Tue 7 Aug 2007
MURDER AT 3 CENTS A DAY, by William F. Deeck: The GODWIN titles.
Posted by Steve under Covers , Reference works / BiographiesNo Comments
The latest batch of covers uploaded to Bill Deeck’s Murder at 3 Cents a Day website are those for the William Godwin, Inc., 1933-1936.
Here’s Bill Pronzini’s introduction to the page containing the publisher’s line of mystery fiction:
The first mystery to carry the Godwin imprint was Wesley Price’s Death Is a Stowaway (1933), a title inadvertently left out of the Godwin listing in Murder at 3c a Day. The three Timothy Trent (Carl Malmberg) titles are excellent hardboiled tales, as is Alan Williams’ Cainesque Room Service.
In 1935 Godwin published several British mysteries on a cooperative deal with the king of the U.K. lending library publishers, Wright & Brown; these all used the original W&B dust jacket art, most of it by Micklewright. The Godwin editions had very poor sales, as evidenced by the fact that copies are extremely difficult to find today, and the arrangement with W&B was abandoned after only a single year.