Reviews of Mabel Seeley and Reginald Hill to come, but in the meantime I thought you might like seeing these Theodore DuBois book jackets. After a bad experience with DuBois' Death Is Late to Lunch (1940), I rather enjoyed her Death Comes to Tea (1941), so I am giving DuBois' books another look. Plus, I just like the jackets.
Of course Dorothy B. Hughes made rather good use of that novel title four years later--not to mention that, six months before Hughes, A. B. Cunningham published a mystery titled Death Rides a Sorrel Horse. Evidently a sorrel horse is a copper-red shade of chestnut.
Interestingly, DuBois originally planned to call this novel Death Rides a Flying Horse, maintaining her "Death" series of titles. I don't know why the title was changed.
It's Raining Violence (1949) presents a classic Salvador Dali-esque image. Surreal jacket designs cropped up a fair bit in the Forties, but I think this is an exceptionally nice one.
It's credited to Zaccone, who also did the evocative jacket for Jonathan Stagge's The Scarlet Circle, as well as Triangle's edition of Edgar Allan Poe tales and Cornel Woolrich's The Black Path of Fear (1944)--a prestigious, if grim, portfolio!
That cover for It's Raining Violence is absolutely magnificent!
ReplyDeleteBook covers today are depressingly dull and imaginative.
It's usually a shadowy walking figure for crime fiction. An absolute yawner at this point. Of, for cozies, pastel colors, country cottages, chrysanthemums and cats.
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