Signet 1755 (1960)

Title : Cobra Venom
Author : John B. West
Cover art : Jerry Allison 
  [New York, Signet, 1960. No. 1755].

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John B. West's Rocky Steele was a lively entry into the crowded field of private eye fiction in the late 1950s. According to one source, Steele was a P.I. so tough he made Mike Hammer look like Liberace [1]. But what was probably most interesting about this series was that author John B. West was a black physician practising in West Africa [2], as well as a part-time owner of a broadcasting company, manufacturing firm, and a hotel/restaurant chain, when he wrote the Steele thrillers. A good summary of the Rocky Steele aesthetic can be found here and here. 

Fittingly, the John B. West novels were rather well served by vintage cover art; even the mid sixties reissues, while lacking perhaps the naive, visceral charm of the Signet originals, nonetheless have a beguiling elegance of their own. 

For the featured title of Signet 1755, Jerry Allison's incredibly intense cover art nicely captures the grittiness of the character in dramatically chiarscuro-esque fashion. But for sheer over-the-top visuals nothing can compare to the usually restrained Barye Phllips' ultra-exploitative take for Taste for Blood.

[1] Max Allan Collins, History of Mystery, p. 148.

[2] Liberia, to be exact.

Signet 689, 1948

Title : The Silver Tombstone Mystery
Author : Frank Gruber
Cover art : Robert Jonas [?]
[New York : Signet Books, 1949. No. 689. "First printing, October 1949." Anonymous cover art, though some sources credit Robert Jonas.]

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The uncredited cover art for Signet 689 dates from the company's pre-Avati period and features cartoonish tableaux of two tough guys scuffling, with screaming redhead nearby. Fun to compare the cover art of this version with the 1959 reprint [Signet 1677] by Bayre Phillips. I like the later version better.

Signet 1528, October 1958 (first printing)
[first published in hardcover, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1956]
Title : Nightwalkers
Author : Beverley Cross
Cover art : Robert Schulz

style ***
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A real sleeper, this one. A largely forgotten novelist, best known today as a screenwriter; plus a terrific cover by Robert Schulz, yet another underappreciated cover artist of the 1950s and 1960s. What makes this cover stand out is twofold. First is the highly prominent use of the color blue, a rarity in vintage cover art (which went more for garish yellows and reds). It's employed to good effect here, with the blue tones nicely depicting the rather desperate-looking, gun-wielding guy who is superimposed menacingly over the woman. Which brings us to the second thing worthy of note -- the figure of a woman, rendered so delicately and ambiguously. The peekaboo depiction makes it difficult to tell : is she wearing something? nothing? or is the figure a sculpture? mannequin? Whatever the case, a memorable cover. [p.s. : pretty spiffy lettering for the title].

Signet 1151, 1954

Title : Mafia
Author : Ed Reid
Cover art : James Avati
style ***
substance **
collectibility **

We generally associate the covers of James Avati with Erskine Caldwell-esque scenes of soft summer nights and languorous figures, albeit rendered with an undercurrent of tension and dissatisfaction. Here is a rare venture into the crime and hardboiled milieu for this usually restrained artist [1]. Mafia shows that Avati could boil hard with the best of them; the book is executed (no pun inteneded!) with his usual low key lighting but he sure gets the message across – the cover depicts a hit man putting a gun back in a shoulder holster as he looks down at a dead guy sprawled on a table. Here Avati’s preference for earthy tones suits the gritty subject matter perfectly.

The book’s presentation is such that it looks more like a novel than nonfiction, in fact I thought this was the case until I did a little research and discovered that the book indeed is nonfiction, a mid-century classic on organized crime in America, a collection of 16 stories of the Mafia and its members, to be precise.

[1] In the popular imagination old, or vintage, paperbacks – particularly those of crime fiction – are generally thought of in terms of “good girl art,” “lurid,” “sensationalist,” or “pulp fiction,” as portrayed in over-the-top glory by publishers like Avon, Popular Library and the like. Avati and Avati-influenced covers, with their Rembrandt-esque lighting and predilection for browns and grays, are really a different strain in the popular culture and can be thought of as a different school altogether.
Probably due to commercial demands, even Signet, the quintessential Avati publisher, occasionally had to come into the lurid fold, as is witnessed by the Signet versions of Mickey Spillane novels and, later, the James Bond novels. [Even Avati himself did a couple of Spillane covers!]