Category Archives: Pulp paperback cover art

Pulp Friday: more adventures behind the bamboo screen

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 6 Comments

The Turncoat

One of the most successful pulp fiction related posts to date on this site was a selection of Asian themed pulp fiction paperback covers I put up in 2011, Behind the bamboo screen: Asian pulp covers of the sixties and seventies.

For a while now I’ve been planning a follow up and here it is.

As was the case in the original post, the covers below portray the anti-communist hysteria created by the rise of the so-called ‘red menace’ as well the fate of innocent (and not so innocent) Westerners thrown into chaos and intrigue of the ‘Far east’, a place of intrigue, “notorious pleasure palaces” and “forbidden desire”.

Hong Kong was a popular setting of Asian themed pulp fiction, as evidenced by titles such as A Coffin From Hong Kong (“A seemingly innocent telephone call led him to the murder of a Chinese call-girl who had talked to much and into the teeming, sordid nightlife of colourful Hong Kong”).

Other locales portrayed below include, Korea (The Turncoat), China (Shanghai Incident – “I had two callers my first night in Shanghai – death and a honey blonde”), the “South Seas” (November Reef), India (Men and Angels), Burma (The House of Bamboo – “In a Burmese girl’s warm, seductive beauty he found escape from the flames of forbidden desire”), and Thailand (Port Orient).… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: The Deadly Prey

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Deadly Prey

“A sadistic maniac was developing a deadly virus by using children as guinea pigs.”

Vigilantes were one of the key themes of the muscular over the top world of seventies pulp fiction. And one of the biggest, meanest and weirdest of them was John Yard aka The Hunter.

Published in 1975, The Deadly Prey is one of four books I know of in The Hunter series, the other titles being Scavenger Kill, Track of the Beast and A Taste for Blood. All of them were released by New York pulp publisher, Leisure Books. You’ll find the covers to the other three books here on my Pinterest site.

Yard is a former African game hunter who has changed professions and, along with his side kick, Moses Ngala, now works as a gun for hire.

The subject of his attentions in The Deadly Prey is a mad scientist who is testing a lethal super virus on the inhabitants of an Appalachian hippy commune. Unfortunately for the scientists and his backers in the military industrial complex, one of the kids he kills happens to be the son of one of Yard’s former hunting partners and, of course, a former Green Beret.

Whatever, the back cover blurb does much more justice to the story than I ever could.… Read more

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Posted in Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: The Smashers

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

The smashers“A novel of The Organisation – girls, horses, dope, murder.”

Regular readers will be familiar by now with my admiration for the late Donald Westlake. Westlake was the hard boiled writer’s hard-boiled crime writer, having penned numerous books over his career, including the wonderful Parker novels under the pseudonym of Richard Stark.

Today’s Pulp Friday is one of Westlake’s early efforts, The Smashers, aka The Cutie, aka The Mercenaries. This edition is the first Dell publication in 1960.

The Smashers was Westlake’s official fiction debut under his real name. His previous fiction efforts, like those of his peer Lawrence Block, were soft porn paperbacks written under other names (here’s a nice post on one of these titles Back Stage Love – “The Shocking expose of what goes on behind the scenes at a summer stock theatre”).

The Smashers is the story of Clay, the right hand man of New York mob boss Ed Ganolese. Clay gets a late night call from a junkie with a dead woman on his hands and the police on his tail. The junkie claims he’s innocent and because he’s connected to Ganolese, Clay has to adopt the role of a PI and find out who the real killer is.

It’s an early and interesting take on the criminal as protagonist that Westlake was subsequently to perfect with his Parker books.… Read more

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Posted in Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark, Parker, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Sinquake

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

sinquake

“Mike Brand’s most sinister adversary – Cyn Boudin, high priestess with a lust for power.” 

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a wonderful piece of forgotten Australian pulp, Sinquake by Gene Janes.

Sinquake was produced by little known local pulp publisher and distributor, Calvert Publishing  After Horwitz Publications and Cleveland, Calvert may well have been one of Australia’s largest publisher of paper backs in the fifties and sixties. Calvert published the Carl Dekker ‘On the Spot’ mystery series, as well as a large number of Westerns, war and romance novels.

There’s no publication date for Sinquake but it was probably released some time in the early to mid-sixties, before the introduction of decimal currency in 1966. The cover was supplied to me courtesy of local pulp collector, Graeme Flanagan.

Sinquake features Mike Brand, an Australian trouble-shooter for the British secret service. I’ll let the back cover blurb explain the rest.

“The Soviet was using the enormous appeal of BLACK MAGIC, with its terrifying rites and orgies, together with the sensual and seductive beauty of “SIN” – Mademoiselle Cynbarra Boudin, the high priestess of the Cult’s British circle, to ensnare top political and diplomatic figures into compromising situations.

With recent scandals as a blue-print, the political stability of the Free World is threatened by moral chaos.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Horwitz Publications, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Sin a la Carte

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

Sin a la carte 1“Loaded with money – starved for sex – and her favorite dish was Sin a l Carte. The story of a summer hotel that gave women what they wanted – for a price.”

When it comes to quality sleaze pulp the serious collector can’t go past the books produced Midwood in the late fifties and sixties.

I don’t know a lot about this New York based publishing outfit, except that they produced some classic sleaze pulp. Lesbians sex, trailer park trash, suburban infidelity, nyphomaniacs, illicit sexual on campus, in the office, in a remote swamp community. You name it, there was a Midwood book dealing with it, always accompanied by appropriately suggestive titles and lurid cover art.

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a classic example, Sin a la Carte (formerly known as Another Night, Another Love), by Loren Beauchamp, published by Midwood in 1962.

There’s nothing I can say about this book that isn’t perfectly captured in the by the back cover below.

Sin a la carte 2

You can find second hand Midwood pulps on the web but, be warned, they are not cheap.

If you want to see more head over the excellent site Pulp International, which has a great selection of Midwood books (as well as just about every other type of pulp book and magazine imaginable).… Read more

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Posted in Pulp fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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