Cover art by F. Accanero. A quick search on Google brings up a handful of other paperbacks he did the cover art for, mostly as Franco Accanero, but once again, no website.

WARNER paperback original; 1st printing, September 1975.

      From the back cover:

But there was far more to the story than was ever told. Two of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous characters, Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger, played pivotal roles in the historic happenings. Here are the facts, never before revealed, of the confrontation: two of the most remarkable intellects the Earth ever produced pitted against beings intelligent enough to conquer space. Read now —

[A PERSONAL NOTE] The cover’s really only OK. Leaving off the Holmesian pipe and cap, it’s a fairly generic sci-fi cover and to my mind, not particularly eye-catching.

   There is a reason why I’m posting it here, and you can believe the story or not, as you wish, but it is true.

   I don’t always remember where or when I bought a particular book I have in my collection, but sometimes I do, and I’m sure it’s the same way with you. And I certainly do in this case, and here’s why.

   My daughter Sarah and her husband Mark had been living in Illinois for only a year, no more than two, as I recall — Charleston, in fact, if you’d like to look them up — and to entice me to visit, besides of course the obvious, Sarah mentioned that there was going to be a library sale somewhere in St. Louis where, it was said, they were going to be offering a million books. (I may have the number wrong. Maybe it was only half a million.)

   So of course I went. I saw the sights in Charleston (other than Sarah’s school, it didn’t take long) and in Champaign-Urbana, where Mark works (that took a little longer), and we checked out all of the bookstores anywhere in between.

   Came Saturday, we all got up early and drove the couple of hours over to St. Louis. There were lots of books, but the sale was rather disappointing. Maybe if I didn’t have to mail back anything I found, I would have bought more, but I don’t think I spent over $60 or $70. This is for paperbacks at 50 cents each, so it was a sizable amount, but I didn’t buy nearly as many books as I’d expected. (I’ve spent as much as $200 at some sales.)

   Anyway, this book by the Wellmans (father and son — in fact, Wade Wellman is actually Manly Wade Wellman, Jr.) was one of the books. So I know exactly where I bought this book and how much I paid for it.

   Well, here now comes the part that you’re not going to believe, and I wouldn’t either, except I was there. I opened the book up to glance through it, to see if it was worth keeping — the condition’s not entirely the best, as you can see — and inside was a bookplate.

   My head spun for a moment, I collected my thoughts and looked again. If I could carry a tune, I suppose I could have heard the theme for the Twilight Zone. The book was not mine — I hadn’t paid for it — and it never had been. I’d never seen it before in my life.

   I solemnly swear that the above story and final statement is true.

            Signed on this date, December 6th, 2007.

                      Steve Lewis

   Cover artist identified as Cliff Miller, a commercial artist who’s done hundreds of paperback covers (mysteries, science fiction, Nancy Drew), but so far I haven’t been able to find a website for him.

BANTAM paperback reprint, April 1990. Hardcover edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, February 1989. [Fourth in the Leo Haggerty series.]

      From the back cover:

“A SIZZLER.”    — Publishers Weekly
             ———
         SWEET JANE vs. THE BAD GUYS

   Escorting a young rock singer from the airport to his Washington hotel and guarding the door of her penthouse for the night sounds like a piece of cake to Detective Leo Haggerty. Sure, Jane Doe of the Pleasure Principle has gotten some death threats, but what celebrity hasn’t? To Leo, this small job sounds like sweet financial gain with a minimum of pain — and Jane’s real easy on the eyes.

   The headstrong songwriter does have some real enemies, though. For starters, the guys in her bad are furious that she won’t sell out and sign a major-label contract with them — but that’s no reason to kill somebody, is it? When the cushy job explodes into violence, Leo has to put his life on the line — or Jane might make the hit list before she even puts an album out.

         THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE
             ———

“The Things We Do for Love is a credit to … the hard-boiled private eye tradition. The prose is lean .. .with colorful touches along the way.”     — The Philadelphia Inquirer.

   Beginning work on Part 21 yesterday, I found myself annotating the entries for a number of authors known primarily for their romance fiction. One large subcategory of romance fiction is known as “romantic suspense.” There wouldn’t be a name for it if it didn’t exist, as you will see below:

BAHNSEN, KIMBERLY JEANNE. 1956- . Pseudonym: Kylie Brant, q.v.

BARTON, BEVERLY. Pseudonym of Beverly Beaver, q.v. Born in Alabama. Under this pen name, the author of many romance novels, some having criminous components. Add the one indicated with a (*) below. This is now her complete entry in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV.
      After Dark. Zebra, US, pb, 2000. Zebra, UK, pb, 2001. Setting: Alabama. [A book in the author’s “The Protectors” series.]
      * Her Secret Weapon. Silhouette, pb, 2000. [Book Four in the “A Year of Loving Dangerously” series.]

