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Post by andydecker on Feb 25, 2021 11:10:53 GMT
A few from the 70s: The last one with the nice rat is originally a British cover for the rat novel Willard.
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Post by helrunar on Feb 25, 2021 18:48:04 GMT
A bloodied decapitated doll's head for a novel entitled Hour of the Headhunter is wild and hilarious... very Wednesday Addams.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Feb 25, 2021 18:52:36 GMT
And I'm sure I've seen the raven before somewhere, too.
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Post by jamesdoig on Feb 25, 2021 20:12:07 GMT
And the skull with the Robert Plant wig blowing smoke or something:
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Post by andydecker on Feb 25, 2021 20:23:39 GMT
thanks for the info, Dem! I never would have thought that the doll's head is from an foreign cover. The added blood is a nice touch, though.
The novel is Douglas Rich's The Night That Never Ended, 1961 Digit Books. It is a strange mixture, begins with a guy who beheads a girl, but his court appointed psychiatrist doesn't believe his 'a ghost made me do it' until he gets confronted with said ghost. It is a rather limp novel because the 50s kitchen sink psychology is so tiresome and the supernatural stuff only starts after the first half. Which is a shame as the ghosts motivation is solid and the ending is effective.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 25, 2021 20:34:02 GMT
And the skull with the Robert Plant wig blowing smoke or something: Robert Heinlein of all people? I don't f***g believe it! I can't imagine a more unsuited cover as this.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 26, 2021 9:16:07 GMT
Some more crime covers: "Pushed on the sidetrack", 1980 "Maigret and the Dead Girl", this edition 2009 "Other paths to Glory", 1986 "The snow was red with blood" (Snowbound), 1976
This Maigret edition was a nice one. Hardcovers in the size of a paperback, all the novels, numbered. Unfortunatly it is out of print as the rights went to another publisher.
Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac were the two French guys whose novels Vertigo (called From among the Dead) and Les Diaboliques (1955) were filmed. The published more then 20 thrillers, but only a handful were translated into English. These novels are very different from American crime stories.
Anthony Price wrote this series about British spy David Audley. The novels were in the vein of Le Carre. Mostly the writer used some historic topic as a part of the then contemporary plot. This one got him the Gold Dagger Award. I love this book. It is about the battle of the Marne. Price also wrote one about British Civil War reenactment which is equally good.
The Pronzini is one of his early novels, when he still followed the Richard Stark path.
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Post by helrunar on Feb 26, 2021 14:32:03 GMT
Very alluring chap on the cover of The Snow was red with blood (I've never heard of Bill Pronzini and have no idea what the original title of this novel was). I might not buy the book based on his seductive look, but I'd be forced to pick it up and read the blurb. And then most likely put it back on the rack.
Interesting selection!
H.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 26, 2021 15:09:02 GMT
Very alluring chap on the cover of The Snow was red with blood (I've never heard of Bill Pronzini and have no idea what the original title of this novel was). I might not buy the book based on his seductive look, but I'd be forced to pick it up and read the blurb. And then most likely put it back on the rack. Interesting selection! H. Thanks. I just grabbed some random photo covers from the crime shelves, to be honest. I have some more, but the house-style doesn't vary much.
Bill Pronzini (and his wife Marcia Muller) were for a while the backbone of the American P.I. novel. At least it appeared so from afar. Pronzini wrote dozens of novels in his Nameless series, a San Francisco P.I. who is an avid pulp collector. (The gimmick was that the first person narrator and hero had no name.) Unlike other writers he let him age. One early novel, Hoodwink from 1981 is about a murder on a pulp convention. It is not as cozy as it sounds. I re-read it not so lang ago and it held up quite well. Muller did write a series about female P.I. Sharon McCone. Snowbound was a typical gangster novel. A heist goes wrong, the three gangsters have to take cover in a little town called Hidden Valley and get snowed in. They terrorize the few citizens who finally fight back.
One Pronzini of a maybe interest in the Vault is his The Running of Beasts, co-written with Barry Malzberg in 1976. It is a serial killer novel before they became popular and is quite well done.
