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Title : Blue Murder
Author : Robert Leslie Bellem
Cover art : Joe Servello
[Miami : Dennis McMillan. First paperback edition, October 1987. Soft Cover. 158 p. Part of the Classic Hard-Boiled Detective Series. Introduction by Bill Pronzini. Originally published in 1938 by Phoenix Press].
style ***
substance ***
collectibility **
Bellem was the author of over 3,000 pulp stories, many of them featuring the ribald, wacky adventures of "private skulk" Dan Turner. Blue Murder features terrific retro-style cover art by Joe Servello of tough guy with smoking gun and sweaty redhead in low cut gown. The portrait of the sultry femme fatale recalls Cloutier's oily cover art for Dan Brennan's The Velvet Rut, which similarly depicts a languorous brunette veritably dripping in sleaze.
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Phoenix Press, 1938
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Title :
Halo in Brass
Author : Howard Browne
Cover art : Joe Servello
[Missoula : Dennis McMillan, 1988. 'A Paul Pine detective.' Cover by Joe Servello. Originally published as by John Evans, Bobbs-Merrill, 1949. Reprint, Pocket #709, July 1950. Notable for its use of lesbian themes, a rarity in the 1940s. Review by Marvin Lachman.]
style ***
substance ***
collectibility *
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| Pocket Books, 1950 |
I'm a big fan of retro-vintage covers and this is one of my favorites. Joe Servello's front cover art really delivers the noirish goods (albeit using a technicolor palette). The added bonus is the back cover art, also presumably be Servello, which is almost as good. Halo is genuinely 'retro' in the sense that the novel was originally published in 1949. Howard Browne's star has risen in recent years and today he's considered one of the best of the classic era detective writers who wrote in the Chandler/Hammett tradition.
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| Foulsham, London, 1951 |
