Westlake on Rabe: Murder Me for Nickels & Anatomy of a Killer by Peter Rabe (Gold Medal, 1960 / Panther, 1962)

NB: A version of this post also appears at The Violent World of Parker. Featured in Friday's Forgotten Books.

In his 1989 essay on Peter Rabe for the critical anthology Murder off the Rack, Donald E. Westlake identified two distinct periods during which, Westlake reckoned, Rabe produced his best work. The first came at the start of Rabe's career, encompassing the five books from Stop This Man! (1955) to Kill the Boss Good-by (1956). The second – also encompassing five books – began in 1959 and comprised the final Daniel Port novel, Time Enough to Die, along with My Lovely Executioner (1960), The Box (1962), and the final two novels I'll be blogging about in this current run of Rabe posts: Murder Me for Nickels and Anatomy of a Killer (both 1960).

Only the second of Rabe's novels to be narrated in the first person (the first being the aforementioned My Lovely Executioner), for Westlake Murder Me for Nickels was "absolutely unlike anything that [Rabe] had done before... as sprightly and glib as My Lovely Executioner was depressed and glum". Westlake isn't alone in appreciating the merits of the novel, either: it's also a particular favourite of Westlake aficionado and The Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, who has called it "marvelously sardonic". And the Gold Medal original – this copy of which I found at the last-but-one London Paperback & Pulp Bookfair – boasts one of the best covers ever to grace a Peter Rabe book, by the great Robert McGinnis.

But for anyone looking for the single Rabe novel that perhaps exerted the greatest influence on Westlake, especially on his pseudonymous (as Richard Stark) Parker series, I'd still point to Anatomy of a Killer. I blogged about this one two years ago, in its original hardback edition – published, as Westlake puts it in his essay, by "a penny-ante outfit called Abelard-Schuman" – that post later appearing in an altered form over at The Violent World of Parker. In order to demonstrate the similarities between Anatomy and the Parkers I quoted extensively from the opening of the novel, and would you Adam and Eve it that's precisely what Westlake does too, sampling the exact same passage – including the opening "When" – and labelling the novel "as cold and clean as a knife".

The copy seen here is the British paperback edition, published by Panther in 1962 as part of their Crime Circle line. The cover art is uncredited and I can't make out the signature, but around this time Panther had a habit of taking cover art from often random and unrelated American paperbacks and reusing it, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that this artwork is lifted from a completely different book.

UPDATE: Ray Garraty quickly identified the original book the cover art was taken from as Harry Whittington's 1959 novel Strange Bargain, as seen on Killer Covers. No word as yet on cover artist, although that signature could be "Darcy", an alias of Ernest Chiriaka.

I do have a handful of other Peter Rabe paperbacks to blog about, dating from the mid-1960s to the early '70s, but Westlake doesn't have much to say about those in his essay, so I think I'll save them for another time. But before I leave Rabe behind, there is one last book of his I'd like to take a look at – an atypical entry in his canon that has a special significance for me right now...

Richard Stark's Parker Novels: Westlake Scores; Gold Medal First Edition Gallery, Robert McGinnis Cover Art

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

So apparently there's some movie out in the States starring Jason Statham and based on the nineteenth novel in a twenty-four-book series featuring a cold-hearted taciturn career criminal. Dunno what that's all about, but whatever it is, I'm certainly not about to let it distract me from the task in hand (especially since said film isn't out here in the UK until March) – namely: blogging about a bunch of vintage Parker crime novels I've recently come into possession of. Because in a really quite remarkable multiple Westlake Score, a couple of weeks ago I managed to get my filthy mitts on four – count 'em, four – US first edition paperback originals of Donald E. "Richard Stark" Westlake's Parker novels, all from the same local book dealer. What's more, three of them comprise a run of the first three Gold Medal editions of the Parkers (the fourth I'm saving for a separate post as it dates from earlier in the series), and are in about the best condition I'm ever likely to see, with nary a cracked spine between them.

