Thursday, March 29, 2018

The Double Shuffle by James Hadley Chase

She Was Worth One Million Dollars...Dead

 
Insured: For Sudden Death
Who persuaded the gorgeous burlesque queen to insure herself for on million dollars?
Who knew that there was one way to kill her that no one could ever foresee?
Who discovered an amazing family coincidence just in time to make a monstrously clever murder possible?

Oliver Brabbins Cover
These were the baffling questions that Steve Harmas' boss at the insurance company expect him to answer when the company found itself stuck with the strangest policy in the world. Steve and his never at a loss wife, Helen, track down the shrewdest killer.

Printing History
Written by René Lodge Brabazon Raymond (1906-1985)

Gannet Press
1953

Signet Books
#1113
June 1954

Monday, March 26, 2018

Country Girl by Joan Ellis

He was her only chance of escaping the boredom of small-town life and it was a chance she was determined to take!

Paul Rader Cover

The Impatient Age

She wanted to make him notice her, to see how ripe and restless she was, to sense her hunger for big city glamour and excitement.

She wanted to tell him what she  was willing to do in return for a ticket away from the nothingness of her dull existence.

She wanted to prove to him that a girl from the wrong side of the tracks knew more about pleasing a man than any spoiled and sophisticated college girl.

She wanted to show him i n a dozen different ways how grateful she would be if only he'd giver a chance to be something more than a country girl.

Printing History
Written by Julie Ellis

Tower Publications, Inc
Midwood Books
32-579
1965

Saturday, March 24, 2018

Backstairs by L.K. Scott

A Society Woman's Strange Craving

Cover by Jim Bently

Four People Caught In A Riptide Of Raw Emotions

Lydia-Behind her mask of genteel respectability, hidden desires smoldered and flamed.

Fredrick-He was torn between his sister's adoration and the servant girl's love.

Mollie- The maid. Her bewitching innocence and willing lips proved more dangerous than her mistress's corruption. 

Clyde-The road gang tough who held the key to Mollie's past, and discovered the meaning of Lydia's strange craving....

Cover by Jerome Podwil


Printing History
L.K. Scott

Almat Publishing Corp
Pyramid Books  
#103
1953

F850
1963



Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Nude Running by Clayton Matthews

She Was A Power Hungry Woman Who Used Love As A Weapon

Cover by Rafael M deSoto
Vengeance.........drove Steve Temple back to Reesville to fight Mona Alcott, the 'lady" D.A., who sent his father to prison eight year before.

Corruption.....was the keynote of Mona's powerful political machine, and she used every unladylike means to enforce her rule. 

Steve was determined to stop her in any way he could, in spite of the fact he was falling for Mona's naive young daughter, Laurie. Joining forces with reform candidate Luther Kelso, Steve started a campaign aimed at Mona's greatest source of revenue, girls, gambling, and gin. But Steve did not count on Mona's insatiable thirst for money and power. With her political ambitions threatened, Mona proved she wasn't a lady but a tiger, ready to offer her own daughter as a sacrificial lamb to protect her empire of sin.

Printing History
Written by Clayton Hartley Matthews (1918-2004)

Monarch Books
#331
February 1963

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

The Revolt Of Abbe Lee by James MacBrian

She Always Got Her Way
No Matter What The Cost

Cover by Tom Miller
Beware Of Abbe Lee!
She was Abbe Lee..luscious, nubile, amoral..a girl ready to revolt because she'd always been ignored by the domineering males in her family. Jacob, her father, and Michael, a brother. It was time for revenge.

Only one way presented itself. To wreck the family business. But what chance does an inexperienced girl, inexperienced in business, that is...have to outmaneuver men who know all the ins and outs of throat cutting? Any other woman night have given up the idea, but Abbe went into battle using the only weapon she had..her willing body.

From then on it was simply a matter of trading certain intimacies for cooperation from the professional destroyers who were suddenly eager to see that Abbe Lee gained her ends.

Printing History
Written by Richard Alan Curtis (1937- )

Monarch Books
#429
April 1964

Saturday, March 17, 2018

Summer Of Sin by Orrie Hitt

Clem Evans learned that Nan was good for him.
Emily was easy for him.
Gloria was a challenge to him
Because she needed more than a man!


Summertime ..when the lovin' is easy
And nowhere was it easier than Playland Beach. When Clem Evans arrived on the hot sands, cute beauties in bathing suits threw themselves at him. In Particular there was Nan Gordon, who had her own perverse ideas of what a man should be, and do. And there was Emily, a sultry brunette, so generous that her favors covered the waterfront. There was Gloria Darnell, too, the blonde temptress who was a wholly new experience for him. Gloria was hard to please and impossible to trust, and the delights she gave Clem were only means to a dangerous end. In her embraces Clem was helpless, caught in an erotic web from which there seemed no escape........Until the night he opened the bedroom door and saw for himself to what depraved depths her lusts had driven her! 

