The Detective Tales cover for January

Tonight is the time to follow the tradition to upload on Vraie Fiction a cover from Detective Tales and comment on it. I skipped December because I had plenty of other subjects to blog about. Maybe I should end this tradition, as it generally gathers little interest from my readership (it very rarely gets commented anyway), but I love judging a book, or in this instance a magazine, by its cover and it is always fun to look at pulp art. This one is from January 1936. Quite a nice image, with an economy of details and characters and plenty of action. The setting is the roof of a building. The damsel in distress is in the center of the frame, looking worryingly at the back as a thug holding a sharp knife is climbing a ladder, while the squared jaw hero (private eye?) is holding a gun and looking carefully for potential enemies, oblivious to the clear and present danger behind him. I love the way the blonde is about to grab his arm to warn him. And I wonder how she managed to get up over the roof with such tight dress. So there you have it, a classic pulp magazine cover.