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Recommended reading
The lurid world of pulp
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Category Archives: Pulp fiction
Pulp Friday: The Laughing Policeman
The Laughing Policeman is probably better known as the title of a book than a film, but both are the subject of today’s Pulp Friday offering.
Originally published in 1968, The Laughing Policeman was fourth in a series of ten books featuring the bad tempered police detective, Martin Beck, by Swedish crime writing duo, Maj Sjowell and Per Wahloo. The book was adapted into a film, directed by Stuart Rosenburg, and released in 1973.
The covers in today’s post include both the original novel and the paperback-tie in for the film. The one above is the 1974 Bantam edition. In order those below are: the back cover to the 1974 Bantam edition, the cover of the 1977 Vintage edition, and the 1974 UK paperback tie-in for the movie, published by Sphere. The film appeared under that title in the UK.
The series is very famous and I don’t think I have to go into detail about it here. The plot of the original The Laughing Policeman novel concerns a gunman who shoots passengers on a public bus, killing eight people and wounding one. Beck and his team believe the murders are a disguise for the murder of a police detective who was engaged in an out of hour’s investigation into the murder of a 16-year-old Portuguese sex worker.… Read more
Pulp Friday: Klute, the UK paperback tie-ins
Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a very short addendum to my post a couple of weeks ago about the US paperback tie-in to Alan J Pakula’s 1971 movie, Klute, and the career of its author, William Johnston. As I noted in the post, which you can read in full here, Johnston appears to have been a master of the paper-back tie in, a massively popular form of entertainment before the advent of VHS, as a way for fans to re-live their favourite films and television shows.
Spurred on by a comment by one of my readers, I thought people might be interested in the UK paperback tie-in editions for Klute. There a two that I am aware of. The first is the 1973 Sphere paperback above, the cover for which was kindly sent to me by the reader in question, Stuart Radmore. As he noted, and I agree, it is a much darker and atmospheric cover design than the US 1971 Paperback Library edition. The back cover of this edition is included below.
The second is another Sphere version, this one from 1971, which appears to be the Australian and New Zealand edition of the Sphere tie-in. Until I saw Stuart’s comment, I had totally forgotten that I owned this version.… Read more
Pulp Friday: Klute the novel & William Johnson, master of the paperback tie-in
I had a lot of interest in my post earlier this week on Alan J Pakula’s wonderfully atmospheric 1971 movie, Klute. Given this, I thought Pulp Curry readers may be interested in having a look at this artefact from my pulp collection, the paperback tie-in for the film. It was published by Paperback Library in July 1971, a month after the film was released. I like the tag line on the cover, which reduces what is a remarkably sophisticated film to a classic, 1950s sounding pulp novel: ‘A small-town cop and New York call girl run a collision course with murder’.
I thought this would be a relatively straight forward post, but as is often the case there is a story behind the author of this book. Paperback tie-ins were a massively popular form of entertainment before the advent of VHS, as a way for fans to re-live their favourite films and television shows. The author of Klute, William Johnston, appears to have been somewhat of a master of the paper-back tie in.
According to an article on this site, much of which was taken by a longer piece by author, Lee Goldberg, Johnston penned a large number of them. The best known of these were numerous books for the Get Smart series.… Read more
Posted in 1970s American crime films, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art
Tagged Alan J Pakula, Bewitched, Caligula (1979), Echoes of Summer (1976), EWelcome Back Kotter, Gilligan’s Island, Happy Days, Klute (1971), Magilla Gorilla, Movie paperback tie-in, Nanny and the Professor, The Brady Bunch, The Monkees, The Munsters, The Priest’s Wife (1970), The Swinger (1966), William Johnston