This entry in Editions ERP's I Gialli dello Schedario's FBI series is a late one. It was number 259 and came in 1980, which is surprsing because we didn't realize ERP was still using painted cover art then. This one was the work of Mario Carìa, and Norman Forrest the author was actually—you guessed it—Renato Carocci, the guy who you could be forgiven for thinking wrote every Italian crime novel ever. You can check his output by clicking his keywords below, and you can see a small collection of FBI covers here. 

Above: a pretty nice cover with a bullseye motif for Angeli neri di Brooklyn by Thomas Wright, from Editions ERP, entry fifty-four in their I Gialli dello Schedario series, published in 1959. Wright was a pseudonym often used by author Aldo Crudo, who wrote more than four hundred books beginning in 1957. The cover artist is unknown to us. We thought it could be Mario Ferrari. Alternate option, there's a possible artist signature in red ink but we can't read it and it doesn't correspond to any we could find. It might be from the person who owned the book. We've run into book signers before. Anyway, we like the art. 

FBI Fichiers Secrets was a series of crime novels published in France by Rome-based Editions ERP during the early 1960s. The authors’ names are all pseudonyms—the books were really written by guys like Pino Belli, Aldo Crudo, Gualberto Titta, Nino Giannini, Gianfranco Parolini, and others. Above you see ten covers with top art from Mario Ferrari. You can see more masterworks from Ferrari here, here, and here. 

Above, a rather nice uncredited cover for Akeus Edwards’ Echec au F.B.I., number twelve in ERC’s series FBI Fichiers Secrets, aka Secret FBI Files, published in 1962. The series was originally published in Italy and, according to our friend over at Muller-Fokker, who helped us with info on this piece, "badly translated, like something out of Google translation." No surprise, then, that Akeus Edwards was a pseudonym for an Italian author named Rino Pele. Many pulp/sleaze authors used pen names, but the passage of time raises a question about such subterfuges. We get that they wanted to distance themselves from what they perceived to be low rent literature, but since the pen name thing makes it nearly impossible today to attribute certain books to their real authors, we wonder if any of them, if they were alive, would feel the entire practice was a bit self defeating. Just wondering. 

Above are some great covers for Editions ERP’s Super Policier series, which were published in France beginning around 1955. The authors here were all pseudonyms for guys like Mario Pinzauti, Pino Belli, Aldo Crudo, Franco Prattico, and a host of others. You may have noticed the distinctly Italian sounds of those names. Well, they were Italian, because ERP was based in Rome, but published in France. You may also notice, if you’re looking very closely, that the last cover is from ERP’s Super Détective series. We threw that in just because we liked it. The art on at least one of these covers is by Mario Carìa, and a few others are by Mario Ferrari, who we talked about here and here.

Above, a cover for the thriller Où est le cavadre, which as you might guess means, Where Is the Corpse?, a question the man involved here seems to be asking with some urgency. Well, if you can’t find a corpse you might as well make one yourself. This book, which appeared in France in 1962, actually originated in Italy with Editions ERP, where in 1961 it was published as part of their I Gialle dello Schedario series. The writer, Joe Vivard, was really Pino Belli, and wrote under several names, including Ricky Lambert, Steve Cockrane, and others. The excellent is art by Mario Ferrari, whose work we showed you a while back when we did a post of eleven I Gialle dello Schedario covers. See those here, and see more from Ferrari later. 

Eleven giallo, or yellow, thrillers from Editions ERP's I Gialli dello Schedario FBI series, mostly illustrated by Italian artist Mario Ferrari. More on him later.