To recap (yet again – feel free to skip this paragraph if you're already au fait with the publishing facts from previous posts... or indeed if you have a life): in 1967 Fawcett/Gold Medal acquired the rights to the Parker novels from previous rights-holders Pocket Books, who published the initial eight Parkers from The Hunter (1962) to The Handle (1966). Gold Medal would go on to publish the next four books in the series and bring The Hunter and The Seventh (1966) back into print under new titles reflecting their movie adaptations, i.e. Point Blank! and The Split respectively. Whereas the Pocket Parkers all had cover art by Harry Bennett, the Gold Medal Parkers had cover art by Robert McGinnis.

Anyway, back at the start of the year, I was idly perusing AbeBooks looking for a cheap, decent condition first edition of the eighteenth Parker novel, Backflash – my battered ex-library copy being in danger of falling apart – when I came across a listing from a bookseller based in Brighton (just down the road from where I live in Lewes): Alan White Fine Books. I was immediately intrigued; I'd been under the impression that I was aware of every secondhand bookseller in the area, and yet here was one I hadn't come across before. I took a look at Alan's website and discovered that he had a number of other Richard Stark books besides Backflash (he still has... just not quite as many now)... including some American paperback originals, all in reportedly excellent condition. A number of emails later, and as well as the copy of Backflash (I'll be offloading my ex-library copy onto a local charity shop soon, so look out for it, fellow Lewesians), for a very reasonable price I had procured the following:

The Rare Coin Score, Parker #9, published in the US in paperback by Gold Medal in 1967. This was Gold Medal's first Parker, and it boasts to my mind Robert McGinnis's best representation of the man himself – looking, incidentally, not unlike Josh Brolin, who I reckon would've been a much more suitable choice for the lead in the above-mentioned movie featuring a cold-hearted taciturn career criminal. Ahem.

The Green Eagle Score, Parker #10, also published by Gold Medal in 1967, again with McGinnis cover art. Now, this one might ring a bell with Existential Ennui/Violent World of Parker regulars, as I blogged about this very same edition in both places in November as a Westlake Score, which I won on eBay. That copy was a bit battered, however, whereas this one is in pristine condition. And if it strikes you as odd that a body would buy two copies of exactly the same book... well, you clearly haven't spent enough time lurking on Existential Ennui.

And the third and final Gold Medal Parker I acquired from Alan White was The Black Ice Score, Parker #11, published by Gold Medal in 1968, cover art by McGinnis. In truth this is one of my least favourite Parkers, but I saw a copy of the Gold Medal edition get snapped up right in front of my eyes at last year's London Paperback & Pulp Bookfair before I could reach it, which kind of rankled (us collectors can be sore losers), so I was dead chuffed to find this lovely copy in Alan's possession. And even more chuffed to relieve him of it.

And since I already have these on my shelves:

Point Blank!, published by Gold Medal in 1967 (McGinnis cover art), and:

The Split, published by Gold Medal in 1968 (McGinnis cover art again), that means I now only need the Gold Medal edition of The Sour Lemon Score (Parker #12, 1969) in order to complete my Richard Stark/Gold Medal collection. Rest assured that I'll be posting an equally prolix update if and when I obtain one.

The Green Wound and The Silken Baroness (Joe Gall / Nullifier Spy Series) by Philip Atlee, alias James Atlee Phillips (Gold Medal, 1963/64)

For this final post in this series on vintage paperbacks – for now, anyway; there'll doubtless be more old paperbacks in the new year – I thought I'd showcase a pair of Gold Medal spy fiction originals: one boasting cover art by an artist who'll be familiar to fans of Donald "Richard Stark" Westlake's Parker crime series; the other boasting cover art by another artist who'll be familiar to Parker fans:

The Green Wound and The Silken Baroness by Philip Atlee, published straight to paperback in the US by Fawcett/Gold Medal in, respectively, 1963 and 1964 (although the edition of The Green Wound seen here is the near-identical British one, published by Frederick Muller in 1964). The cover artist on The Green Wound is Harry Bennett, the man responsible for the covers of the initial eight Parker novels published by Pocket Books from 1962 to 1966; the cover artist on The Silken Baroness is Robert McGinnis, the man responsible for the ensuing four Parkers published by Gold Medal from 1967 to 1969, plus two reissues. I've written about both artists repeatedly – follow their tags at the bottom of this post for more – so I shan't cover old ground again here, except to note that it's interesting to see their different approaches to the material: loose and expressive in Bennett's case, tighter and more traditionally illustrative in McGinnis's, who still manages to include a nod to abstraction in the form of the canvas in the background.