Printing History
Written by Orrie Edwin Hitt (1916-1975)

Universal Publishing And Distributing Corp
Beacon Books
B422
1961

Thursday, March 15, 2018

The Harem by Louis Charles Royer

"One Woman Isn't Enough"
the artist said


Shocked by stories of his artist brothers unconventional life  on the primitive isle of Port Cros, Michel Faulcroix abandoned his respectable banker's existence in Paris for the role of the reformer. Like an avenging prophet, he sought to destroy his brother's Mediterranean paradise where three exotic women and one man shared a strange pact of marriage. What Michel discovered, and how he was tempted by the Bohemian life.

Printing History
Written by Louis Charles Royer

Greenberg Publishing
January 1932

Dell Publishing Company
#567
January 1952

Pyramid Books
#114
1954

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Framed In Guilt by Day Keene

Keene's First Novel


Bob Stanton said he didn't know the girl. He said he didn't remember a wife and child in England. He said he hadn't married anyone ever. Then Eve appeared, Eve, blinded in the blitz, who had only her memories of the husband who never came back. Hi-Lo,  pounds of full blooded Sioux, had been through lots of scrapes with Stanton. But murder was one thing, and deserting a beautiful wife, blinded by war, was another. Stanton said he was framed! Well, at least one man agreed with him. Inspector Treech thought he was Framed in Guilt!

Printing History
Written by Gunnar Hjerstedt (1904-1969)

M.S. Mill Company
1949
 
Graphic Books 
1952 

Stark House Press
2016

Monday, March 12, 2018

Dressed To Kill by Milton Ozaki

Boy Meets Body

Cover by Walter Popp

The car was hot, and so was the blonde who drive it. A smart shamus like Rusty Forbes should have known better than to hole up with her in a tourist cabin. By the time that little picnic was over, he found himself custodian of a corpse and on the trail of enough loot to stock a department store. To bad for Rusty that some of Chicago's rougher citizens viewed the situation with alarm. It wasn't enough that the corpse brought the cops down on him. He also had to battle a horde of hoodlums. Fortunately, the hot blonde had a cool friend, even bigger and blonder. She gave Rusty, among other nice things, a tip on how to come out of the deal with a buck or two. Whereupon he quit being a fugitive for justice and dished it out instead, with the aid of his pet .38 equalizer!

Printing History
Written by Milton K Ozaki (1913-1989)

Graphic Books
#79
January 1954

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Strange Sisters by Fletcher Flora

She Dared Enter a Lesbian World
 

A beautiful young lesbian, Kathy, falls into relationships with women. However, feeling unnatural, she starts to experience bouts of depression that become so intense and protracted, that she tries to escape by letting a man she meets in a bar date her. When the man makes a sexual advance at her, Kathy is so overcome by repulsion that she attacks him violently.



Printing History
Written by Fletcher Flora (1914-1968)

Pyramid Books 
G474
1954

Lion Books
#215
July 1954

Monday, March 5, 2018

Backfire by Dan Marlowe

He Fell In Love With Another Cop's Wife
Then Had To Go Out And Find His Killer


Stakeout For A Killer
They were tough, ambitious cops, Marty Donovan and Tony Alfieri, a good precinct team. They agreed on most things except dames. Tony chased anything in skirts and Marty hated the look of  Lenore Alfieri's face every time her husband cheated. Hated it enough to fall in love with her himself. Then Lenore dreamed up the stakeout, the unauthorized stakeout to catch the murderous jewel who was baffling Headquarters. No one could tell that it would end with Tony bleeding his life away on the jewelry shop floor while his killer escaped. Marty was caught in a squeeze. HE had to build a cover of deceit and lies to protect Lenore and save his badge.

But the job seemed impossible. Somewhere in 
the city was a killer whose face he'd never seen. 
But the killer had seen his.....

Printing History
Written by Dan J Marlowe (1914-1986)

Berkley Medallion Books
G 575 
November 1961

Saturday, March 3, 2018

This Is For Real by James Hadley Chase

When a woman turns up in Paris with information to sell to the CIA, is it for real? It soon becomes clear that it is, and the CIA aren't the only ones to realize it


Robert Henry Carey was a spy who had defected to Russia and when the news leaked out that he had changed sides again an intensive and ruthless manhunt was on. From the glamour and nerve shattering noise of Paris the hunt switches to the violent and scorched wastelands of Senegal, West Africa.


There is Fat Rossland who doesn't recognize trouble when it sits on his lap:
Girland, a dissatisfied agent who is greedy for money and women:
Dualnay who fatally plays the ends against the middle:
Radnitz, the sinister tycoon with a past:
And finally Malik, the blonde Russian, with whom Girland tangles in a deadly battle of wits:

Printing History
Written by René Brabazon Raymond (1906-1985)

Robert Hale 
1965

The Thriller Book Club
1965