I can't resist these.

The Secret Life of E. Robert Pendleton - Michael Collins

I have to recommend this book. If you like crime with a twist you'll love it. I thought it was going to be somewhat like Richard Russo's Straight Man (the best story about university faculty ever) and the first few pages certainly are a bit like that, but it quickly gets down to secrets and lies and missing girls. Read it and like it. Read Straight Man too. You won't regret it!

Good girls

After that last post I checked out a few book covers that speak of love and the route to romantic fulfilment. The main point of difference with the crime novel covers is a fashion one. The romances show us well-dressed, mainly classy women or career girls (nurses, flight attendants, secretaries) who would shudder at the idea that putting on a slutty dress or satin lingerie could enhance their love lives, even in the privacy of their own homes. Now that I think about it, secretaries are often crossovers from chaste career girls to fighting for the bosses' heart with every wile available to them.  
Anyway, what if someone aimed a gun at that classy girl and forced her to wear a sheer black nylon baby-doll nightgown and matching panties, made her put on that famous crimson lipstick and made her mix and drink a martini made with tequila?
They say we tend to shy away from doing things we know we shouldn't and I think that's almost always true but the idea of nudging someone over an invisible line appeals to me as a writer of crime novels. The dependence which might follow a successful transformation enhances the plot but the person enforcing the makeover has to say exactly the right words to reinforce the emotions involved. Beware, the girl could become a masked avenger or something, out to punish the man who made her wear crimson lipstick instead of her normal pink. How traumatic is that?

The covers:-

 

 

Cover Art

I checked about 180 cover illustrations and found that every one involved a girl, mostly an underdressed girl, a few males as props only, and wondered why. The answer was obvious really. These were designed to attract men and I seem to remember it worked. Personally, I always enjoyed a good Carter Brown, whose early covers were photographs of women who lacked the sophistication of the later drawn models. Come-hither looks were the standard the artists worked to but there are a lot of girls fainting an caught by a strong silent type. I liked the covers where the girl was clearly the protagonist in the story, holding a gun and often smoking at the same time, clearly multitasking. Here are some more.

Re the girl sitting on the piano - a girl sat on my drums one time. She fell off them, and that's how it should be. Don't touch a person's musical instrument, ever.

Cover art

I like those old book covers, whether pulp, cheap romance, thriller or detective novels. The skill of the artist's was terrific and they certainly did their job of attracting attention. Here are a couple of covers I've enjoyed.