Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (Signet, 1960)

No. 7 in a series of posts on books I've bought but haven't got round to blogging about properly – indeed may never get round to blogging about properly – so this will have to do.

What is it?
The first American paperback edition – at least under its original title – of Ian Fleming's debut James Bond novel, Casino Royale, published by Signet/New American Library in 1960.

Who illustrated the cover?
Barye Phillips, whose extensive cover credits include novels by Peter Rabe, Edward S. Aarons and Donald Hamilton.

Where and when did I buy it?
At the Lewes Book Fair, last year.

Why did I buy it?
I spotted it on the table of a dealer who was new to the Lewes Book Fair and couldn't resist it, despite already owning British Pan and Panther paperbacks of the novel. In my experience it's unusual to come across vintage US paperbacks at British book fairs, so that was one reason for picking it up; plus there's that great Barye Phillips cover. Furthermore, this 1960 Signet printing represents the first time Casino Royale appeared in paperback in the US under that title; previously it had been published in paperback under the title You Asked for It by Popular Library in 1955.

Have I read it yet?
Of course.

Westlake on Rabe: A Shroud for Jesso & Kill the Boss Goodbye by Peter Rabe (Gold Medal, 1955/6)

NB: A version of this post also appears at The Violent World of Parker.

Continuing the rolling – if intermittent – showcase of Peter Rabe books I've bought of late (well, over the last year or so, anyway) – with, of course, additional commentary on each by perhaps Rabe's greatest admirer, Donald E. Westlake, taken from Westlake's 1989 essay on Rabe – we reach Rabe's third novel:

A Shroud for Jesso, published, like Stop This Man! and Benny Muscles In, by Gold Medal in the States in 1955. Although once again this particular copy is the British Frederick Muller edition, issued... I don't know when, actually: there's no publication date inside. But anyway, it's essentially the same as the Gold Medal edition, with the same Lu Kimmel-illustrated cover.

This, according to Westlake in his "Peter Rabe" essay in Murder off the Rack, is where Rabe starts to come into his own – at least, "in the second half of" the book. Westlake calls the characters "rich and subtle, their relationships ambiguous, their story endlessly fascinating". For me personally, it's that ambiguity in Rabe's novels that makes them especially appealing: there's an unpredictability to his characters, and as a consequence to his plots; one never quite knows in which direction they're going to head next. He's also a dab hand at eliciting empathy with essentially unheroic or criminal characters, something Westlake, whose Parker series (written as Richard Stark) was almost certainly inspired in part by Rabe, naturally responds to, as evidenced by the elevated position in his essay he affords Rabe's fifth novel:

Kill the Boss Good-By, published by Gold Medal in 1956 (although as before, this copy is the Frederick Muller edition, bought at the last-but-one London Paperback & Pulp Bookfair), with terrific cover art by Barye Phillips. Westlake uses Kill the Boss Good-By to kick off his essay, ridiculing the title ("Why would anybody ever want to read a book called Kill the Boss Goodbye?") but calling the novel itself "one of the most purely interesting crime novels ever written", adding "The entire book is spare and clean and amazingly unornamented."

For Westlake, Kill the Boss Good-By "was the peak of Rabe's first period, five books [the fourth being A House in Naples, 1956; I don't have a copy of that yet], each one better than the one before". He continues: 

In those books, Rabe combined bits and pieces of his own history and education with the necessary stock elements of the form to make books in which tension and obsession and an inevitable downward slide toward disaster all combine with a style of increasing cold objectivity not only to make the scenes seem brand new but even to make the (rarely stated) emotions glitter with an unfamiliar sheen.

Sadly, in Westlake's eyes, that peak was followed by a trough that lasted roughly ten novels; for him it wasn't until the late-1950s that Rabe regained some of his early promise, producing a "final cluster of five excellent books"...

