Fri 15 Jun 2007
MURDER AT 3 CENTS A DAY, by William F. Deeck: The Hillman-Curl titles [1938].
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Covers , Reference works / Biographies1 Comment
To supplement Bill Deeck’s reference work about lending-library mysteries, Murder at 3c a Day, I’ve just uploaded scans of the covers of those that Hillman-Curl published in 1938, 24 of them in all. Authors with more than one book from H-C that year were J. S. Fletcher, Norman Forrest [Nigel Morland], Paul Haggard, E. R. Punshon and Edmund Snell.
I asked Bill Pronzini, who’s been supplying me with the covers to upload, if he could recommend any of the titles from 1938. Are there any unknown gems in the lot? His reply:
“The Haggards aren’t bad, particularly Death Talks Shop. Slangy, eccentric, and super fast-paced, reminiscent (to me anyway) of Theodore Roscoe’s two novels for Dodge. Roger Torrey’s 42 Days for Murder is a pretty good pulpish private eye novel. The two John Donavans [one from 1937] are decent fair-play deductive mysteries. The [Vivian] Meik is a Sax Rohmerish adventure mystery with a screwball plot. I haven’t read a lot of the others.”

June 21st, 2007 at 1:48 pm
[…] [Bill Pronzini, earlier on the Mystery*File blog]. “A Sax Rohmerish adventure mystery with a screwball plot.” *** […]