Also he did edit a few anthologies, both horror and westerns.
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Post by helrunar on Feb 26, 2021 23:14:19 GMT
Hoodwink piques my interest if there's ethnographic material (so to speak) about what it was like attending a pulp fan convention in the 1980s. Not being a pulp collector (I don't own a single issue of any classic pulp magazine), I never attended one of those, but they sound fun.
cheers, Steve
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Post by jamesdoig on Feb 27, 2021 6:08:09 GMT
Robert Heinlein of all people? I don't f***g believe it! I can't imagine a more unsuited cover as this. [/quote] Indeed! And a dreadful book. I tried rereading another long Heinlein novel recently, Time Enough For Love, and couldn't get through it. I didn't have the heart to try any more Heinlein.
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peedeel
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 61
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Post by peedeel on Feb 27, 2021 7:36:11 GMT
I must confess that as a young man I read and enjoyed Heinlein’s fiction. But what the hell, eh? Those were halcyon days of youthful innocence (ignorance?). Sure, Starship Troopers set some alarm bells ringing when it was published – here was our young cadet hero learning that duty is obedience, that wars will happen come what may, that the military always knows best. And kill the alien before he sticks it to you! Yeah, even back then, its easy-going militarism was reminiscent of Hitler’s Wehrmacht on a day trip to Paris – the whole presented in a most seductively attractive but simplistic way. But still I read on, you know? After all a man capable of writing, “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity”, couldn’t be all bad in my book! I read Stranger in a Strange when it was published and thought it a great book. Today, a thousand and one years on, I tried a reread but couldn’t get past the first few chapters. Perhaps, you need to be young and impressionable to read Heinlein? Or a proto-fascist? Or perhaps he was of his time, and has now simply passed his “best before date"?
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Post by andydecker on Feb 27, 2021 13:16:06 GMT
Indeed! And a dreadful book. I tried rereading another long Heinlein novel recently, Time Enough For Love, and couldn't get through it. I didn't have the heart to try any more Heinlein. I always wanted to read more Heinlein. I read Starman Jones in the mid-seventies, which at the time I didn't knew that it was a) a juveline and b) more than 20 years old, but truly liked it. And I read The Door into Summer which was nice, but also at the time I wasn't aware or cared that it also at least 15 or more years old at the time. Starship Troopers I unfortunatly read after I read a lot about it, and I have a clearer recollection of all those articles and opinions than the actual novel.
Recently I had some interest to finally read the famous Stranger in a Strange Land or The Number of the Beast, but again I read so much about both books beforehand that chances are high that I won't finish it. Revisiting old books is often a disappointment, especially serious sf. I manged to nearly complete a set of the collections of Brian Aldiss whose work used to fascinate me back in the 80s, especially his development as a writer. But when I started with the first collection, I found it a hard going. In many regards these tales are better written than the usual SF in a Carnell magazine of the time. But in most cases time was not nice to them.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Feb 27, 2021 13:22:36 GMT
I manged to nearly complete a set of the collections of Brian Aldiss whose work used to fascinate me back in the 80s, especially his development as a writer. But when I started with the first collection, I found it a hard going. I have read HOTHOUSE many times and always find it fascinating. There is nothing quite like it.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 27, 2021 13:30:00 GMT
Hoodwink piques my interest if there's ethnographic material (so to speak) about what it was like attending a pulp fan convention in the 1980s. Not being a pulp collector (I don't own a single issue of any classic pulp magazine), I never attended one of those, but they sound fun. cheers, Steve Yes and no. While the novel presents the usual activities of those cons like panel discussions and dealership rooms, it is mostly about the grudges of the attending 30s and 40s writers. There is of course a murder, and the main suspect is a writer which already played a role in an earlier novel of the series, an alcoholic hack who used to be popular but now is offered only the chance to write pseudonymous Adult western which he hates. There are a lot of insider gags which I only understood when I re-read those novels years later after learning a lot about the magazine era.
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