Edward S. Aarons and the Sam Durell / Assignment Series of Spy Novels (Gold Medal, Coronet, Herbert Jenkins, 1950s/60s/70s)

In 1955, two years after Ian Fleming's James Bond made his debut in Casino Royale, America gained its very own globetrotting secret agent: Sam Durell of the Central Intelligence Agency. Debuting in Assignment to Disaster (Gold Medal, 1955), Durell would go on to star in a further forty-eight adventures over the next twenty-eight years – all bearing the legend "Assignment" in their title, all published by Gold Medal in the States, and all but the final six written by Durell's creator – Edward S. Aarons.

Given that Sam Durell is arguably America's first proper postwar fictional series spy – beating another, rather better remembered US agent, Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm, into print by five years – it's perhaps surprising that he's slipped so comprehensively from the collective memory. In their day, the Durell/Assignment novels were hugely popular, going through multiple printings and selling in the tens of millions. They're characterised by a pacy, urgent style and display a convincing grasp of the exotic locales – researched in person by Aarons himself – that would become a hallmark of the series after the initial domestically set stories. Many of them stand up well even today; those critics that do still recall the books – Doug Bassett et al; Spy Guys and Gals (both those pages boasting bibliographies, the latter annotated) – hold at least some of them – Assignment Suicide (1956), say, or Assignment Tokyo (1971) – in high regard. But the series as a whole fell out of print years ago, and beyond this biography by Sergio Rizzo (scroll down) and the sites already linked, you'd be hard pushed to find much of substance about either Durell or Aarons online.

Born Edward Sidney in Philadelphia in 1916, Aarons attended Columbia University, working as, among other occupations, a reporter, a salesman and a fisherman, and in 1933 winning a collegiate short story contest. In 1938 he published Death in a Lighthouse, the first of around thirty hardboiled mysteries and thrillers written under the pen name Edward Ronns, many starring newspaper editorial cartoonist Jerry Benedict. Aarons's writing career was interrupted when, following Pearl Harbor in 1941, he enlisted in the coast guard; upon returning to civilian life he gained a bachelor's degree in literature and history from Columbia, and resumed penning the Ronns novels, publishing at least one a year, and sometimes two or three, until 1962. He also, from 1948, began publishing novels under his own name, and once the Assignment series commenced in 1955, his already prodigious output increased even further, with the Sam Durell stories also appearing two or three times a year.

All of the Durell novels were published straight to paperback in the States by Fawcett/Gold Medal, under covers illustrated by the likes of Robert McGinnis, Barye Phillips and Charles Binger. In the UK, Frederick Muller issued the earlier Sam Durell adventures in paperback editions virtually identical to the US ones (only the cover price and prelims were changed), before Coronet picked up the softcover rights in 1966, publishing a good chunk of the series under photographic covers over the next ten or so years. But a number of the Assignments also made it into hardback in the UK. I wrote about the ones published by Gold Lion and White Lion in 1973/4 the other day, in particular Assignment Black Viking, but another British publisher beat Gold/White Lion to the punch, issuing half a dozen Durells in hardback in the mid- to late-1960s: Herbert Jenkins.

I speculated in that Black Viking post that Gold Lion had some kind of rolling line-wide deal with Gold Medal, and Jenkins evidently had a similar, earlier arrangement: they published dozens upon dozens of Gold Medal crime and spy fiction paperback originals into hardback around this period. Sometimes the dust jacket designs would take cues from the American covers – see Peter Rabe's My Lovely Executioner or Frank Castle's The Violent Hours – but the jackets for the Jenkins editions of the Assignment novels forged their own direction, ranging from the fully painted, to the design-led, to photographic treatments.

As far I've been able to determine, Jenkins's earliest Durell offering (they'd published a non-Durell novel, The Defenders – a tie-in to the old TV show – in hardback in 1962) was Assignment Suicide, the third Sam Durell mission (originally published by Gold Medal in 1956), which they issued in 1964 under a wrapper designed by Bill Payne. The story sees Sam Durell parachuted into the USSR to deal with an attempt by rogue Russian elements to launch a nuclear strike on the US, a plot that Barye Phillips interpreted rather more literally on the Gold Medal cover:

The only other Jenkins edition I've got my hands on to date – like Assignment Suicide, courtesy of Jamie Sturgeon – is Assignment Zorya, the eleventh Durell adventure, published by Jenkins in 1967 (Originally published by Gold Medal in 1960).

