Mon 1 Mar 2010
ANNOUNCING: An IPL Checklist, by Victor A. Berch.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Collecting , Covers , Publishers[4] Comments
AN IPL CHECKLIST, by Victor A. Berch
This is Steve speaking. IPL is the short form of a tongue-twister name of a publishing company called International Polygonics Limited. The man behind the company was Hugh Abramson, and the man behind him, working as a series consultant and helping to choose what books to reprint, was Douglas G. Greene, who’s presently the man in charge of Crippen & Landru, publisher of previously uncollected stories of a long list of mystery writers.
Together, as the head honchos behind IPL, they put together a long run of paperback mystery reprints, with a soupcon of hardcovers and original novels thrown in. Authors such as John Dickson Carr (and his alter ego Carter Dickson), Margaret Millar, Leslie Charteris, Craig Rice, Clayton Rawson, and George Baxt.
Should I name more? I can, and easily. Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Jonathan Latimer, Charlotte Armstrong, E. Richard Johnson, and Stuart Palmer. All of the above, and others, were among those with multiple titles offered.
Impressed? You should be.
Among the non-mystery titles IPL published were more than a handful by P. G. Wodehouse.
Several years ago Victor Berch completed a checklist of all of the IPL titles, and you can see it here on the main Mystery*File website. (Click on the link.)
Note that it’s long enough that it takes two full pages, with a link on the first taking you to the second. Be sure you find your way to both pages.
This pair of web pages is still being worked on, which is why the checklist has never been announced officially until now. I have many many cover images to add to it, including back covers, and research into some of the non-mystery books remains to be done.
But as a checklist of the books themselves, they’re all there, with plenty of cover images already included. It also could use a better introduction and overview of the entire IPL operation, but you can consider this a Preview, with more to come, as soon as I can do it.
To my mind, this is an extraordinary run of paperbacks, but because of limited distribution of the books, few people are as aware of their existence as they should be. This checklist should help remedy that — or at least Victor and I hope so!
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:04 am
IPL was indeed a wonder, and even more so I think I have read everything they published save for about eight titles (though not all in the IPL edition). All things considered I had very good taste — not as good as IPL though. One of the great mystery lines, and well deserving such an exhaustive list.
March 2nd, 2010 at 12:47 am
A very useful service, Steve.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:28 pm
David
For a run of classic detective fiction that would surpass the IPLs, I don’t think you could find one better. Wish I could say I’d read them all, though maybe, someday.
Curt
Even if I haven’t read them all, Curt, you can do as I’m doing: collect them all!
PS. It was your comments about the IPL books on the Yahoo “Golden Age of Detection” group that prompted me to announce Victor’s checklist, which I’ve been working on slowly and for far too long.
You’re the sharp stick that prodded me into doing so, in other words, even though it’s not quite finished.
I’ll be adding more covers as time goes on, though, and other enhancements too. Hopefully, whenever you or anybody goes back, you’ll find something you haven’t seen before.
One word about the covers. I didn’t care for them at first — they were too cartoony, I thought — but the more IPLs I’ve accumulated, the more I see how well (i.e., cleverly) they were done, with a lot of thought behind them.
January 30th, 2014 at 7:01 pm
Love the IPL reissues. It’s so much fun to find ’em on the used racks.
It turns out that most titles are available through Half.com. I’d rather find ’em but broke down and bought two Stroganoff volumes and a Stuart Palmer the other day for between 75 cents and $1.49 plus $4 shipping each.