Fixed in Posts

• New York City-born Tom Lovell (1909-1997) was really a magazine illustrator and a painter of Western scenery, rather than a book-jacket artist. So, though I’ve seen examples of his elegant work in Pulp Covers and elsewhere online (here, for instance, and here), he hasn’t been a principal focus of my interest. However, there’s a handsome new, limited-edition volume about his work due for release in October, titled simply Tom Lovell—Illustrator (The Illustrated Press), and I may just have to add it to my library. The book carries a $44.95 cover price, but judging by its contents—which you can flip through here—that charge doesn’t seem so very exorbitant.

• Robert McGinnis fans, take note: The now 90-year-old artist is creating a whole new line of retro covers for paperback re-releases of Neil Gaiman’s novels, at the author’s request. The first one, gracing American Gods—rushed into print in advance of the 2017 Starz TV adaptation of that 2001 yarn—is due out in mid-August from William Morrow. You can appreciate its artwork on the right. After seeing the results here, author Duane Swierczynski (Revolver) wrote on Facebook that it “guarantees that … I’ll be buying my Neil Gaiman books all over again.”

• Not being a regular (or even irregular) reader of “swashbuckling space fantasies,” I might never have spotted Nathan Long’s 2012 novel, Jane Carver of Waar (Night Shade Books), had it not been for the blog Thinking About Books, which I stumbled across only recently. It showcased Jane Carver of Waar a while back, and made clear in the course of things that its dramatic cover illustration, by Dave Dorman, is a “cleaned-up” version of the artist’s original topless painting. You can compare the two versions more easily in this post from Pulp Covers, which elsewhere offers the no-less-“sanitized” front from Long’s sequel, Swords of Waar (2012).

• In his blog, Pretty Sinister Books, writer and bookseller J.F. Norris features a handsome gallery of Holt Mystery novels, all published between 1939 and 1941. Probably my favorite of those shown is Murder’s Coming, a 1939 novel by Donald Clough Cameron.

• And of course, what would one of these links compilations be without mention of some post or other in Pulp International? Especially worth seeing there recently have been this seductive cover from the 1962 sleaze novel Wait Your Turn (its artwork uncredited) and this Robert Maguire-painted front for the 1954 paperback original The Blonde on the Street Corner, by David Goodis.

MacDonald’s Century: Closing Arguments

Above: The 15th Travis McGee tale, The Turquoise Lament (1974, with artwork by Robert McGinnis). Below, right: The Drowner (1969, featuring artwork by Stanley Zuckerberg).

Today marks 100 years since the birth, in Sharon, Pennsylvania, of John Dann MacDonald, the business school grad who grew up to become famous as crime and thriller novelist John D. MacDonald.

After spending the last two weeks celebrating MacDonald’s centennial with a series of book-cover posts on this page, what I have come to realize is just how little experience I’ve had with the breadth of MacDonald’s fiction. Yes, I have enjoyed a number of his colorful 21 novels starring larger-than-life “salvage expert”-cum-detective Travis McGee. Additionally, I have read probably a handful of his standalone novels, including Murder in the Wind (1956), The Executioners (aka Cape Fear, 1958), and The Drowner (1963). But MacDonald published more than twice as many non-series books as he did McGee adventures—some of which have earned acclaim from authorities such as Ed Gorman—and most of those, I haven’t so much as touched yet. It seems I have many years of catching up to do. Spurred on by Killer Covers’ recent observance of MacDonald’s birthday, I am enthusiastic about getting on with that task, familiarizing myself not only with more of his novels (including the science fiction he wrote), but also with the short-story anthologies he produced during his almost 40-year career.

Since I cannot be in Sarasota today—the Florida town where this author lived and wrote for many years before dying in Wisconsin in December 1986, at age 70, and where commemorations of his centennial are set to take place—the next best thing is for me to build on Killer Covers’ display of vintage MacDonald book fronts. There are far too many to feature them all, but if you scroll down you’ll find 74 façades that have decorated his novels and non-fiction books over the years. On top of the 14 I have recently posted on this page, and others I’ve highlighted here over the years, I feel pretty good about representing MacDonald’s literary range. Among the artists whose work appears on the covers below are Bill Johnson, Barye Phillips, Stanley Borack, George Gross, James Avati, Jerry Allison, Darrel Greene, Owen Kampen, Ron Lesser, Mitchell Hooks, Victor Kalin, Barbara Walton, Samuel Peffer, Milton Charles, and of course Robert McGinnis. Enjoy the show!

READ MORE: “John D. MacDonald Before Travis McGee,” by Lee Sandlin (The Wall Street Journal); “Who Is Travis McGee?” by Prakriti (To Be or Not to Be).