Pulp cover for #Noirvember

Once upon a time, I used to display a cover from the old pulp magazine Detective Tales and comment on it, as a sort of monthly tradition. I thought this would be something perfect to do for #Noirvember. I decided to go for a stereotypical pulp fiction cover, from the November 1938 edition: a damsel in distress, a hero and a few villains in a dramatic action scene. The setting is what appears to be an exotic temple or palace. The damsel in distress is a blonde, gagged but curiously not tied up. There is a henchman holding her and towering over them what appears to be the leader, all clad in white and sporting a devilish looking goatee. The villains seem to be of Middle Eastern or Asian extraction, and they use old fashioned knives. There are three of them. The hero (private eye?) is already wounded and is fighting the biggest one, a thuggish looking guy with a bloody curved knife. Things are grim for the good guys. I wish I could find the story linked to that image, if there is one.

Pulp violence

I haven't put on this blog a cover of Detective Tales for ages, so decided to do one today.This is the cover for the February 1941 issue. Very similar to the one I uploaded in February 2014, which was the February 1940 cover. It has a slightly sinister streak: a secret door made of bookshelves shows starving prisoners. It was accidentally opened by the hero (a private eye?) who is trying to free the damsel in distress, who is a fiesty brunette. Behind them, the villain is holding a revolver menacingly. With his balding head and his goatee, he is a classical looking villain, a bit like an evil librarian. I just love this picture.

The Detective Tales cover for November

I have skipped this tradition in October, but I thought I would respect it before the end of November: as I do (almost) every month, it is now time to upload on this blog a cover from Detective Tales and comment on it. This is the cover from the November 1939 issue. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is worth a million. Like the one I uploaded in November 2012, it is overly melodramatic, with three archetypal characters: the hero, the villain and the damsel in distress. The damsel in distress is about to be crushed between the wall bed and the wall, tied down to it, the villain, a somewhat thuggish yet soberly elegant looking man with a receding hairline, is being prevented from shooting (who?) by the hero, who is holding his wrist and about to punch him in the stomach. The elaborate method of execution for the blonde damsel in distress, tied down to the bed (Murphy bed, tells me Wikipedia), mixed with the ripped off red dress and the rather deep cleavage charge the scene with sadoerotic elements. Freud would have had a field day with this. I have to say, I am impressed. This is really edgy, in so many ways. I wonder if there is any plot going with it, or if this is just the artist's imagination responsible for this cover. If there is a story this image is based on, I want to read it.

The Detective Tales cover for September

The month is almost over, and I had not yet uploaded a cover from Detective Tales. It is time to follow the tradition again. So here it is. The cover from September 1937. I am wondering about its story, because there is something ambiguous about it, or one of its character. Most of them are easy to identify: the blonde heroin, the square jawed hero at the center. In periphery, two thugs: one holding a butcher's knife, in butcher's clothes looking every bit the brute he is, guarding the exit the heroes are trying to get through, and one further away, being gunned by the hero. But it is the figure that the blonde is holding that makes me wonder. The tall, thin, ageing man with white hair. He has been hit on the head and is unconscious. But was he kidnapped by the thugs and the heroes are rescuing him, or is he a villain that the heroes are kidnapping? The tuxedo is often the suit of choice for criminal masterminds in pulp fiction, always more elegant than their minions. Yet he could be an innocent victim. So tell me what you think.

The Detective Tales cover for August

Well, August is almost over, and I thought it was time for me to carry on the tradition of downloading a cover from Detective Tales and commenting on it. This one is from August 1939. You see the hero, dashing in his evening suit, very elegant, and his blonde, red wearing partner, trying to save a damsel in distress from being buried in coal. The villain, a massive, thuggish looking bald goon, is about to club the blonde with a wrench. So you have two damsels in distress for one cover, although only one may be aware of her status. But with her haggard gaze, I think she may have been drugged, or is in shock. In a classic pose, the hero is shooting at an unknown party out of the frame. I love this cover because the rough environment and the look of enemy is in sharp contrast with the elegance of both the hero and the heroine. So here it is anyway.

