Kane, Erle Stanley Gardner, Roymond Chandler, Robert Kyle, Mark Corrigan, Harper Lee, Thomas B. Dewey, Cyril Beaton, Graham Greene, William Burroughs, Mike Avallone, Bowie Morton, Amber Dean, Lee Roberts, Hank Janson, Octavus Roy Cohen, Amy Harris, George Malcolm-Smith, cover art, cover collection, literature
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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.”

  • FEATUREd PULP

TRICK SHOT ARTIST

Uncredited art for Poker de blondes by Oscar Montgomery, aka José del Valle, from the French publisher Éditions le Trotteur in 1953.

DON’T RIDE THE WHITE HORSE

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.

BARN GIRLS

Two Spanish language digest novels from Argentine publishers Malinca Debora and Malinca Nueva Pandora.
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.

LOVES OF A BLONDE

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.

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