Acquisition Madness, part 2

Here's part 2 of the books I purchased during the summer.  Plus the best of the vintage paperbacks I picked up yesterday afternoon on the first day of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference Book Sale.  Lovely sunny autumn day to be down in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, about 20 miles south from our condo way up in Rogers Park.

The top half shows a collection of hardbacks with DJs we bought at the fabulous Jackson Books in Omaha, Nebraska.  The only reason we visited Omaha was to see the new exhibits at the very impressively designed zoo. Then we investigated the restaurant scene and by chance found Jackson Books nestled in a bustling and touristy entertainment district. Nebraska is also one of the states I'd never visited. Every summer for the past ten years we try to visit at least two new states. Last year we knocked off Kansas from that list. Six left (Wyoming, Idaho, Vermont, West Virginia, and the Dakotas) and I'll have been to all 50 states in the country.

Click to enlarge the paperback photos for more detail.

Late Summer Acquisition Madness, part 1

Looking over Tracy's post at Bitter Tea and Mystery about her book finds from the Planned Parenthood Sale she attended got me thinking of the bags of books I acquired over the summer. Here's a collection of what I picked up in a midsummer trip to Nashville a while ago. This is a mix of hardcovers with jackets, one vintage book from 1919, and several vintage paperbacks.

The hardcover mysteries were all purchased at BookMan BookWoman and were on sale for $9.95 each. I could easily have spent an awful lot of money there, but I decided to restrain myself and be selective. Wild Justice (reviewed here) was also purchased with this lot. The paperbacks (shown first) all came from the Rhino Books location in the Lipscomb University neighborhood. An impressive but small vintage and collectible paperback section at that store, but on ridiculously high shelves that challenged my stretching abilities (I couldn't find a step stool1) The other Rhino Books location was closed the day we were book hunting. If ever in Nashville I highly recommend you visit these two used bookstores. Both are general used bookstores with quite a variety of fiction and non-fiction in all categories.

Above is the frontispiece from the US first edition of Something Doing (1919) by Varick Vanardy, a thriller featuring master criminal Crewe, "the Two-Faced Man." My copy has no jacket and a boring typographic cover so opted for the inside illustration by George W. Gage instead which was used to adorn the original DJ.

The next two books I bought at the Lake Forest Public Library book sale held every September. I thought I'd add them into the mix because they were rather exciting finds for me.

This is a sequel to Murder in a Nunnery which I reviewed back in 2013. I've been looking for the second title ever since. Couldn't pass up this copy (one buck!) in the scarce dust jacket even if it's chipped and torn.

Unnatural Causes, the third book in the Adam Dalgliesh series, is a rather scarce 1st American edition. The copy I found is in superior condition, with only minor creasing to the bottom of the excellent dust jacket. I got it for a mere $20. Can't help but brag about the steals I encounter in my book collecting.

Next week I'll post the books I picked up at an earlier trip to Omaha and the remainder of the books from the Lake Forest sale.

IMPRESSIVE IMPRINTS - Armchair Mystery

David McKay Company, another publisher based in Philadelphia (see previous Main Line Mystery and Lippincott Masked Man posts), joined the post-World War Two era mystery imprint mania around the mid 1940s. They seemed to have copied their line of crime fiction imprints along Doubleday's Crime Club 1940s model which used a set of cartoon drawings to denote the subgenre of each of the books being sold ranging from a magnifying glass to signify "Favorite Detective" to a grinning skull for "Comic Crime". McKay Company also chose to broaden the definition of detective fiction to include spy novels and adventure thrillers that supposedly also include detective novel elements. On the rear panel of each book included in the imprint there was a key to help the buyer determine what kind of crime novel they were holding in their hands. But while Crime Club used distinctive icons McKay used a subtle system of color coding employed in the imprint's very clever logo of man reading in an armchair. And if you couldn't figure it out for yourself they just told you as shown in the example below.

The "Armchair Mystery" dust jackets began with a uniformly designed dust jacket at the start in 1945. The entire DJ had a yellow background with full color art work on the front panel, an ad for another Title on the rear panel, and the logo key explained on the rear flap along with another ad for the upcoming book in the series. The imprint logo or title was placed on the front board and spine of the book and on all panels of the DJ: front, both flaps, rear panel and spine panel. In the years after 1945 this formula was dropped and DJ art no longer used the yellow background and the logo key was eventually eliminated as well.

The leading writers in the "Armchair Mystery" imprint were Bruno Fischer, W. T. Ballard, and "Edward Ronns" who writing under his own name, Edward S. Aarons, became one of the bestselling writers for Gold Medal when he created the "Assignment" series featuring Sam Durrell, a CIA agent.

The imprint, however, was extremely short lived and ran from 1945 to 1948. I can find no sign of any of David McKay's detective, crime or espionage fiction after 1948 published as part of the "Armchair Mystery" imprint. If anyone knows that this one lasted longer, I'd appreciate knowing of some or all of the later titles.

IMPRESSIVE IMPRINTS: Holt Mystery, 1939-1941

Henry Holt & Company had an unofficial mystery imprint throughout the 1930s. Around 1939 and for about three years afterward they created Holt Mystery imprint adapting their usual wise old owl colophon to a more sinister looking owl. For two years during wartime they decided to forgo paper dust jackets, presumably to save on paper as all publishers were doing, in favor of pictorial boards with a textured surface.

Sometime in the 1950s the owl logo transformed into an owl wearing a deerstalker and smoking a pipe. Did some Cockney punning artist decide to come up with Sherlock Owlmes? Unfortunately, I found only one example of this logo in 1952 and nothing afterward. I'm guessing it was just as short-lived as the first owl logo.

Below are examples of dust jacket art and illustrated boards from 1932 to 1952, the only years I can verify when a Holt Mystery imprint existed.

1939 - "A Holt Mystery" appears on spine

1939 - Owl logo not yet created

DJ with the Holt Mystery Logo

1940-first year with no DJs and use of pictorial boards instead

Pictorial boards continue in 1940

Pictorial boards - 1940

Pictorial boards and for some odd reason the author name is absent
The book is by Donald Clough Cameron in case you're wondering

Brief return to using a DJ in 1941 Author is actually Frank Gruber using a pseudonym

Pictorial boards - 1941

1952 -  new "Sherlock Owlmes" logo
Appears on a few books in 1952 and 1953, then discarded