Pulp Covers

Occasionally, when I'm browsing for some neato vintage finds, I'll come across a pulp paperback novel with a great cover. Below you'll find a few worth noting. For an added bonus, these novels have some great synopses written up, either on the back cover or right when you open the front cover:


The Girl in 304, by Harold R. Daniels. Cover art by Walter Brooks. 1956.

On the back cover:

Standing in front of her mirror in Room 304, slipping on her yellow dress for the Sunday evening's work, Lucy Carter wearily hoped the bright color would be the bait she needed for a successful night.

Sometimes, though, it could hook the worst sort of fish...like Lt. Cox, whom she'd refused to pay off....

Still, these were the risks of her trade. But when Sheriff Ed Masters found her the next day in the weeds of the Georgia swamland, the risks were over for Lucy Carter...and just beginning for the man who had ended them.


The Man Who Got Even With God, by Reverend M. Raymond, O.C.S.O. (Originally written in 1941, this printing: 1963.) No credit for cover art.

On the back cover:

"I'll get even. I always do," said John Green Hanning, the violent-tempered schoolboy. He was stating the principle that would govern his life. His teachers knew him as the boy with a chip on his shoulder. As a young man he "got even" with his father in a violent, evil way. He became a cowboy who refused to become friends with anyone. He was an outsider, all the way.

But there came a change–a complete transformation of character. The man who couldn't get along with anybody became a Trappist lay brother and got along with everybody.

Brother Joachim, who was John Hanning, sounds like a character out of fiction, yet his story is as real as the world he left and the world he entered. Father Raymond, a Trappist monk at the same monastery, tells the story of this ex-cowboy–a life as fascinating, as moving, as any fiction.

(The cover art wraps around to the back. I might have to scan the whole thing and upload it later.)


In a Deadly Vein, by Brett Halliday. Cover art by Bob McGinnis. (Originally titled "Murder Wears a Mummer's Mask", written in 1943, this printing: 1962.)

From the inside cover:

I'm on vacation when I meet this gorgeous trick with a head of golden hair that's worth half of Fort Knox. Her old man has found a mine worth the other half. Putting them together, she stacks up as a lucky girl.

Then she disappears. With her looks, and her old man's loot, I figure she's a diamond-studded candidate for the morgue.

That makes her my dish. After all, murder and blondes are my business.

Man, I totally want to read this now.


More about old paperbacks:

Pop Sensation: blog.
Pulp Fiction: Flickr group.
Vintage Paperbacks: site with tons of images.