The Detective Tales cover for July

This is again the time when I upload an image from a cover of Detective Tales and comment on it. As I mentioned last year and before, finding a good cover for July is getting increasingly difficult, because I already used many. So I chose the ultimate cliffhanger: the cover for July 1944. The heroine is in a very uneasy position, hanging in the air, held by a single hand (her private eye love interest?) while she is taking hold of a purse, the MacGuffin of the story. And there is a hoodlum who saw everything, on the right side of the window, lurching at it with a gun. How she got there must be quite a story. And from (I am assuming) such height, in such a light dress, she must be quite cold. But I guess it is to her a secondary aspect of her predicament.

The Detective Tales cover for May

This is time again in the month when I upload and comment a cover from Detective Tales. I might try to find other pulp magazines to do the same thing at some point, because the choice from some months is starting to run thin. I hesitated to upload this one because, well, it is racist, like unfortunately many pulp stories were back then. It is the cover from May 1939. All prejudice against China aside, it is quite a good cover, ridiculously dramatic. So you have both the squared jaw hero and the heroin, a damsel in distress, in a very tight spot. The hero, maybe a private eye, is shooting at an unseen enemy off frame, holding with his free hand his bloodied upper arm, while the blonde is being held by... the mechanical arm of a metallic Buddha.And she is crying on top of her lungs for his attention, as a Fu Manchu looking Chinese (he is probably Chinese, although I guess he could of any Asian denomination) is about to strike him with a hatchet. The villain is bald and has long thin mustaches. And he is emerging from a secret passage or a tunnel, or some arched alcove. What more can I say? I don't think the story can be nearly as good as the cover.

The Detective Tales cover for February

The month is almost over already (being the shortest month of the year and all) and I have not until now uploaded a cover of Detective Tales. So it is time to carry on this blogging tradition, with the cover from February 1940. Absolutely brilliant cover, full of very strong images, especially from that time. A hero, private eye (?), is trying to untie the damsel in distress du jour... She is wearing the red dress very common for damsels in distress and is tied upside down to a butcher's cooler door. With two badguys/butchers on each side of the door, one peeking through meat carcasses, the other one lying on the door, both pointing guns at the hero. Eros and Thanatos in all their glory. No pun intended, but this is a very raw image, one wonder if those butchers are not a bit serial killers, maybe more than mobsters. In any case, what a cover!

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.

The Detective Tales cover for September

Today is a good occasion as any to observe this blogging tradition (a tradition of this blog, I mean) of uploading a cover from Detective Tales and comment on it. September is a tricky month, because my mind is all on horror stories and I think very little about crime fiction, so I am less inspired watching these covers. Last year I had chosen a cover with some elements you could find in horror stories, even though there was no supernatural element in it. I did something similar in 2008, uploading a cover with strong sadistic elements. So this year I looked thoroughly, pondered a lot about what would look good on Vraie Fiction, then chose the cover from September 1938. It is a crime fiction adventure cover, but it does have the nod to other genres: the simian hunchback and the secret passage, right by a fireplace.

So let's have a good look at the cover. When I saw it, it reminded me of the Clue/Cluedo mansion, which I wrote a post about this year. In a way, the setting belongs more to a whodunit than hardboiled crime fiction. I say whodunit, I should add a lazy one, because as Ronald Fox said in his ten Commandments of Detective Fiction, shouldn't rely on secret passages, not more than one anyway. It is true that it may be the only one. The old mansion, or the luxurious house is a setting of whodunits, in any case. I don't know what Fox thought of hunchbacks. That said, this is not a whodunit story, for obvious reasons: the hero is not an eccentric detective, but an action man, athletic and probably a private eye, even though he is very well dressed and firing away at an adversary out of the frame. The living room is not a place where the detective will reveal the identity of the murderer in front of all the suspects: it is a place of violent confrontation and danger, the fire still burning very near the escape route, blocked by a nasty antagonist. The two ladies in the back are both damsels in distress, one because she is unconscious, the other because she does not see the beastly henchman holding a knife. He could easily belong to a Gothic horror story. But in any case, it is an exciting piece of work.