The Green Wound and The Silken Baroness are both narrated by CIA agent Joe Gall, who would go on to star in a further twenty novels – all of them bearing the legend "Contract" in their titles (for subsequent printings, the first two books in the series would become The Green Wound Contract and The Silken Baroness Contract) – in the process assuming the sobriquet "The Nullifier" (unfortunately "The Liquidator" and "The Eliminator" were already taken). Gall actually made his debut in an earlier novel, Pagoda, written under Atlee's real name, James Atlee Phillips, and published by Macmillan in 1951, but as the estimable Bill Crider points out, though it's the same character, it's not technically part of the series – for one thing, it's written in the third person rather than the later books' first.

All of the Joe Gall books fell out of print decades ago, but they're fondly remembered by paperback enthusiasts – witness George Kelley's overview at Mystery*File and its attendant comments. And on the strength of The Green Wound – which is the only Gall I've read thus far – there's certainly merit in them: a tough cynicism leavened by a surprisingly adroit facility with the written word (Gall reveals early on that he used to be a writer), and a mystery that remains intriguingly opaque until very late in the tale. It has to be said, however, that a modern day reader might find the notion of a white secret agent pitted against a black conspiracy – led by a character operating under the alias Uncle Tom Asmodeus, and funded by enforced prostitution and white slavery – somewhat uncomfortable (this modern day reader did, anyway), and as this follow-up Mystery*File post notes, other books in the series also suffer from issues to do with the depiction of race. Then again, that's not exactly uncommon with old thrillers – and according to Atlee Phillips's friend, Don Walsh – and to Atlee Phillips's credit – the eighth Joe Gall outing, The Skeleton Coast Contract (1968), apparently earned the author the ire of South Africa's apartheid regime.

Of course, like other spy thriller writers, Atlee Phillips was reflecting, and to a degree sensationalising, the real life events of his era, whether that be racial conflict or, potentially, nuclear conflict. But it seems he also had a rather more direct insight into America and the CIA's involvement in certain events. Not only did he have firsthand experience of intelligence work in the 1950s – as confirmed by both Don Walsh and Atlee Phillips's son, the musician Shawn Phillips – but secondhand as well, in the shape of his brother, David Atlee Phillips: for twenty years a high-ranking officer in the CIA, and one of the architects of the Bay of Pigs invasion – a fiasco which, oddly enough, Joe Gall states in The Green Wound was the catalyst for his taking an extended leave of absence from the CIA.

And that's yer lot for this year as regards paperbacks. If, heaven forfend, you've missed any of my recent posts on vintage softcovers, there are links below; but next on Existential Ennui: my review of the year in books and comics – 2012 edition.

The 2012 London Paperback & Pulp Bookfair

Man Hungry, Sally and Backstage Love by Donald E. Westlake

The Score by Richard Stark

The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution by Donald E. Westlake

Edward S. Aarons and the Sam Durell/Assignment Spy Series

Assignment to Disaster by Edward S. Aarons

The Green Eagle Score by Richard Stark

The Big Bounce by Elmore Leonard

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

The Sound of His Horn by Sarban

The Stories of Ray Bradbury

Vintage British Patricia Highsmith Paperbacks

The Deep Blue Goodbye/Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald

A Purple Place for Dying by John D. MacDonald

Elmore Leonard's Debut Crime Novel: The Big Bounce; First Edition (Gold Medal, 1969); Robert McGinnis Cover Art; Review

NB: A Friday Forgotten Book.

From a Gold Lion original sporting a Robert McGinnis cover, next in this series of posts on paperbacks, another Gold Medal original, once again sporting a Robert McGinnis cover:

Elmore Leonard's The Big Bounce, published straight to paperback in the States by Fawcett/Gold Medal in 1969. This copy came from the basement of a Cecil Court secondhand bookshop, for less than a tenner – quite a nice find, considering the only copies I've seen online are in the US and listed for rather more than a tenner (and with postage on top), and the book's significance. Because The Big Bounce was Elmore Leonard's first crime novel – or, more accurately, his first contemporaneously set novel. Up to this point in his career, Leonard had published only westerns – novels and short stories – pretty successfully in the 1950s, with two of them, 3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T (alias The Captives) – more on that one later – being made into films in 1957. As soon as he decided to leave his ad agency job in 1960, however, the western market died on its arse; as Leonard explains in his introduction to the 1989 Armchair Detective Library edition of The Big Bounce, for most of the rest of the decade he "wrote ads, promotional material, industrial and educational films, everything but cocktail napkins and not a word of fiction". Eventually, the movie rights for his 1961 novel Hombre sold, and Leonard used the money to fund the writing of his "first novel with a contemporary setting, Mother, This is Jack Ryan".

