Pan’s People: The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner (1960)

 

Finishing off our recent celebration of Pan’s late ‘50s / early ‘60s cover artwork, here’s another absolute banger from Sam ‘Peff’ Peffer.

I don’t have much else to say, as my interest in the work of Erle Stanley Gardner extends precisely as far as the cool cover design which sometimes graces his books [see previous examples: 1, 2, 3], so instead let’s just say: wow, look at that dissolving big city skyline and the faceless guy in the shadows… no doubt knocked out under a tight deadline in a matter of minutes, this is pulp craftsmanship at its finest.

Pan’s People: The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey (1958)

From looking at Glenn Steward’s striking cover artwork for Josephine Tey’s ‘The Man in the Queue’, I got the feeling it might be one of those mid-20th century explorations of frenzied, urban existentialism and modern man’s alienation from his surroundings and so forth…. but the rather more straight-forward back cover copy soon disavowed me of that idea.

If I haven’t said so previously by the way, huge props to Pan for being one of the only mid-century paperbacks imprints in the world to actually let cover artists clearly sign their work. It makes life so much easier all these years later.

Pan’s People: Two Edgars (1956/57)

Many of the cover illustrations used for Pan’s innumerable Edgar Wallace paperbacks are a bit dull, but these two are both absolutely terrific I think, highlighting the same lurid / fantastical aspect of Wallace’s work which was exploited so wonderfully by the German Krimi productions of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

This edition of ‘The India Rubber Men’ was published 1956 with art by Bruce C. Windo, whilst ‘The Ringer’ is 1957 (fifth printing), signed “Silk” (an artist whose full name and identity appears to be unknown, but as ever, please do drop me a line if you have any further info).

‘The Ringer’, of course, was the basis for Alfred Vohrer’s highly entertaining ‘Der Hexer’ (1964), which I reviewed here back in 2019.

Pan’s People: Two Wests (both 1958)

We continue our look at some recently acquired Pans with these two splendidly atmospheric covers by Pat Owen, both illustrating works by the insanely prolific John Creasey, whose 40+ Inspector West novels comprise a mere single figure fraction of his literary output.

Pan’s People: Moment of Danger by Donald MacKenzie (1959)

After all the excitement of October, I’m going to try to keep this blog afloat by turning to some scans of recent additions to my paperback collection - which is something I’ve not got around to for a while, so there’s plenty of stuff to work through; not least, plenty of newly acquired Pans.

As I’ve probably remarked before in these pages, Pan’s ‘50s-‘60s crime paperbacks remain such a ubiquitous and cheap presence on the second hand market here in the UK that it often feels as if I pick up a new one every time I leave the house. But, their artwork is so consistently beautiful that each one I pick up still feels like both a bargain and a treasured addition to my shelves… and this characteristically evocative number from our old friend Sam ‘Peff’ Peffer is a case in point.

As the back cover here makes abundantly clear, ‘Moment of Danger’ was adapted for the screen in 1959. Shot in Jess Franco’s future stomping ground of Malaga in Andalucía, the film was directed by Hungarian-born Hollywood exile Laslo Benedek, best known for ‘The Wild One’ (1953) and ‘Death of a Salesman’ (1951). 

Meanwhile, as Pan’s ever-busy copy editors also manage to inform us via the yellow-backed paragraph on the bottom right, author Donald MacKenzie also sounds like an interesting cat - but apparently not sufficiently so as to merit his own Wikipedia page, whilst google searches are complicated by the existence of multiple authors and academics of the same name.

From what I can gather beyond the fascinating tit-bits concerning MacKenzie’s history of incarceration provided here, he was born in 1908, and also penned the source novel for the Seth Holt-directed 1958 thriller ‘Nowhere to Go’, in addition to a series of sixteen ‘John Raven Mysteries’, published between 1976 and 1994 (the year of his death), amongst other things.

