Category Archives: Pulp paperback cover art

Pulp Friday: Opium Flower by Dan Cushman

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

“They were out to hook the whole world with the filthy stuff – Ryan had to stop them even if it meant losing the most luscious play-mate in the Orient.”

There’s pulp covers and then there’s pulp covers and I reckon this one is a beauty.

It perfectly combines two of my main obsessions, sixties pulp paperback art and crime fiction set in Asia, in this case Laos.

Opium Flower was published by Bantam Books in 1963. Author, Dan Cushman, was a regular pulp writer for US outfits such as Bantam and Gold Medal, where he penned tough guy pulp stories. Many of them, including Jewel of the Java Sea (1951) and Port Orient (1955) were set in Asia.

The back cover blurb for Opium Flower is great:

“Opium. Somehow it was getting back to the State. From Harlem to Venice City, the hopheads were practically floating in it. Ryan was the only man who could stop the flow at its deadly source – Laos.

All he had to do was become the second son to the biggest opium dealer in the world, endure the most insidious tortures ever devised by man and fight his way out of the dirtiest double-cross ever invented.

If he survived, it was worth every excruciating minute.… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: Ricki Francis, Nero

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

“The frank, revealing story of a male prostitute.”

By far the best home-grown Australian pulp produced in the sixties and seventies came from a little known publishing house called Scripts Publications.

I’ve long wondered about the nature of this low rent operation and their bizarre roster of pulp paperbacks.

The mystery has now been solved thanks to John Harrison’s marvellous history of vintage adult paperbacks, Hip Pocket Sleaze. According to Harrison, Scripts was the in-print Horwitz used for is racier pulp titles. Key themes included crime, bikies, black magic, Japanese prison camp exploitation, and a voyeuristic fascination with the exploits of drug users and sex workers in Kings Cross, Sydney’s notorious red light district.

According to Hip Pocket Sleaze, “a total of sixteen paperback titled [were] published per month at the height of their popularity in the mid to late 1960s, with each title having an initial print run of 20,000 copies.”

For these titles Horwitz mostly used most cheap photographs for covers, something which gives the books a wonderful fly on the wall expose feeling.

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is a classic example, Rick Francis’s, Nero, published in 1971.

I don’t know who Rick Francis is, if indeed that’s his real name. But, if the other titles listed at the beginning of Nero are anything to go by, he did a damn fine line in paperback sleaze – The Butch Girls, The Sex Life of a Model, Innocents Behind Bars and The Bikies.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Scripts Publications, True crime, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Pulp Friday: Syndicate Girl

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

“She was tough as the hoods she worked with – until she met a man who made her feel like a woman.”

I’m feeling like some classic pulp today. And they don’t come any more classic or pulpier than this 1958 first edition paperback by Dell Publishing, Syndicate Girl, by Frank Kane.

Kane was a New York based pulp writer who wrote nearly 40 pulp novels in a career spanning from 1947 to the late sixties. This included numerous short stories, 29 novels featuring the Big Apple private eye Johnny Liddell and numerous stand alone books, including Syndicate Girl.

If you want to know more, the Thrilling Detective website has a great post on Kane.

I don’t really need to say anything else, except the back cover blurb is as classic as the front cover.

“Network of corruption.

‘That was a nice job, Mary. Real nice.’

She smiled. ‘They always are, when I do them.’

The fat man shrugged. ‘This wasn’t an easy one. He was a smart cop.’

‘Not so smart,’ she said. ‘He’s dead.’

Mary Lister would do anything for a price. Kill a man, love him, whatever paid the most money. She didn’t know the meaning of fear-or passion. And then she met Mal Waters…”… Read more

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

Pulp Friday: Trouble Is My Name by Stephen Marlowe

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

“Instead of bourbon in the file I keep the savage ghost of murder.”

As front cover blurbs go, that’s a pretty good one.

Today’s Pulp Friday offering is Trouble is My Name by Stephen Marlowe, published by Five Star Paperbacks.

There’s no publication date on this book.

Through the wonder of the Internet, I discovered that Five Star Paperbacks was the pulp in-print of Mayflower paperbacks.

It did produced a range of crime, horror, Gothic romance and science fiction books in the late sixties and early seventies. I found a nice little selection of some of their titles at an interesting site called Vault of Evil, if you want to check them out

Five Star Paperbacks also licensed a number of hardboiled mysteries and thrillers from the famous US pulp publisher, Gold Medal Books, including Trouble is My Name.

Marlowe was a US crime writer, best known for creating Chester Drum in 1955. He wrote science fiction and crime under at least five pseudonyms that I have been able to find.

Trouble is My Name featured Drum and was originally published in 1957.

I’d be curious to know whether the back cover blurb on the original was as salacious as that on the Five Star Paperback version:

“My Code?… Read more

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

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Pulp Friday: The Brat by Gil Brewer

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

This week’s Pulp Friday offering is for all the hardcore noir fans out there, Gil Brewer’s The Brat.

Brewer really is the aspiring pulp writer’s pulp writer. The author of dozens of sleazy sex/crime/psychological thrillers, he began his career writing for Gold Medal Books in the early fifties, also wrote under the Ellery Queen by-line, as well as using the pseudonyms Eric Fitzgerald, Bailey Morgan and Elaine Evans.

He kept up a punishing work schedule, once writing a book in three days. Between books he churned out hundreds of short stories for mystery and pulp magazines.

He died in 1983, after years of alcoholism, mental health problems and financial stress. Like most of the most accomplished pulp novelists, he only gained critical attention well after his death.

There’s a great site about Brewer, done by his estate, which includes full listings of his work, bio details and some great photographs. It’s called Gil Brewer, Noir Fiction Writer.

The Brat was first published in 1957. The edition above is 1958 and appears to be an overseas in-print judging from the currency denomination on the top right of the cover.

The Brat features femme fatale Evis Helling. The narrator, Lee Sullivan, is in for one hell of a surprise when marries Evis.… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction, Fawcett Gold Medal Books, Gil Brewer, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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