Category Archives: Pulp paperback cover art

Pulp Friday: Model School

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

“The King’s Cross vice world taught her the other side of the profession.”

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a wonderful example of local pulp fiction from the early sixties, Model School by Christine James, released by Horwitz Publications in 1965.

The early sixties were a turning point for the Australia’s pulp paperback industry, when publishers stopped relying purely on reprints of overseas material and stories set offshore, and started releasing locally set stories by Australian writers.

The setting for much of this work was Sydney’s Kings Cross, which during the sixties, seventies and eighties was Australia best-known center of drug use and prostitution.

Prostitutes, beatniks, con men, drug dealers, bent cops, organized crime lords, innocent tourists and American servicemen on leave all rubbed shoulders in  ‘the Cross’ as it is referred to locally. To this, local pulp authors added Chinese Triad gangs enslaving white women, witches and warlocks and a host of other less believable characters.

Like so many of the Australian pulp I feature on my site, I have not been able to find anything out about the author, Christine James, if, indeed this was her or his real name.

Model School is a fairly typical example of the Kings Cross pulp of the early to mid-sixties.

“The phoney model racket.… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: Narcotic pulp

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 8 Comments

Dope, smack, heroin, cocaine, the evils of narcotics have always been a central pre-occupation of pulp fiction, as can be seen by the selection of paperback covers below.

In Second Ending the victim in question was one of pulp’s favourite characters, a way ward jazz musician who starts taking drugs for kicks, “small time stuff at first”, Benzedrine, then marijuana, “and soon graduates to the killer drug – heroin.”

The main character in Nelson Algren’s classic, The Man With the Golden Arm, is a card shark and former heroin addict fresh out of jail who fights find a new life and avoid slipping back into his habit.

Open Your Hand and Close Your Eyes is a story of drug use and crime amid “a terrifying world where the razor gang rules and a teenage girl will do unspeakable things to get the drug she craves.”

Pulp’s obsession with drugs and their link with crime and changing sexual standards was often thinly dressed as sociological inquiry. A classic example is Drug Scene Kings Cross by Robert Connell, which promises to unveil the real drug scene in Sydney’s Kings Cross, including the aphrodisiac powers of marijuana or “‘pot’ as it is termed by its devotees”.

Better known is Go Ask Alice by Anonymous, an anti-drug propaganda tale about a teenage girls descent into junkie hell.… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: dark hungers and primitive passions

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

My post earlier this week on 50 Shades of Grey and, consciously or not, how it feeds into the rich seam of sleaze and sex pulp popular in the late fifties and sixties, generated a lot of interest.

Today’s Pulp Friday is a selection of titles from this sub-genre of pulp fiction. The following editions hail from the sixties and span pulp from the UK, US and Australia. They cover off all the main pulp obsessions.

There’s illicit young love in The Offenders and The Hot Summer (as the blurb for The Offenders puts it: “Old enough to know better – young enough not to care…”)

Primitive Passions, Dark Hunger, A Feast of Friends and Boarding House all deal with innocent women dealing with the dark sexual appetites of men. As the cover of Dark Hunger put it: “Her mind shrank from the horror that was happening to her – but her body cried for me.”

The sexual desires of wanton women also got a thorough going over in books such as House of Deceit (“She was an amateur in love – but a professional in sin”) and The Dream and the Flesh: “Into the sin pits of Paris she lured him. Into the nameless dark places of reckless thrills.”… 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: Sin in Hong Kong

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

“Lassington Dhal was condemned to die of pleasure. What was the secret that had earned him free grog, free women and a drunkard’s death?”

Today’s Pulp Friday is a wonderful specimen of Asian themed Australian pulp fiction, Sin in Hong Kong by James Workman, published by Horwitz Publications in 1965.

You can almost smell the polluted water of Kowloon Harbour and feel the beer sweat oozing from the pores of this book. The combination of the cover illustration and the suggestive title do a wonderful job of evoking a sense of the mysterious, sleazy Orient, one of the mainstays of pulp publishing in the fifties and sixties. Criminals, Communists, Asians. What’s the difference? Remember, this was 1965. The Cold War was in full swing, Vietnam was just starting to wind up, Australia was years away from recognising Red China, fear and ignorance of Asia was widespread (and it could be argued in some quarters still is).

As is the case with nearly every local Australian pulp cover I present on this site, I’ve no idea who did the art work for Sin in Hong Kong.

James Workman appears to have been one of the many house pseudonyms used by Horwitz. In this case, the real author appears to have been well known Australian novelist James Edmond MacDonnell.… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: Flat 4 Kings Cross

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

“A raw and revealing novel of abandoned passions in Sydney’s twilight zone.”

Today’s Pulp Friday book is Flat 4 Kings Cross, by Geoffrey Tolhurst, published by Horwitz Publications in 1963.

As I’ve previously written on this site, the early to mid-sixties was the transition point during which the Australian pulp publishing industry stopped relying completely on reprints of overseas titles and stories and characters set in the US, and started to pump out stories set locally.

As was the case in the UK and America, much of this was kitchen sink and exploitation fiction, often dressed up as lurid exposés of drug use and sexual promiscuity. These fed off mainstream society’s fears of youth rebellion and changing sexual standards. The setting for much of this work was Sydney’s Kings Cross, which during the sixties, seventies and eighties was Australia best-known center of drug use and prostitution.

Prostitutes, beatniks, con men, drug dealers, bent cops, organized crime lords, innocent tourists and American servicemen on leave all rubbed shoulders in  ‘the Cross’ as it is referred to locally. To this, local pulp authors added Chinese Triad gangs enslaving white women, witches and warlocks and a host of other less believable characters.

Flat 4 Kings Cross is a great example of this sub-genre of Australian pulp. … 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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