The Detective Tales cover for May

I thought I would upload a different one for this month. It was more challenging to choose a good cover as back in May 2008, I uploaded many of them already. So the villain is not as grandiloquent as they often are, it is, like last month, a simple thug. You can see no private eye, but a uniformed police officer and a "special detective" (according to the badge you see) who is... a woman. A damsel in distress who is also armed, and who knows how to use it. A female cop must have seem quite daring back May 1942. We have seen other capable women on the covers, but this one is unusual: she is certainly no amateur. And the police officer seems rather impotent: getting up slowly after having been knocked down (one presumes), his hair ruffled from the fall, looking confused, his gun not even aiming at the badguy yet...

And what brilliant angle, what inspired idea to use the mirror. We see the action in the same perspective as her, the shot is close and claustrophobic. It is dynamic, slightly dizzying... And I also love the little touch of feminity: the handbag and mirror, mixed with the hardboiled elements: the guns, the badges. I am not sure I could write convincing female heroins. I can easily invent tough guys, good or bad, I think I can anyway. But tough ladies? Not sure I could. This one, in one image, is so convincing.