The jacket design is uncredited, but again it's markedly different to Charles Binger's Gold Medal cover art:

Other than those two hardbacks and the Gold Lion edition of Assignment Black Viking, my burgeoning Edward S. Aarons collection consists mainly of various paperback editions, most of which I acquired at this year's and last year's London Paperback and Pulp Bookfair:

And it's to the book on top of that pile that I'll be turning next: the debut Sam Durell thriller, Assignment to Disaster...

The Spy Novels of Donald Hamilton: The Wrecking Crew (Matt Helm #2), The Removers (Matt Helm #3) and The Silencers (Matt Helm #4), and Collecting Hamilton and Helm

Having reviewed the debut novel in Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series of spy thrillers, 1960's Death of a Citizen, in this second of three Helm-centric posts I thought I'd showcase some of the other Hamilton/Helm books I've acquired recently, in the process examining – in my traditionally tedious and prolix fashion – the publishing history of Hamilton's most famous creation. And let's begin with this:

Which is not, despite appearances to the contrary (for Hamilton/Helm aficionados, that is), the 1960 US Fawcett/Gold Medal paperback first edition/first printing of the second Matt Helm novel, The Wrecking Crew. No indeed. Because although it's virtually identical to the American version, it is, in fact, the 1961 UK paperback first edition, published by Frederick Muller in 1961. Muller frequently re-published Gold Medal paperbacks around this period – witness the Muller editions of Peter Rabe's Daniel Port crime thrillers in this post – their only changes being the replacement of the American price on the front cover with a British one, and a few lines on the copyright page:

So far as I've been able to establish, this was the first Matt Helm novel to be published in the UK. To my knowledge, the debut Helm, Death of a Citizen, didn't make it into print in Britain until Coronet/Hodder Fawcett published it in 1966, making The Wrecking Crew Helm's UK debut. (Muller, it seems, adopted a somewhat scattershot approach to the Gold Medal books they picked up for British publication, with no rhyme or reason as to which ones they chose.) Consequently, British readers must have been a bit perplexed in 1961 to be reading a sequel to a novel that hadn't actually appeared yet – there being a certain amount of continuity between the Matt Helm books. (Also consequently, all four Coronet printings of Death of a Citizen have become quite scarce in this country.)

(UPDATE 20/12/11: Existential Ennui reader Mark Martinez left a comment – see bottom of this post – letting me know that Muller did, in fact, publish Death of a Citizen, so the above is, in effect, nonsense. Mark has a great work-in-progress Donald Hamilton cover gallery, which can be found right here.) 

That's the 1966 and 1968 first and second printings of the Coronet edition of Death of a Citizen, there. Once Coronet started publishing the Helm novels, however, they issued all of them – including reissues of the scant few Muller had published – up to and including the seventeenth book in the series, 1976's The Retaliators (actually published in 1979 by Coronet in the UK – British publication commonly lagging behind American). Thereafter, though, no other British publisher picked up the rights, so while in the US, Fawcett/Gold Medal would go on to publish a further ten Matt Helm novels, in the UK, the series effectively ended with The Retaliators, making the latter books very hard to come by over here. Mind you, since all of the Helm novels are now out of print in the US as well (at least, for now...), those final ten books are in short supply on t'other side of the pond, too.

There's a small number of the various Coronet printings of The Wrecking Crew available from British sellers on the likes of AbeBooks at the moment, but this Muller edition is very scarce; I can't see any for sale online at present. The back cover reveals a little about the story – note also that blurb from Edward S. Aarons; that's a name that'll be cropping up again on Existential Ennui before too long – which sees a fully reactivated Helm sent to Sweden to off an enemy agent, but if you want to delve deeper into the tale I can heartily recommend the Unofficial Matt Helm website, which has dedicated pages for all twenty-seven novels, including this one, replete with fun facts about each instalment. Or, y'know, there's always Wikipedia.