      A Man Like Morgan Kane. Silhouette, US, pb, 1997. Silhouette, UK, pb, 1999. Setting: Birmingham AL. [A book in the author’s “The Protectors” series.]

BEAVER, BEVERLY. Pseudonym: Beverly Barton, q.v.

BRANT, KYLIE. Pseudonym of Kimberly Jeanne Bahnsen, 1956- , q.v. Under this pen name, the author of many series romances, many having criminous elements. Add the ones indicated with a (*) below. This is now the complete entry for the author in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV.
      * Bringing Benjy Home. Silhouette, pb, 1997. Setting: Arkansas, Virginia, California.
      Falling Hard and Fast. Silhouette, pb, 1999. Setting: Louisiana. [Sheriff Cage Gauthier has an unresolved murder on his hands in the sultry town of Charity LA.]

      Guarding Raine. Silhouette, US/UK, pb, 1996. Setting: California.
      * An Irresistible Man. Silhouette, pb, 1995. Setting: Philadelphia.
      * McLain’s Law. Silhouette, pb, 1993. Setting: Philadelphia. [Detective Connor McLain is skeptical when Michele Easton claims she’s had dreams about kidnapped children.]
      * Undercover Bride. Silhouette, pb, 2000. Setting: Idaho. [Book 2 in the “A Year of Loving Dangerously” series: SPEAR agent Rachel Grunwald is assigned to infiltrate the Brotherhood of Blood compound.]
      * Undercover Lover. Silhouette, pb, 1998. Setting: Miami. [Undercover agent tackles a gang of smugglers.]

CLARE, CATHRYN. Pseudonym of Cathy Stanton, q.v. Under this pen name, the author of series romances, some having criminous elements. Add the one indicated with a (*) below. This is now the complete entry for her in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV.
      The Baby Assignment. Silhouette, 1996 [Texas] [Woman and child on the run from danger with an FBI agent for protection.]
      -Blind Justice. Silhouette, pb, 1989.
      The Honeymoon Assignment. Silhouette, pb, 1996. Setting: Texas.
      The Wedding Assignment. Silhouette, pb, 1996. Add setting: Texas. [Former DEA agent kidnaps a bride-to-be about to make a dangerous mistake.]

MAGNER, (ELLEN) LEE. Full married name: Ellen Lee Magner Tatara, 1947-2002, q.v. Confirm both dates. Author of series romances, some having criminous elements. Add the one indicated with a (*) below. This is now the author’s complete entry in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV.
      Dangerous. Silhouette, pb, 1996.
      * Owen’s Touch. Silhouette, pb, 1998. Setting: West Virginia. [A woman with amnesia may be on the run from a killer.]

STANTON, CATHY. Pseudonym: Cathyrn Clare, q.v. Born in Canada, moved to US when she married an American citizen.

TATARA, ELLEN LEE MAGNER. 1947-2002. Confirm both dates. Used a shortened form of her full married name, Lee Magner, q.v., as a pseudonym.

Cover artist: Edward Gorey.

DELL. Paperback reprint: July 2001. Hardcover First Edition: Delacorte Press, July 2000. [The same artwork was used on both.] Published posthumously.

      From the back cover:

Julia Larwood’s Aunt Regina needs help. She and two friends pooled their modest resources and invested in equities. Now the tax man demands his due, but they’ve already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole? Even more to the point: Can the sin of capital gains trigger corporeal loss?

That’s one for the sibyl, psychic counselor Isabella del Comino, who has offended Aunt Regina and her friends by moving into the rectory, plowed under a cherished garden, and establishing an aviary of ravens. When Isabella is found dead, all clues point to death by financial misadventure.

So Julia calls in an old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow a money trail that connects Aunt Regina and her friends to what appears to be capital fraud — and capital crime. The two women couldn’t have a better champion than the erudite Hilary, as once again Sarah Caudwell sweeps us into the scene of the crime, leaving us to ponder the greatest mystery of them all: Hilary, him — or her — self.

   No cover artist this time, as you can see. If the object of a paperback cover is to attract potential buyers, this one should have. The strategy may not have worked, though. There are only 12 copies offered for sale on ABE, suggesting not many were sold in the first place. (Or perhaps anyone who has a copy is keeping it.)

PINNACLE paperback original; 1st printing, April 1976.