A capsule biography extracted from the website of publishing conglomerate Hachette UK (who currently offer MacKenzie’s entire catalogue for sale as e-books) repeats the quotes used by Pan on the back cover to ‘Moment of Danger’, but adds various other info, as follows:

Donald MacKenzie (1908-1994) was born in Ontario, Canada, and educated in England, Canada and Switzerland. For twenty-five years MacKenzie lived by crime in many countries. ‘I went to jail,’ he wrote, ‘if not with depressing regularity, too often for my liking.’ His last sentences were five years in the United States and three years in England, running consecutively. He began writing and selling stories when in American jail. ‘I try to do exactly as I like as often as possible and I don’t think I’m either psychopathic, a wayward boy, a problem of our time, a charming rogue. Or ever was.’ He had a wife, Estrela, and a daughter, and they divided their time between England, Portugal, Spain and Austria.

So there ya go.

Pan’s People: Gideon’s Month by J.J. Marric (1960)

I’m afraid I’ll be heading off on holiday for a while through May and June (no prizes for guessing where). As such, I’ll be leaving you with a few pre-scheduled posts, offering up some recent additions to the various bits of my paperback collection I’ve been featuring here over the past few years. And, it seems weirdly appropriate that we should kick things off with a book seemingly set in London during a May heat-wave.

Like many of the British crime books published by Pan (see: The Little White God), there’s a heavy ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ feel to this one, although the sight of a lady in her night-gown being threatened by a knife-wielding ne’erdowell at least hints at the more lurid content that crime stories and thrillers were routinely dishing out by the dawn of the 1960s. Lovely artwork as always from BITR hero Sam ‘Peff’ Peffer.

J.J. Marric was of course a pseudonym for the impossibly prolific John Creasey – we covered another entry in his long-running Gideon series here a few years back.

Pan’s People: The Saint Sees it Through by Leslie Charteris (1962)

…and finally, our whistle-stop tour of Pan’s dawn-of-the-‘60s crime list brings us to ‘mad’ Manhattan in the company of ol’ Simon Templar.

As far as perennial series characters go, I must confess I’ve never really cared for The Saint. I mean, he’s just such a smug bastard, isn't he? I mean, I know that’s kind of the point of the character, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to take an interest in his shenanigans. In fairness, perhaps Roger Moore is more to blame for my distaste than Leslie Charteris, but nonetheless.

I will however make an exception for the sake of the artwork for this particular edition, which is superb - so busy, so much colour... yet it works brilliantly.

Sadly however, I’m once again not coming up with much more online than “cover artist: unknown”.

Anyway, feast your eyes chums, because we’ll be back to movie reviews for a while from next week, likely as not.

Pan’s People: The Little White God by Edwin Brock (1965)

After Paris and L.A., we move to the more familiar environs of South London, circa 1965.

I love the Times quote on the front. (For the uninitiated – Z Cars.)

Edwin Brock (1927-1997) was primarily known as a poet, and this seems to have been his only novel. Once again, it looks as if it might well be worth a read. And, yet again, beautiful cover art too – a quintessential example of 50s/60s Brit-crime imagery that, frustratingly, I can’t find an artist credit for online. Good ol’ Pan.

Pan’s People: Experience With Evil by John Ross Macdonald (1958)

Over the past year or so, I’ve really been getting into the work of Ross Macdonald (he soon dropped the ‘John’, for whatever reason).

Coming on as if Raymond Chandler had knocked the ‘frustrated-literary-novelist’ bit on the head and settled into a routine of knocking out two hard-boiled thrillers per year, the Macdonald books I’ve read thus far have all been absolutely first rate, mixing up the requisite laconic humour and restless plotting with consistently sublime prose and an acute sensitivity for the tragic quirks of human nature, all baked in an atmosphere of creeping malaise and cynicism that is pure mid-century California noir.

If you’re into crime fiction and yet to discover Macdonald, doing so is an experience I can highly recommend.

‘Experience With Evil’ originally appeared in 1953 under the delightful title ‘Meet Me At The Morgue’, and though it doesn’t feature Macdonald’s signature character Lew Archer, I’m nonetheless confident that Pan’s blurb-ists weren't lying when they deemed it “a kidnap mystery for the connoisseur”.

The cover – by our old pal Sam “Peff” Peffer – is of an equally fine calibre (no firearms pun intended), and in fact, finding this book a few months back represented a rare quadruple win for my paperback collection: a great writer, great art, great condition, and a great price (£2). Satisfying!

