Retro

A Pocketful of Death

She Told The Truth Only Once, And It Killed Her…

via

Mesmer’s Eyes

The origin of the world’s greatest psychic detective

Another retro creation from Aly Fell

Space Slaves of Venus

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The TRUE life scientific adventures of Nancy Goodaim: Space Ranger

Edit: Found where this image originally came from; a contest at ConceptArt.org to create the character of Nancy Goodaim, Space Heroine and Flying Ace. Set in 2010 as seen from 1950. Nancy Goodaim saves Danny Seeker, the perky reporter from the Galaxy Daily, and the universe, from the clutches of Tal Largethought, the evil scientist and his nasty sidekick Kraw the Cruel in weekly episodal installments. Added the original artwork, and a progressive .GIF that shows the creation of the image.

Note the differences between the image he entered in the contest and the final cover image. He added a lot of details.

Quarry’s Ex

You Never Forget Your First

HOMICIDE BEGINS AT HOME Even the enigmatic hit man called Quarry had to start somewhere. And for him that was the day he returned stateside from Nam to find his young wife cheating. He’d killed plenty overseas, so killing her lover was no big deal. And when he was recruited to use his skills as a contract killer, that transition was easy, too. He survived in this jungle as he had in that other one—by expecting trouble. What he didn’t expect was ever running into her again…

via Hard Case Crime

Getting Off

A Novel of Sex & Violence

So this girl walks into a bar… …and when she walks out there’s a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better.
On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She’s been doing this for a while, and she’s good at it. And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her.
She starts writing down names. And now she’s a girl with a mission. Picking up their trails. Hunting them down. Crossing them off her list…

via Hard Case Crime

Murder Is My Business [Hard Case reprint]

Time hadn’t tamed her…and neither could he!

Ten years ago, private eye Mike Shayne did a job for one of the richest men in El Paso, digging up dirt on a boy courting the tycoon’s daughter. Now the daughter’s back, all grown up and dangerous. And so’s Shayne—but this time it’s to investigate murder…

via Hard Case Crime

Nobody’s Angel

Take A Cab Ride Into The Heart Of Murder

Eddie Miles is one of a dying breed: a Windy City hack who knows every street and back alley of his beloved city and takes its recent descent into violence personally. But what can one driver do about a killer targeting streetwalkers or another terrorizing cabbies? Precious little—until the night he witnesses one of them in action…

via Hard Case Crime Painting via oldcarguy41

Memory

The Crime Was Over In A Minute— The Consquences Lasted A Lifetime

Hospitalized after a liaison with another man’s wife ends in violence, Paul Cole has just one goal: to rebuild his shattered life. But with his memory damaged, the police hounding him, and no way even to get home, Paul’s facing steep odds—and a bleak fate if he fails…

via Hard Case Crime Painting via Glen Orbik

The Valley of Fear

They all answered to…the BODYMASTER!

Years ago, a P.I. out of Chicago brought justice to a dirty town. Now he’s going to pay.

A sawed-off shotgun blast to the face leaves one man dead–and reveals a secret that has pursued another across an ocean and set the world’s most ruthless criminal on his trail. The man needs the help of a great detective…but could even Sherlock Holmes save him now?

via Hard Case Crime with original artwork by Glen Orbik

The Corpse Wore Pasties

Sometimes There’s No Difference Between The Naked And The Dead

WHO BUMPED OFF THE BUMP-AND-GRINDER? Usually, when you call a burlesque act a “show stopper,” you don’t mean it quite so literally. But this time, that’s just what happened: The show stopped dead, and so did the girl. And as I looked at her nearly naked and completely lifeless body and the bottle of poison in her hand with my fingerprints all over it, I thought to myself: Porkpie, you’re in for it this time…

via Hard Case Crime

Quarry In The Middle

When two rival casino owners covet the same territory, guess who puts himself in the crossfire…

via Hard Case Crime. The history of this cover painting, as well as some preleminary sketches, is on the author’s blog.

Honey In His Mouth

They Shared The Same Face—But Could They Share The Same Woman?

What would you do if you were a dead ringer for a dictator? If you were small-time grifter Walter Harsh, recovering in a hospital with a broken arm, you’d listen to a proposition that could net you a cool $50,000 for impersonating the South American strongman you resemble. You’d pay attention when the dictator’s sultry mistress started putting the moves on you. And in the dead of night, when no one was watching, you might just hatch a plot to get it all for yourself: the money, the girl, and the stash of stolen loot she’s conspiring to spirit out of the country…

via Hard Case Crime. Painting via Munchkin Press

Losers Live Longer

Death Prowls The Streets Between C & D

The death of legendary private eye George Rowell looked like an accident—but searching for the truth behind it will put down-and-out East Village detective Payton Sherwood on the corpse-littered trail of a runaway investment scam artist, a drug-addicted reality TV star—and the bewitching beauty whose appearance set it all in motion…

With preliminary sketches!

via Hard Case Crime, back cover inset via via

Stop This Man!

He Carried Death Everywhere He Went

SOME MEN AND SOME MERCHANDISE ARE JUST TOO HOT TO HANDLE All Tony Catell knew when he broke into the university science lab was that they had a gold ingot on the premises for some sort of experiment. So he stole it. What he didn’t know was that the experiment involved nuclear power—and that the gold was dangerously radioactive. Now the cops and the FBI are on Tony’s trail, Tony’s underworld contacts don’t want anything to do with him, and the loot he’s lugging around is leaving a swath of radiation sickness and death in his path. And since he’s just come from his third stint in prison, if they catch him, he’s not going back to jail—he’s going to the electric chair…

via Hard Case Crime

Passport To Peril

On the run —- behind the Iron Curtain!

From the corridors and compartments of the Orient Express to the shadowy, ruined streets of Budapest—which he saw firsthand as a foreign correspondent during World War II—Parker takes you on a nightmare tour of a land where life is cheap, old hatreds run strong, and a couple of Americans can find themselves in more danger than they ever imagined. With all the immediacy of the wartime dispatches Parker filed from Turkey, Danzig, Warsaw, and Bucharest and all the authority of a man who himself spent three years crossing borders without a passport and narrowly avoiding arrest by the Gestapo, PASSPORT TO PERIL paints a heart-stopping picture of desperate men in a desperate time.

via Hard Case Crime