No Man Could Tame Them
Inside the secret desires of nature’s most mysterious creature… woman
My favorite part? The “original title”. GENIUS!
Tag: Retro
The Princess in Cell Block AA-23
Love Me to Death
Their Secret Love Was A Kiss That Turned Into A Scar.
I especially love the Author of “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB” blurb.
My Funny Valentine
The artwork is pure comics, but he really nailed the Mike Shayne-style paperback framing device.
via TonyFleecs
Armed And Gorgeous
He packed the heat, she had the looks — and they were on the run from a psycho!
Sin City Spy
The Grifter’s Girl
Hard Case Crime
![21452292-1[1]](https://pulpcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/21452292-11.jpg)
Hard Case Crime is dedicated to reviving the vigor and excitement, the suspense and thrills—the sheer entertainment—of the golden age of paperback crime novels, both by bringing back into print the best work of the pulp era and by introducing readers to new work by some of today’s most powerful writers and artists. Determined detectives and dangerous women… fortune hunters and vengeance seekers… ingenious criminals and men on the run… Hard Case Crime novels offer everything you want from a great story, all in handsome and affordable editions.
Hard Case publishes great books with amazing covers. I have featured a few of their titles here before, but I was not having much luck finding decent scans of most of their covers. So, I wrote to the editor, Charles Ardai, and asked for the original cover images. And he actually said yes! Charles is a man who clearly appreciates pulp cover art, as you can see in this extensive interview he did with Killer Covers, and he has put together an peerless collection of covers from some of the best artists working today.
So, I am proud to present what might be a PulpCovers.com exclusive: the complete collection of Hard Case Crime covers in their original, digital, non-scanned glory. Enjoy!
The Unknown Five
The Twenty-Year Death (Hardback)
She was beautiful. He was damned.
1931—The body found in the gutter in France led the police inspector to the dead man’s beautiful daughter—and to her hot-tempered American husband.
1941—A hardboiled private eye hired to keep a movie studio’s leading lady happy uncovers the truth behind the brutal slaying of a Hollywood starlet.
1951—A desperate man pursuing his last chance at redemption finds himself with blood on his hands and the police on his trail…
Three complete novels that, taken together, tell a single epic story, about an author whose life is shattered when violence and tragedy consume the people closest to him.
Rose McGowan posed for the cover painting
via Hard Case Crime
False Negitive
There’s no glamour in the grave.
Newspaperman Adam Jordan’s byline ran above two big articles in the early editions. One of them got him fired. The other landed him a job writing true crime pieces for Real Detective magazine. The story he’s working on now—a beauty contestant found strangled on an Atlantic City beach—is one that boardwalk power brokers would rather see covered up then covered. And if Adam keeps digging, he may find that he’s digging his own grave…
via Hard Case Crime
69 Barrow Street (Hard Case Crime)
At The Intersection Of Sin And Madness…
Greenwich Village: home to every form of depravity and perversion known to man…or woman.
It’s on the streets of the Village that Ralph met Stella—but what started as a love affair between a painter and his seductive muse has become torment as he’s found himself drawn into her world of cruel pleasures. It’s a tinderbox of hatred and desire—and when beautiful Susan Rivers moves into their apartment building, tempting Ralph and Stella both, it’s set to ignite.
From dim waterfront bars to the movie houses of Times Square, from nights in rat-trap hotel rooms to drug-fueled orgies in ground-floor apartments, no one can bring 1960s New York to life like Edgar Award winner Lawrence Block. And in this early tale of psychological suspense—unavailable for fifty years and never before published under his real name—readers will discover a harrowing portrait of men and women pushed to their limits and beyond. It’s a double shot of darkness as only Lawrence Block can deliver it.
Published as part of a “Double Novel” with another Lawrence Block story, Strange Embrace.
The original Paul Rader cover is here.
via Hard Case Crime
Strange Embrace
Life On The Stage — And Death Behind The Scenes
They say the show must go on—but in the case of Broadway’s next sensation, A Touch of Squalor, someone’s out to make sure the show never opens. And when threats don’t do the trick, a straight razor to the throat just might.
It’s a case for the NYPD…but with a mysterious killer targeting his cast, producer Johnny Lane can’t just wait in the wings. There’s a Playbill full of suspects, giving Johnny the casting challenge of his career: who to put in the role of murderer, when the wrong call could bring down the curtain on his show—or his life!
Published as part of a “Double Novel” with another Lawrence Block story, 69 Barrow Street.
via Hard Case Crime Painting via Heritage Auctions
Blood On The Mink
The Money Was Counterfeit — But The Danger Was Real!
Set A Fake To Catch A Fake
Somewhere in Philadelphia, a master engraver is turning out brilliant forgeries of U.S. currency plates for organized crime. To bring the operation down from the inside, the government sends an agent undercover posing as a West Coast crime lord’s right-hand man. It’s a dangerous game of impersonation—one that could prove fatal when the agent’s secret begins to unravel…
via Hard Case Crime
The Comedy Is Finished
Comedy is easy. Dying is hard
But Seriously, Folks
The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People’s Revolutionary Army, who’ve decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life…
via Hard Case Crime