Pan’s People: The Law of The Streets by Auguste Le Breton (1959)

Staying in France, this one is also high on the ‘to read’ pile, needless to say.

I haven’t been able to pin down an art credit for this cover, but there’s a sketchy/blurry/over-busy quality to it I quite like; it’s just a touch crazier than the usual ‘classy’ Pan house style. Postcards at the usual address if you’ve got a name we can attach to it.

Pan’s People: Villainy Unlimited by Derick Goodman (195?)

N.B. – I’m unsure whether or not this Pan edition actually dates from 1957 – only the copyright / first publication date is given. Given the Pan catalogue number (G327) I’m guessing 1959/60-ish.

Since I last shared some Pan paperback covers here in 2016, I’ve been fortunate enough to add some really great new Pans to my collection, particularly with regard to the imprint’s always interesting crime list. So, the next few weeks seems as good a time as any to share them with you. Expect a new post every few days.

As I’ve observed in the past, these books remain cheap and easy to find, without too much of a cult cache or a collector’s market sniffing around them, but nonetheless they are frequently things of beauty – none more so than this wonderfully atmospheric cover by Dave Tayler. (Source.)

The silky light and shade here reminds me of a golden age Hollywood movie poster more than anything, and, needless to say, the book itself sounds like a fascinating read too – I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into it at some point (perhaps during a future trip to Paris, fingers crossed).

Pan-demonium.

 Following this 2014 post on the work of paperback cover artist Sam “Peff” Peffer, I’ve become quite interested in expanding my collection (and appreciation) of Pan paperbacks.

With their preference for colourful oil paintings bluntly depicting events within the book, Pan’s old-fashioned approach to cover illustration was the polar opposite of the modernist, design-based aesthetic of their rivals at Penguin, seemingly reflecting the fact that they tended to publish a far higher quantity of war stories, British Empire yarns and other such ‘square’ subjects, with just the occasional revered author or hot-headed literary turk thrown in for good measure.

Even in terms of the latter (with writers such as Alan Sillitoe), Pan seemed always to stay pretty ‘down to earth’ in comparison to their competitors. It’s certainly difficult to imagine anything terribly experimental finding a home between their covers during the ‘50s and ‘60s, and they rarely indulged in much science fiction. (Trying to imagine what the bloody hell their stable of cover artists might have made of a William Burroughs or Philip K. Dick book could definitely lead you to a few sleepless nights.)

Admittedly, they did move with the times and get a bit ‘psychedelic’ toward the end of the ‘60s with stuff like the Adam Diment books, but it always feels like a bit of a grudging acceptance of modernity, and, as a result, Pan’s output remains far less collectable and less rarely celebrated than that of Penguin, even though their design and illustrations are often very good, with a great deal of charm.

The bold, brightly coloured, no-nonsense paintings (kind of like the best of American pulp paperback arworkt, but with any hint of sex or sleaze surgically removed), the bold, upper-case block lettering, black spines and that distinctive yellow logo…. since I rearranged my book shelves last year and put all the Pans in one place, they really stand out, giving me an itch to acquire more. As such, some of my more recent finds are shared below.

(1960, cover art by Glenn Stewert)

A grand old man of BBC radio productions, Charles Chilton (1917-2013) wrote ‘Journey Into Space’ as a series of radio dramas between 1953-58, subsequently adapting them into a trilogy of novels, published in Pan between ’58 and ’62. See the above wiki links for as much information as you could possibly wish to know on these subjects.

Though he has a nice clear signature, Google turns up nothing on cover artist Glenn Stewert.

(1968, cover designer unknown)

The better looking entries in the Horror Stories series are probably about as close to ‘iconic’ cool as Pan paperbacks get, and this is definitely one of my favourites. As is often the case with Pan - great fonts.

(1952, cover artist unknown)

I don’t know anything about this one, and can’t read the artist’s signature, but it’s quite lovely isn’t it? Quite abstract by Pan standards.

(1957, cover by Rex Archer)

With no slight intended to ‘Rex’, you’d think they’d have gone with something a bit more.. classy for Hemingway, but what the hey, I like it. Kind of reminds me of an old Indian movie poster or something. As someone appears to written above the title of my much abused copy: ‘potent’.