      From the front cover:

A gold artifact from the sixth century, a treasure of the Czars. Many had died for it, and the killing continues …

      From the back cover:

    “Like so many of the Scythian tombs; it had already been robbed, perhaps centuries before. But then a secret compartment was discovered. In it was a single artifact, a sold gold stag nearly two feet long and twelve inches high. It was resting on an iron shield which covered the bones of one of the chieftains. The stag was in a prone position with its forepaws folded under and a long golden mane flowing back from its antlers to its tail. Its design and concept are so close to the abstract forms of today that one can hardly believe it was created twenty-five hundred years ago. In terms of value, there is no way to put a price tag on it. Except for a few precious gems, it is probably the most valuable piece of its kind in the world today…”

    Devlin looked at Irina, drank in her exquisitely beautiful face, a figure that put his blood on fire, and wondered why she was so eager to tell him this Russian fairy tale. Especially now, after he was suspected of killing a French diplomat. Even that unfortunate event could be traced to his first meeting with Irina. A most innocent meeting.

    Now it would be different. Their eyes spoke a language that was anything but innocent. The strong, heady aroma of cognac — and Irina — decided it all.

    Tomorrow he would see about that finding that goddamn stag…

[COMMENTS] In case you were wondering, and are old enough to wonder, yes, Basil Heatter is the son of Gabriel Heatter, the well-known radio commentator for the Mutual Broadcasting System during World War II, and on through the 1950s.

   And Tim Devlin, the primary protagonist of The Golden Stag, is a series character. He also appeared in Devlin’s Triangle, Pinnacle, 1976. He’s the head of Devlin Underwriters, a “small but highly respected marine insurance firm.”

   The first winter storm of the season, here in the Northeast, and our first power outage, from 7:15 this morning to about 1:30 this afternoon. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. Wisely planning ahead, I made the big push this weekend, and Judy’s car was in her half of the garage when the ice and freezing rain hit. (Of course some of the boxes of books that came from there are now in the living room, but you have to remember: one step at a time!)

   But the reminder of how much we depend on electricity is a sobering one, not to mention access to one’s computer. I’m still working on Saturday’s New York Times crossword puzzle, for example, and without Google the Southwest corner is proving to be impenetrable.

   Al Hubin also sent me Part 21 of his online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV early this morning, and here it is, almost 4:30 in the afternoon, and I’ve only now gotten it uploaded.

   This new data is strong on newly discovered birth and death dates for authors, along with added info on series characters and settings. But also in this installment are lengthy entries for romantic suspense writers Kylie Brant and Glenna Finley, among others; historical fiction author Nigel Tranter, whose books often contained elements of crime-related activities; western writer Tim Champlin, for whose books the same can be said; Ian Rankin, whose books have been the basis for a number of recent TV films; and science fiction writer Walter Jon Williams, whose stories of galactic gentleman burglar-thief Drake Majistral are now included.

   It’s too early for me to have start adding cover images and so on, along with whatever additional commentary I will begin to add as soon as I can get to it, but I will, as soon as I can get to it!

   Tom Taylor is a Herbert Adams collector as well as the author of The Golf Murders (Golf Mystery Press, 1997), a bibliography of golfing mysteries, and yesterday he sent me the cover image below. It’s for Death of a Viewer (Macdonald, 1958), a book that Mary Reed reviewed back in August. I couldn’t come up with a copy on my own, so he sent me one. (The cover image, not the book.) Tom also says that he’s working on an Adams bibliography and has a complete collection except one title, Black Death (Collins, 1938).

   A partially illustrated checklist of Adams’s Roger Bennion novels, of which this is one, appeared along with Mary’s review. Follow the link above.

   I was working in Part 9 for a short while again this evening. The following are consecutive entries in the M’s. Not the most interesting group of authors, perhaps, but they’re all grist for the mill. (And who is to say, without reading them?)

MILLAR, FLORENCE N(ORAH). 1920-2000? Add tentative year of death. Author of two detective novels and one work marginally criminous, all three included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. Chief Inspector Douglas Grant (DG) is the series detective in two of them. See below.
      Fishing Is Dangerous. Gifford, UK, hc, 1946. DG
      Grant’s Overture. Gifford, UK, hc, 1956. DG
      -The Lone Kiwi. Dawson, UK, hc, 1948. Setting: Italy, World War II.

MILLAR, J(OHN) HALKET. 1899-1978. Born in New Zealand. Add as a new author entry.
      Death Round the Bend. R. W. Stiles & Co., New Zealand, hc, 1954. [A novel about the bushranging Burgess gang that terrorized the New Zealand goldfields in 1866.]

MILLAR, PETER. British journalist and author of one thriller novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below. Bleak Midwinter (Bloomsbury, 2002) is about an outbreak of bubonic plague set in modern Oxford.
      Stealing Thunder. London & NYC: Bloomsbury, hc, 1999. Add setting: 1945. [Alternative history thriller involving Klaus Fuchs, the German born Los Alamos physicist who passed on critical pieces of information about the atomic bomb.]

MILLER, RON(ALD) JAY. 1943- . Add full first name and year of birth.
      The Medallion. Salt Lake City: Northwest, pb, 1992. Setting: Wyoming. “This tale of courage and triumph follows Calvin Taft as he battles to regain his past with the help of a special medallion.”