One thing I can't do is tell you for certain who painted the cover of the Muller edition – which is the same as the original US edition, remember – although I suspect it might be the same artist as painted the cover of the third Matt Helm book I'll be showing in this already lengthy – and possibly destined to be gargantuan – post. (I'll also be exploring how the Gold Medal covers of the Helms changed when I get to that third book, so bear with me, cover art fans.) I do, however, know who painted the cover of this next book:

The 1962 Frederick Muller first British paperback edition (and first printing) of the third Matt Helm thriller, The Removers, originally published in paperback by Gold Medal in the States in 1961. As with The Wrecking Crew, the British cover is almost identical to the American one, and was painted (in both cases, obviously) by Barye Phillips (or possibly Philips, one "l"; opinions on the spelling of his surname differ, and he only ever signed his first name, so it's difficult to check), one of the more expressive and inventive artists in the Gold Medal stable. I blogged about Phil(l)ips in this post on Peter Rabe's The Box in January of this year, so go read that for more on the artist.

The story this time sees Helm – who's now been back working for Mac, his boss in the unnamed government counter-espionage unit, for a year – responding to a request for help from his ex-wife and in the process getting mixed up with – you guessed it – an enemy agent; head over to the Unofficial Matt Helm site for more details. The Muller edition of The Removers is slightly more readily available than The Wrecking Crew – but only slightly: there are currently just two copies on AbeBooks, one in the UK and the other in Australia.

Lastly, we have this:

Which, for a change, isn't the British first edition. Instead it's the American first edition/first printing of the fourth Matt Helm thriller, The Silencers, published by Gold Medal in paperback in February 1962. This particular – and particularly lovely – copy was originally owned A-Team writer and producer Frank Lupo, from whose impressive collection I also obtained – via Richard Thornton Books – US first editions of Donald E. Westlake's Dortmunder novels Drowned Hopes and What's the Worst That Could Happen? (the latter a signed first). Once again the Unofficial Matt Helm site has a good overview of The Silencers' story – which sees Helm attempting to extract an agent from Mexico – while the cover art on the Gold Medal first is by Bill Johnson, another Gold Medal mainstay who, as I say, I think painted The Wrecking Crew cover as well.

Coronet eventually issued The Silencers in the UK in 1966, but I don't believe Frederick Muller published this one in the UK at all – I can't see any trace of a Muller edition online. However, one thing you will notice if you search for US Gold Medal editions of The Silencers – or indeed of any of the first five Matt Helm novels – on Amazon or AbeBooks, is that most of the covers displayed by booksellers differ from the Bill Johnson one seen above. That's because having issued the initial five Matt Helm novels with covers that were typical of Gold Medals of the era but otherwise not identifiable as being part of a particular series, when the publisher reached the sixth book, 1963's The Ambushers, they finally settled on a style that would see them through the subsequent seven books, up to 1969's The Interlopers: a line drawing head shot of Helm in the top right-hand corner, and the book's title done as a kind of rubber-stamp. And once they'd adopted that style, Gold Medal then went back and reprinted the initial five Helms with covers in the same style, to bring them into line:

I gather the cover art on all of these is by John McDermott, about whom I know little other than he signed his work "MCD".

I'm just about ready to draw a line under this unintentionally mammoth post now (sighs of relief all round...), but a few points before we move on: if you'd like to learn more about Matt Helm, or indeed Donald Hamilton, you could do a lot worse than this Mystery*File essay by Doug Bassett on Helm (and John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels); this Mystery*File essay by John Fraser on Hamilton; and this overview of Hamilton's life and career. As is often the case with spy fiction writers, it was actually thanks to spy novelist (and friend of Existential Ennui) Jeremy Duns that I became aware of Donald Hamilton; Jeremy, who's a big fan of the Matt Helm books, had the opportunity to talk to Hamilton on the telephone a few years before the author's death in 2006, and you can read the results in this post on Jeremy's blog (which also details the "lost" twenty-eighth Helm novel, The Dominators).