The Detective Tales cover for August

So again, this is the time of the month when I upload on Vraie Fiction a cover of Detective Tales, because I love good old pulp fiction imagery. Incidentally, I uploaded the one of August 2012 on the very same day. This cover is from the August 1945 issue. It is deliciously sinister, with an image that could belong just as much to gothic horror than crime fiction. You have no detective or male protagonist, but a heroine. The damsel in distress is discovering blood dripping from the sealing, so we know a murder was committed in the upstairs (attic?) room. If there was any doubt, you see in the background a shadowy figure, a cloaked man holding a bloody knife, going down a scale. An evil, ghostly presence. The murderer has seen her, but she has not seen him. Further in the background, you see that it is a dark and stormy night. What can I say? It is a great cover.

The Detective Tales cover for June

Well, it is this time again, when I upload in Vraie Fiction an old pulp cover from Detective Tales. Here is one that I hope screams June and summertime. It does not feel or look like summertime outside, at least I can make this blog looks like a summery read. So this is the Detective Tales cover from June 1938. It is dark and dramatic. And it is set on a boat. The hero, maybe (probably?) a private eye, is gunning at an unknown threat, while the heroin in the very red is at the center of the frame, going down a scale to join him, as a villain who is also a sailor man has his knife ready to stab her. Both the hero and the damsel in distress have clothes partly shredded. My idea: the boat in question belongs to smugglers, the two protagonists came on the ship uninvited, they got in a bit of trouble earlier, they may have become prisoners and they are now not only trying to escape, but to take control of the ship and make it change course. I would read a story like this one by the swimming pool.

The Detective Tales cover for May

This is now the time for another upload of a cover from Detective Tales. It is getting more and more challenging to find an original cover and something new to say every month. This is the cover from May 1949. I chose a simpler one this time. The quality of the picture is not as good: the colours are worn out. I do think however that it is part of its charm. It looks appropriately retro. The setting is interesting: a private detective's office, or rather its inside and its outside, separated by a window broken by guns. The action is of course a gun fight. It is a bit confusing: who is the villain, who is the good guy? Is the man inside the office an intruder taking hostage the blonde, or is he pushing her away, trying to protect her from the outside assailant. As neither men have clear features identifying them as the good guy and the villain, it is difficult to tell. If the man outside the private detective, why is he outside? All we know for sure is that the blonde in the red dress is a damsel in distress. That said, in spite or because of this confusion, I love this cover.

The Detective Tales cover for April

I did not want to blog about the Boston bombing (too depressing and I don't know what I could say worthy of interest) or the funerals of Margaret Thatcher (too sickening), I thought I would do my monthly upload of a Detective Tales cover. This one is April 1949. I blogged recently about realism in crime fiction, ironically enough I have chosen a cover that is utterly over the top. It bears similarities from the one I uploaded in January 2012 (from a January 1939 cover), because in both the hero is being attacked by a man in a knight's armor. It is maybe more interesting than the previous cover, because this one is a reversed situation: the private eye is suddenly in the role that would usually suit to the damsel in distress, with his iron clad adversary making him powerless, and the blonde heroine wearing red (a favorite color for heroines in crime fiction, it seems), usually the one in need to be saved, now trying to save her man. Rather inefficiently, I might add. Little detail of interest: the villain in the armor was behind a glass, they might be in a museum. Looking at it, I actually wonder if it is a crime story and not a horror one. Maybe the armor is haunted.

The Detective Tales cover for March

So I am carrying on with the tradition. This time I chose the Detective Tales cover for March 1938. It is another dramatic cover, filled with action. In this one, the hero is dealing with one badguy bare hand, pushing him down the hole with a firm, decisive hand, easily overpowering his enemy. But the center of the stage is occupied by the damsel in distress, resourceful, as she is about to shoot another badguy aiming at the hero from behind, yet vulnerable, as another villain, looking a lot like a slimy vampire, is about to tied her up with a lasso. I wish I know the story linked to the picture, if there is one of course. Anybody can imagine one?