Eighty-four (!) rejections, one rewrite and a title change later (although the line the original title was inspired by is still in the book), The Big Bounce found a home as a novel at Gold Medal and as a movie at Warner Bros. The film, directed by Alex March and starring Ryan O'Neil and Leigh Taylor-Young, is by all accounts a bit of a stinker – and the 2004 version isn't much better regarded – but the novel is terrific; not Leonard at his absolute best – that would come later with the likes of Stick, Get Shorty and Pronto – but not far off. Even at this early stage in his career, Leonard had a prose style all his own: lilting, deceptively easygoing, yet focused and intense; clever, lightly handled but thorough character work; and that gloriously naturalistic and yet still idiosyncratically Elmore-esque dialogue.

The plot isn't terribly complicated, but then Elmore Leonard plots rarely are; that aspect of writing just isn't that important to him. A young drifter, Jack Ryan (no relation to Tom Clancy's later CIA analyst-turned-president), takes a job working as a handyman at a Michigan lakeside cabana complex owned by local justice of the peace Walter Majestyk (no relation to Vincent Majestyk from Leonard's own Mr. Majestyk). Majestyk has seen film footage of Ryan using a baseball bat in a fight and so knows he has a self-destructive streak; but he also sees something worthwhile in the younger man, and does what he can to help him out – with a certain amount of resistance on Ryan's part. But then Ryan, who has a string of minor robberies in his past and has already turned over one local property, gets mixed up with Nancy, the manipulative mistress of Ray Ritchie, the rich farm owner for whom Ryan briefly worked as a picker – and Nancy has a plan for stealing fifty grand from Ritchie.

Everything flows from character in an Elmore Leonard novel: the decisions the protagonists take and the ramifications of those decisions; the things they say or do to one another and the consequences of those actions. It helps that Leonard has a forensic eye for character – not in an overwritten, overly intrusive sense – for really, how well can we truly know one another (something that Leonard-through-Ryan reflects on late in the novel: "What good was being cool if you weren't you? Whoever you are, Ryan thought") – but in the way he observes the little details: a certain look shot across a bar booth; the cocked head and corner-of-an-eye glance when combing one's hair in the mirror; the idle daydreams of a bored female holidaymaker, fantasizing about Ryan sweeping her off her feet.

Ryan is the archetypal Leonard male lead: quick-tempered, ready to stand up for himself (there's a memorably bruising but ultimately amusing encounter with Ray Ritchie's right hand man, Bob Jr.), sometimes kind of dumb, unselfconscious for the most part, but also self-aware and thoughtful. In fact, so archetypal is Ryan that Leonard admits in that 1989 introduction to The Big Bounce (reproduced here) that "All of my male leads... even in the westerns, resemble Jack Ryan in that they have much the same basic attitude about their own existence, what’s important and what isn’t", adding, "Jack Ryan might possibly have become a continuing character aging along with his maker, if it were not for the fact that each time you sell a film rights to a studio, they own the character for a specified number of years. So I change the names." Or rather, some of the names: like Raylan Givens and Ernest Stickley, Ryan would be granted the honour of another starring role, this time in 1977's Unknown Man No. 89.

The one character in The Big Bounce I struggled with was Nancy. She's so bored, feckless, destructive and malicious it's a wonder any man falls for her, let alone Ryan, who has to constantly fight the urge to boot her in the behind and bugger off out of it. As it turns out, though, Nancy has her basis in a particular type of Los Angeles lass, characterised in a February 1967 issue of Esquire as "The New American Woman", and described by Hollywood literary agent H. N. Swanson as girls looking for "the bounce". The bounce in this case being the scheme to grab Ritchie's money – although latterly Nancy concocts an even bigger, rather more deadly bounce.

