Vintage Pulp | Feb 3 2016 |
Whew! What a swim. I love this isolated old cottage. No stress, no phone, all the problems of the world just gone...
The Crooked Man, written by Shelley Smith for Doubleday & Co.'s Perma Star subsidiary, is the story of a man who survives by cheating people out of their money. Technically he'd be considered a serial killer, but only goes that far if there's no other way. Other times he relies on more complex methods such as marrying to get at women's dowries or bank accounts. His various schemes go fine until—spoiler alert—they don't, and the past comes back to undo him. It was first published in 1952 as Man Alone, and appeared as the above in 1954. The art, which we love, is by George Erickson, whose consistently excellent work we've shared previously here and here.