The Detective Tales cover for February

I have decided to upload the monthly cover picture from Detective Tales early on. I thought about which one to upload since January, but nothing came to my mind until now. It was difficult to top the brilliant one I uploaded last year (from the February 1937 issue). Last month I chose a sober one, so this time I decided to go for something melodramatic. This is from the issue of February 1939. You have the (private eye?) hero punching square in the jaw a doctor/chemist holding a scalpel, while the damsel not so much in distress shoots at a mostly unseen gun holder. Another badguy, a doctor or a chemist, in any case probably a mad scientist, is holding a huge vial of chemicals (acid?) and is about to hurl it on the hero. The setting is a lab, they are maybe making some drugs there. Or maybe biochemical weapons. This could for a story bordering on the science-fiction genre. In any case, I love how filled with details this cover is.

The Detective Tales cover for January

It is the time of the month when I upload on this blog a cover from Detective Tales and comment on it. I have decided to go for simplicity this time. This is the cover from January 1943. Compared to last year, when I uploaded on Vraie Fiction the January 1939 cover, which was filled with sadistic imagery (including a trickle of innocent blood), outlandish settings and many characters, this one is much more sober. You only see the frightened face of the blonde heroine as an assaillant out of the frame cuts the wire of the telephone she is using. To call who? The police, a boyfriend, the hero? She is a damsel in distress like the magazine seemed to love on its cover. In our day and age of wireless phones, cell phones, internet connections, we forget how crucial could be the access to a phone not so long ago. This is why I find this cover interesting and this is why I uploaded it here today.

The Detective Tales cover for December

Before this blog starts being covered with pictures of Christmas, I thought I would upload the monthly Detective Tales cover. This one is from December 1943. It reminds me of the one I uploaded back in May. You can see the similarities: a badguy with a gun and a damsel in distress (in distress yet capable) with a mirror which is also used as a tool. In this case, it is to warn the waiter and ask him for help. The surrounding is obviously a restaurant and you can see from the context that she is secretly held by the villain. He his quite an interesting character, as he has characteristics of both the overtly elegant one we see so often and the thug. He is smartly dressed in a grey suit, wearing monocle, but his massive frame and face look brutish, with the crew cut, the squared head and the strong nose. He reminds me of Gert Fröbe playing Auric Goldfinger. He looks quite Germanic I think, which is even more obvious as he is holding what appears to be a Luger. Since this was published during World War II, I suspect it was very intentional.

The Detective Tales Cover for November

This is my monthly upload of a Detective Tales cover. I re-started this tradition last year, with this very long post. This one will be shorter. It was difficult to top the cover for November last year. I don't think I could, actually. There was just something about that casino scene. Maybe I am playing it safe, I don't know, with a conventional, melodramatic cliffhanger (literally!) scene. Well, there is something uncommon about this cover: the damsel in distress is a brunette, not a blonde. It is from November 1940. We see the lady hanging on a rope from a skyscraper, the hero shooting at an unseen enemy (a recurring element) and the overtly (and old fashioned) elegant villain approaching him from behind, ready to stab him with a sharp knife. I love how the villain manages to look brutish in spite of his fancy clothes. Anyway, it does not have the mystery of the one I uploaded last year, but it is enjoyable all the same. They seem to complicate their life a lot when they wantt o execute someone. Or maybe it is a mean of torture and the damsel in distress was being interrogated. I really need to read some of these old pulp stories.

The Detective Tales cover for October

Like I do every month, I upload tonight a cover from Detective Tales magazine and comment on the pulp cover. But this October marks a difference in this blog's tradition: it is the very first time that I upload one on Vraie Fiction in October. As this month is all about Halloween, my mind is mainly on horror stories, not on crime fiction. So I wanted, like I did this September, to have a cover that could also belong to a horror story and which I could include in my Halloween countdown. I rarely mix genres, but I think this time it is required. So decided to upload the cover from October 1948, showing a blonde damsel in distress answering the door to some sinister fellow, taking off his mask and revealing himself as a sort of Monster of Frankenstein lookalike. I don't think it is merely a hoodlum, he must be a living dead of some sort, with a face grey like this. I wouldn't be surprised if the story has elements of supernatural. I don't envy the blonde. This seems to be one nasty tenant.