Sunday, August 25, 2013

Crime Fiction Alphabet 2013: The Letter U

The Crime Fiction Alphabet keeps rolling along in the home stretch. We are currently in week 21 with the letter U. Kerrie over at her blog Mysteries in Paradise is kind enough to host this community meme. The rules a quite simple. By Friday of each week participants write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week. The post must be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction. This time around I will be featuring a Carter Brown title for each letter of the alphabet.

Carter Brown: U is for The Unorthodox Corpse
 
Grant Roberts Cover
Police Lieutenant Al Wheeler and a school of sexy coeds play 
hide and seek with a corpse who just won't stay dead


The corpse made his social debut in the finishing schools gym astride a horse. A knife protruded from his back. Then he departs only to reappear later stretched out flat in a padded leather box. When Police Lieutenant Al Wheeler is assigned to cover a ceremony at a local stylist girls school, he walks into the strangest caper of his offbeat career. First a hired magician turns into a corpse before he even can whisk a hat out of a rabbit and then a blonde coed is murdered in front of sixty witnesses. 

Printing History
Written by Alan G Yates (1923-1985)

Horwitz Publications, Inc
Numbered Series #54 December 1957
International Edition Series #11 December 1961
International Edition Series #11 (Reprint) March 1965

New American Library
Signet Books
S1950 July 1961
P4197 1970

Other Covers
Australia
Horwitz Publications, Inc
1957, 1965


Russia
n/d, 2001


Netherlands
Middernacht 
1962
 
Japan
Hayakawa Pocket Mystery Series  
1962

France
Gallimard
 1957, 1970, 1973

Germany
Ullstein Bucher  
1976

Finland
Valpar-Mainos
1967

Sweden
Wennerberg
1974

United States
New American Library
1970
Robert McGinnis Cover
   Note
This title was published in a slightly different form on  December 22, 2010.

Trivia
The first Russian title looks like Leslie Nielson (1926-2010) on the cover.

4 comments:

  1. Scott - I like the academic flavour of this one. And for some reason that I'd have trouble really putting into words, I like the Netherlands cover the best.

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  2. This time my favorite cover is the 2nd one with the group of people standing over the body. Nice title and the plot sounds interesting. (And you are right about that cover looking like Leslie Nielson.)

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  3. Those covers certainly grab a reader's attention.

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