You may have noticed that I've been showcasing paperback first editions in this post, rather than, as is the norm on Existential Ennui, hardback first editions. The reason for that is, during the thirty-plus years the twenty-seven Helm novels were being published, only one ever made it into hardback in the English language. So, for my third and final Hamilton/Helm post, I'll be revealing which one that was...

A Run of Rabes: The Box by Peter Rabe (Fawcett/Gold Medal), Barye Phillips Cover Art

For the second in this series of posts on cult crime writer Peter Rabe, we have another of the three Rabe books I bagged on eBay before Christmas, this one published ten years prior to the novel featured yesterday (which, for those who've either just joined us or have really rubbish memories, was 1972's War of the Dons):

A US paperback first edition/printing of The Box, published by Fawcett/Gold Medal in December 1962. The premise of this one is a cracker: a cargo ship docked at the (fictional) North African coastal town of Okar disgorges a crate the size of two telephone booths. There's an awful smell emanating from it, so the captain of the ship and the port clerk open it up... and find inside a filthy and deranged man. His name is Quinn, a mob lawyer who was nailed up in the box as punishment and sent on a round-the-world trip with enough provisions and water to keep him barely alive. What happens to him in Okar forms the basis of the rest of the story...

There's an instructive review of The Box on Amazon – instructive in that in demonstrates how baffling Rabe's work can appear on first inspection. Our perplexed critic notes that "The narrative contains a great deal of detailed description yet at the same time much is left to the reader's imagination", before declaring that "the overall narrative flow is neither smooth nor logic driven. One gets the impression that this story is an allegorical one... I'm sorry to say that any such deeper meaning was woefully lost on me."

I can see how The Box – indeed how many of Rabe's novels – might bemuse. The Box is littered with examples of Rabe's elliptical, allusive prose style (which I outlined yesterday). Here's a passage from early on in the book, a flashback to the aftermath of a confrontation between Quinn and an overweight mob boss:

After that, on the street, Quinn just walked. But it wasn't enough moving for all the holding still he had done. He concentrated on a dream that came out ugly and strong, red, with blue edges—and then I go over, cool as cool, I don't listen any more, I am cool as cool, fire inside though, fire in fist now, and suddenly ram that into the executive pouch—poof! plate jumps out, face collapses, fat lips hanging down, and I step on the plate, a crunch of pure pleasure—

Rabe is showing us those familiar thought processes we all run through in the aftermath of an argument or stand-off, fantasizing scenarios of how we should have handled it or how we might handle it in a similar situation (but probably never will). He uses plain language, but in unexpected ways, deploying colours for feelings, switching the narration to first person, finishing with that image of the false teeth popping out of the mob boss's mouth and then being crunched by Quinn. It's certainly not the kind of writing you expect to find in a pulpy paperback.

The cover painting for The Box is by Barye Phillips – or possibly Philips, with one 'l'; I've seen it spelled both ways online. Barye was a Gold Medal stalwart who began painting paperback covers around 1943, prior to which he worked for Columbia Pictures' advertising department; later in his life he was President of the Society of Illustrators from 1965-67 (the Society's website has the single 'l' spelling of his surname). There's a great cover gallery of his work on this blog, including a 1958 Signet paperback of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. He was possessed of a loose, sometimes expressive, painterly style, one that reminds me a little of Harry Bennett in the way it occasionally mixes line art with splashes of colour.

I like the logo for The Box too, which, appropriately, has been boxed. And it's interesting that, even back in 1962, it was recognised that Rabe was something special – witness that tagline about him being "one of the great stylists in suspense". Indeed he was.