Sat 27 Feb 2010
A Review by Dan Stumpf: CURT SIODMAK – Whomsoever I Shall Kiss.
Posted by Steve under Covers , Reviews[6] Comments
CURT SIODMAK – Whomsoever I Shall Kiss. Crown Publishers, hardcover, 1952. Paperback reprint: Dell 756, 1954.
Quite without meaning to, I read two novels of Romantic Suspense last year. Curt Siodmak’s Whomsoever I Shall Kiss was the first, and it starts off well, with Royal Ludovici, a former small-time grifter and guy-with-a-funny-name, who lives by making himself useful to the very rich.
In Italy to find proof of an heiress’s death (and thereby speed an inheritance to a distant relation), Royal finds the heiress very much alive and maybe suffering from amnesia … or maybe not.
Well, Royal is suave, good-looking and unattached, the heiress is lovely, lonely and broken-hearted, so the only question for Royal is whether to get her to marry him, then tell her she’s wealthy, or to make sure that reports of her death weren’t so far wrong after all.
It’s a nice set-up for a story, and I expected to see something interesting spun out of it by a hack with Siodmak’s credentials, but he doesn’t do much with it; in fact, he does practically nothing at all. Pages go by filled with sight-seeing, passionate embraces, tearful farewells, torrid embraces and even a bit from The Wolfman, all to very little effect. By the time Siodmak tacked an unsatisfactory ending on, I wasn’t even interested enough to be disappointed.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
That paperback cover looks a little like it was inspired by The Wolfman, lol. I love those lurid old “girl” in peril paperback covers.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
This one sounds as if Siodmak intended it originally as a screenplay and turned it into a novel. Most of his books seem to have either been written with movies in mind or novelizations of his screenplays, though in a few cases (FPI) I’m not certain exactly which came first.
Nice cover though.
This one sounds as if it might have made a good film from his noir director brother Robert, though their rivalry was such that Robert never sent much work Curt’s way, his backhanded compliments to his writer brother usually doing more harm than good.
While this is a good ten years before my paperback buying days I certainly collected (and still do) Dell paperbacks when I started. Among the cover artists that did a good deal of work with them James Bama, Robert McGinnis, Vic Kallin, Sol Lesser, Bob Abbett, Robert Stanley, and many more.
February 27th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
I’ve always stood up for Curt Sidomak: we Curt’s must stand together!
February 27th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
According to a seller on ABE, the cover art was done by Frank Cazzorelli. He also did the cover for THE LADY IS AFRAID by George Harmon Coxe (Dell 734).
Here it is, below:
As you see, a very similar style and theme, but a quick search for the author’s name only brought up these two, plus one more:
February 27th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
One big advantage of collecting Dell’s for their cover art is that they often credited the artist on the back cover in later years. It’s easier than trying to spot styles or read the often indecipherable signatures.
February 19th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Very thorough review and the publication dates were a nice addition since this book itself does not actually list them. And I can confirm that the cover art was in fact done by Frank Cazzorelli. He did excellent work!