The Big Bounce marked the end of one phase of Elmore Leonard's career and the beginning of another, one which would come to define him as a writer. Appropriately, there's a sly parting farewell to the wild west form in the novel: during one of their misadventures, Ryan and Nancy spy on Walter Majestyk while Majestyk is watching television in his house. Ryan recognises the Randolph Scott horse opera the older man is engrossed in – "a good one", Ryan recalls, and then listens intently to "the part where Randolph goes in the cave after the guy named Billy Jack... jams the sawed-off shotgun under Billy Jack's chin and wham the guy's face disappears quick, the way it would happen, without one of those fakey fights." The western in question? The Tall T.

Next in this run of paperback posts: things take a turn for the science fictional...

Westlake Score: The Green Eagle Score (Parker #10) by Richard Stark (Gold Medal, 1967); Robert McGinnis Cover Art

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

As trailed at the end of that post on Edward S. Aarons's Gold Medal spy novel Assignment to Disaster, I've got lots more lovely paperbacks lined up for you over the coming weeks – terrific books by the likes of Patricia Highsmith, Richard Matheson and Elmore Leonard; published by such iconic imprints as Pan, Corgi and Gold Medal; and featuring spectacular cover illustrations by the likes of Sam Peffer, Harry Bennett... and the man responsible for the cover art of this latest Westlake Score:

Robert McGinnis, here painting to my mind one of his best visualizations of Donald E. "Richard Stark" Westlake's taciturn antihero Parker. Published straight to paperback in the US in 1967, The Green Eagle Score was the tenth novel to star Parker, but only the second to be published by Fawcett/Gold Medal (second new one, anyway; Gold Medal also reissued the first Parker outing, The Hunter, in 1967, as Point Blank); the eight novels prior to the preceding Parker, The Rare Coin Score, were all issued by Pocket Books.

I'm not sure how many "Top Five Parkers" lists The Green Eagle Score would feature in, but it's a solid Top Ten, I think, at least once you get your eye in as regards the greater series. In his brilliant book-by-book overview of the Westlake canon, Ethan Iverson memorably recalls how The Green Eagle Score was the first Parker he read, and how he "could not understand how dry as dust, simple, and matter of fact it was". By this point in the series, Westlake/Stark's prose is so stripped back, so deadpan and impassive it's almost zen-like in its doggedness: just the facts, ma'am. And yet this is deceptive; the novel's opening paragraph is a perfect example of the Stark less-is-more approach, of how much Westlake crams in with so few words:

Parker looked in at the beach and there was a guy in a black suit standing there, surrounded by all the bodies in bathing suits. He was standing near Parker’s gear, not facing anywhere in particular, and he looked like a rip in the picture. The hotel loomed up behind him, white and windowed, the Puerto Rican sun beat down, the sea foamed white on the beach, and he stood there like a homesick mortician.

I shared some other thoughts about the book back in 2010, so I shan't go over old ground again here, except to note that I like The Green Eagle Score enough that spotting and then winning this copy of the Gold Medal first edition on eBay was an unexpected thrill. As I've mentioned before, it's unusual to see US paperback firsts of the Parkers on this side of the pond, and nabbing them gives me the opportunity to hold little pieces of publishing history in my hands; to discover things about them – for example, the opening page of The Green Eagle Score:

Which affords a glimpse into Fawcett's marketing strategy for the book, positioning master thief Parker alongside other characters in the Gold Medal stable: two spies – Philip Atlee's Joe Gall and Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm – and a salvage consultant. Matt Helm I've blogged about before, but it just so happens that Messrs Gall and McGee – the latter created, of course, by John D. MacDonald – will be appearing later in this run of paperback posts. But next: another Gold Medal novel, published a couple of years after The Green Eagle Score, one which again boasts a Robert McGinnis cover, and marks the crime fiction debut of one of America's greatest writers.