(1962, cover by ‘Michel’?)

Because you can’t get to the end of a cover art gallery without a bit of Erle Stanley. This isn’t one of the more lively crime covers in my collection, but for connoisseurs might like to note that the spine is killer - really jumps off the shelf.

And finally, scribbled on back inside cover of ‘The Case of the Runaway Corpse’, we find one of those curious oddities that occasionally turn up to hint at a book’s past life – in this case, rough notes for a letter decrying the excessive expense and loudness of a new church organ, apparently.

The Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Herbert Van Thal (1959 / 12th printing, 1965)

  

So, check out what I recently found skulking on the goodwill shelf in a café in Laugharne, South-West Wales. A £2 donation to the local cat welfare charity (appropriately enough), and it was mine.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time lurking in British second hand bookshops or libraries will no doubt be familiar with Pan’s seemingly never-ending series of horror story collections, and to be honest I’ve rarely paid them much attention, but I couldn’t resist the fantastic design and artwork of this first volume (uncredited, of course)... and the vague knowledge that some of these are quite collectible didn’t hurt either.

Pretty interesting line-up too, with the authors presented, strangely yet pleasingly, in alphabetical order. An early Nigel Kneale story, more slumming literary colossi than I can bother listing, and, most interestingly from my POV, ‘The Horror in the Museum’ - a story now widely recognised as being more or less entirely the work of H.P. Lovecraft, but presented here under the name of its original credited author, Hazel Heald, and presumably licensed directly from publishers of ‘Weird Tales’ without the involvement of Lovecraft’s executors.

(Well, it’s interesting to me, at least.)

Pan People.

Amid all those artful Penguins, we haven’t had many examples of the more ‘old school’ approach to paperback crime covers on here for a while, so, here’s a cheery trio of UK Pan editions I just picked off the top of the book-heap, all featuring artwork from the ubiquitous Sam “Peff” Peffer - definitely one of the most consistent and classy British pulp cover artists I’m aware of.

‘Dames Don’t Care’ was actually a birthday present a few years back from some friends I’ve sadly lost touch with since (sorry about that guys, if you’re reading). I skim-read it at the time and found it a hell of a lot of fun as I recall – an example of Peter Cheyney pushing the ultra-hard boiled, cod-American thug vernacular style of his Lemmy Caution books to the point of absolute oblivion. Needless to say, none of the raging, desperate white trash characters featured in the book look anything like the more well-appointed couple seen on the front of this edition, leading me to suspect that the illustration was either just a generic, one-size-fits-all crime cover, or else a spare painting left over from some other assignment, slapped on here by a cost-conscious editor on a deadline.

Conversely, the Pan edition of ‘Lady in the Morgue’ must count as a bit of a minor brit-pulp classic, not only for the macabre and unusual cover painting, but for the frenzied back cover blurb (“..cuts grim mortuary capers over a volcano of violence..”), and even the press quotes are good too. Maybe not a paperback that’ll blow your mind on first glance, but in terms of the wonderful and peculiar stuff that keeps me coming back to these books, it’s got the complete package for sure.

Not much to say about about ‘The Endless Colonnade’, except 1. Hitchcocksploitation!, and 2. Ouch, quite a burn on John Buchan from the Evening News.

A nice interview with ‘Peff’ himself, alongside fellow cover artist Pat Owen, can be found here. Plenty of interesting recollections about life in the cover art business, but the thing that really knocked me out was the revelation that, for a lot of these covers, the publisher actually paid for reference photographs to be taken in advance, arranged on the artist’s instructions complete with models and costumes, and THEN paid the artist to paint the cover based on the photos! Truly, the mind boggles.

Oh, and by the way, apologies again for the continuing lapse in regular content on this blog. Just to keep you updated, I’m slowly getting back to some blog writing done after an unavoidable lay off, and, though I still have a pretty daunting workload to get through in other areas of life, I hope to be back in business with some fresh movie reviews by about this time next week, fingers crossed. Thanks again for your patience.

‘Lady in The Morgue’ dates from 1959 (originally published 1937), ‘Dames Don’t Care’ is 1960 (originally published 1937), and ‘The Endless Colonnade’ is 1959 (published for the first time).