MILLS, JOHN FITZMAURICE. 1917-1991. Add year of death. Lived in Wales; art critic for Irish Times for 10 years. Besides one novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV (see below) the author of such reference books as Collecting and Looking after Antiques and How to Detect Fake Antiques.
      Top Knocker. Dublin, Ireland: Wolfhound, pb, 1990. Wolfhound, US, pb, 1990. Setting: Dublin. [Novel about intrigue in the antiques trade, by an insider.]

MILLS, MAX. 1910?-2001? Add both dates, both tentative. Author of one novel included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below.
      Bedtime at Eleven. Quality Press, UK, hc, 1949.

   Cover by Jim Manos, about whom Google turns up nothing, but a James Manos, Jr., is a writer-producer for movies & TV, including The Sopranos, The Shield, and Dexter.

Pinnacle, paperback; 1st printing, Sept 1983. UK hardcover: Collins (Crime Club), 1980; US hardcover edition: Doubleday & Co., 1980.

   From the back cover:

Famed for his extravagant houseparties and his nasty jokes, the Maharajah of Bhopore had asembled as odd assortment of guests for his annual April Fool’s Day fun. With consummate charm, he plies them with luxuries — and then, he tortured them with his tricks.

But mirth turned to murder with the crack of the Maharajah’s backfiring rifle. Obviously someone in the palace had a deadly sense of humor … and Detective Superintendent of Police Howard was just the man to find out who the joker was.

   I was working in Part 4 last week. These are consecutive entries in the S’s.

SHEPPARD, STEPHEN. 1945- . Ref: CA. Born in England. Actor & painter; author of three novels included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV, including the one cited below.
      Monte Carlo. TV movie: CBS, 1986 (scw: Peter Lefcourt; dir: Anthony Page)

SMITH, CRAIG (BRIAN). 1947- . Note: Separate this entry from the one following; they are two different authors. Besides the title below, his only entry in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV, this Craig Smith was the screenwriter for three crime films made between 1996 and 2002.
      Ladystinger. Crown, US, hc, 1992. Setting: New Orleans, Jamaica. (Add the latter.) TV movie: Showtime, 1993, as Scam (scw: Craig Smith; dir: John Flynn). Nominated for an Edgar in 1993 as Best First Novel. [A mistress of the scam may get herself double-looped by her own chicanery.]

SMITH, CRAIG (S.) 1950- . Ref: CA. Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern Illinois; lives in Switzerland. Note: Separate this entry from the one preceding; they are two different authors.
      Silent She Sleeps. Heinemann, UK, hc, 1997. US title: The Whisper of Leaves. Setting: Illinois; academia. [Innocent man is framed by corrupt cop.]
      _The Whisper of Leaves. Southern Illinois University Press, pb, 2002. US title of Silent She Sleeps.

SMITH, WILBUR (ADDISON)
      Wild Justice. TV movie: Syndicated, 1993. Also released as Covert Assassin and as Dial. (scw: J. H. Carrington; dir: Tony Wharmby)

SOHMER, STEVE
      Favorite Son. TV movie [mini-series]: NBC, 1988 (scw: Steve Sohmer; dir: Jeff Bleckner)

SPECHT, ROBERT. 1928-1997. Ref: CA. Editor; free-lance TV writer and story editor. Of two novels written, one is included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. See below. This constitutes the author’s complete entry.
      The Soul of Betty Fairchild. St. Martin’s, hc, 1991. Setting: South Carolina. Add TV movie: NBC, 1997, as NightScream (scw: Eugenia Bostwick-Singer, Raymond Singer, Gary Tieche; dir: Noel Nosseck). [Twenty-four years after Betty Fairchild is murdered, a young woman shows up who is identical to her in appearance and behavior, and seems to suffer from multiple personalities.]

SPEIGHT, RICHARD (DOBBS). 1940- . Trial lawyer living in Nashville, TN. His son, Richard Speight Jr., is an actor currently [2007] in a recurring role on the TV show Jericho. Author of two books listed in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV, one of which is cited below.
      Desperate Justice. TV movie: ABC, 1993, as A Mother’s Revenge; also released as Desperate Justice (scw: John Robert Bensink; dir: Armand Mastroianni)

SPROUL, KATHLEEN. 1903?-1977? Author of five detective novels included in the (Revised) Crime Fiction IV. Series sleuth Dick Wilson appears in the four published by Dutton between 1932 and 1935; covers for one of these is shown below. Her fifth and final mystery is listed immediately thereafter.

      Death Listened In. Phoenix Press, hc, 1946. Add setting: Midwest. Said Anthony Boucher in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Passable enough up to the ending, which hinges upon a device of such monstrous improbability that it makes Buck Rogers look strictly scientific.”