Westlake Score: The Split by Richard Stark (Gold Medal, 1968); Robert McGinnis Cover Art

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

After a run of Patricia Highsmith posts, it's time for a Westlake Score – and further evidence, as if any were needed, of the madness which consumes me. Because despite already owning three different editions of the seventh Richard Stark Parker novel – both under its original title of The Seventh (the 1966 US Pocket Books paperback first edition) and its later title of The Split (a 1969 UK Hodder movie tie-in paperback, and a 1985 UK Allison & Busby hardback) – I've now acquired a fourth edition on eBay:

A 1968 US Gold Medal paperback printing. Really, I can offer little in the way of defence here. I mean, The Seventh/The Split is one of my favourite Parkers, and this edition does boast Robert McGinnis cover art (featuring Parker modelling a fetching roll-neck), and furthermore copies of the Gold Medal paperback aren't easy to come by here in Britain; but even given all that, I'm still not sure I can justify this purchase – except that it does give me an opportunity to point out that, as with the 1967 Gold Medal edition of Point Blank, which is often mistakenly credited as being published in 1962 due to the appearance of a "Copyright © 1962" line in the indicia, the Gold Medal paperback of The Split – which, again like Point Blank, was retitled in order to tie in to its then-forthcoming movie adaptation – often suffers a similar fate; just take a look at the listings on AbeBooks, half of which are currently incorrect. Reason for that being the same as for Point Blank: 

The only indication of pub date is the copyright line from the original publication.

...Yeah, I'm clutching at straws for justification even there, aren't I?

No matter. At least this post gives us another opportunity to gaze at that great McGinnis cover art. And next week I should have a pair of much more interesting Westlake Scores, neither of which, to my knowledge, have ever been shown online before, making them Violent World of Parker/Existential Ennui exclusives. Mind you, I haven't seen the covers of either of the books yet (they're currently en route), so we could all be in for a crushing disappointment if they turn out to be the same as the American editions...

Next on Existential Ennui, though: it's the return of Anthony Price...

Dan J. Marlowe and Earl Drake, 5: Collecting the Man with Nobody's Face, inc. Bibliography

(NB: A version of this post also appears on The Violent World of Parker blog.)

For Part 1, go here; for Part 2, here; for Part 3, here; and for Part 4, go here.

Dan J. Marlowe's final Earl Drake espionage adventure, Operation Counterpunch, appeared in 1976, by which point the series numbered twelve volumes, including the initial two hard-boiled crime works, The Name of the Game is Death (1962) and One Endless Hour (1969). In the States all of the novels had been published as paperback originals by Fawcett Gold Medal, which meant that in the UK, Hodder Fawcett/Coronet had acquired the rights (much as Coronet had begun publishing Richard Stark's Parker novels once Fawcett in the US picked up the rights as of 1967's The Rare Coin Score). But as it happened, Coronet wasn't the only publisher to issue the Earl Drake novels in Britain in the early '70s...

In 1973, British publisher Gold Lion (no relation to Gold Medal... I don't think) issued the initial six Earl Drake novels over successive month... all of them in hardback with dustjackets – the only time any of Marlowe's novels have appeared in that format. Evidently Gold Lion – a publisher which would only exist for a couple of years – were on something of an American crime thriller acquisition spree at that juncture, because in the same year they also published three Parker novels as hardbacks – see this post from last year. Like those three Parkers, the dustjacket designs on the Drakes were variously illustrative and photographic – perhaps the most striking being the photo covers of The Name of the Game is Death (the interior of which is the revised 1973 Gold Medal text) and Operation Fireball – and also like those Parkers, all of the Drake hardbacks have since become incredibly scarce. To give you an indication, at present AbeBooks has just four Drake Gold Lions listed, three of those being copies of the same book, Operation Breakthrough.

Over in the States all twelve of the Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks – two of which, Operations Fireball and Flashpoint, boast Robert McGinnis cover art (the latter of those, in its 1972 retitled edition, I nabbed at November's London Paperback & Pulp Bookfair) – can be acquired fairly easily online, although if you're seeking first editions, it can be a bit of a minefield working out which are first printings and which are later printings. One thing to bear in mind especially is which version of the debut Drake, The Name of the Game is Death, you want. As I outlined in the previous post, for hard-boiled crime aficionados, the original 1962 printing is probably preferable (if pricey; a cheaper alternative is the later Black Lizard edition of that version), while for those with more of an interest in the Earl Drake series as a whole, the 1973 revised edition may well suit.

In the UK, only the revised edition was ever published, in hardback by the aforementioned Gold Lion in 1973 under the novel's original title, and in paperback by Coronet that same year under the new title Operation Overkill, although retaining the interior running head The Name of the Game is Death:

Coronet issued all of the Drake novels – bar the final one, which to my knowledge they never published – from 1972 to 1977, although not always in the correct order (I believe they actually began with the sixth one, Operation Drumfire). They did, however, add the appellation "Operation" to all of the titles, even One Endless Hour, which became Operation Endless Hour. The covers of the Coronet editions are all variations on the same theme, a curious mixture of photography and illustration, with a photo of leggy model – the same model on each cover, I believe – collaged into line-and-wash artwork, all set against a white background. I rather like them.

Most of the Coronet editions are in relatively plentiful supply online, apart from the first two, Operation Overkill and Operation Endless Hour, which are becoming uncommon, and the final Drake novel Coronet published, Operation Deathmaker, which is highly uncommon. As for the final Drake novel overall, Operation Counterpunch, the only option there if you want a copy is the US Gold Medal edition.

Mind you, I say the final Drake novel overall: there's a level of disagreement online as to the correct running order of the entire series. Each of the four bibliographies I've been referring to throughout this run of posts – Mystery*File, Thrilling Detective, Fantastic Fiction and Spy Guys & Gals – has the books in a slightly different order. This confusion seems to have arisen because Gold Medal, who originally didn't number the books at all, introduced a numbering system midway through the run, adding numbers to the covers of the earlier volumes as they reprinted them. But then to add to the muddle, it appears as if the publisher numbered some volumes earlier or later than where in the sequence they originally appeared.

For my Earl Drake bibliography I've gone with the Spy Guys & Gals running order, even though the copyright dates given suggest that Spy Guys & Gals used the later Gold Medal numbering. I've done this partly because, broadly speaking, I've found the site to be accurate in matters to do with spy fiction (although I'll happily revise the running order if a compelling case to do so is presented to me), but also because their list handily includes pithy synopses of all of the novels and a fair-minded overview. The Gold Medal pub dates I've chiefly taken from the Mystery*File bibliography (which in turn was adapted from Allen J. Hubin's Crime Fiction IV), while the Gold Lion and Coronet pub dates I researched myself.

(UPDATE: It's since been pointed out by Violent World of Parker reader Jason that the Thrilling Detective running order is the correct one, so I've changed the below bibliography accordingly.)

DAN J. MARLOWE'S EARL DRAKE NOVELS: A BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. The Name of the Game is Death (US Fawcett Gold Medal PB, 1962; revised edn. 1973 / UK Gold Lion HB, 1973) / Operation Overkill (UK Hodder Fawcett Coronet PB, 1973)

2. One Endless Hour (US Gold Medal PB, 1969 / UK Gold Lion HB, 1973) / Operation Endless Hour (UK Coronet PB, 1975)

3. Operation Fireball (US Gold Medal PB, 1969 / UK Gold Lion HB, 1973 / UK Coronet PB, 1974)

4. Flashpoint (US Gold Medal PB, 1970) / Operation Flashpoint (US Gold Medal PB, 1972 / UK Gold Lion HB, 1973 / UK Coronet PB, 1973)

5. Operation Breakthrough (US Gold Medal PB, 1971 / UK Gold Lion HB, 1973 / UK Coronet PB, 1973)
 
6. Operation Drumfire (US Gold Medal PB, 1972 / UK Coronet PB, 1972 / UK Gold Lion HB, 1973)

7. Operation Checkmate (US Gold Medal PB, 1972 / UK Coronet PB, 1973)

8. Operation Stranglehold (US Gold Medal PB, 1973 / UK Coronet PB, 1974)

9. Operation Whiplash (US Gold Medal PB, 1973 / UK Coronet PB, 1974)

10. Operation Hammerlock (US Gold Medal PB, 1974 / UK Coronet PB, 1975)

11. Operation Deathmaker (US Gold Medal PB, 1975 / UK Coronet PB, 1977)

12. Operation Counterpunch (US Gold Medal PB, 1976)

Next up on Existential Ennui: the return of Raylan Givens...