A gringo detective with an agency in Mexico City is hired to locate his crooked ex-partner, who has bailed with the agency's money, and now is causing trouble for the client. The PI takes the job, glad to be paid to track down his betrayer, and starts in the Mexican town of Rio Bravo where the partner immediately turns up dead. From there the hero delves into local corruption, crosses the border to Texas, uncovers a human trafficking ring, meets a cantina dancer named Arden Kennett, deals with a dangerous wife, watches murders pile up and the police begin to suspect him, and learns that knives can be thrown just as effectively as they can be brandished.

The book was published in the U.S. as an Ace Double in 1959 with Paul Rader art and bound with Charles Fritch's Negative of a Nude, but the rare edition above is from Aussie imprint Phantom Books and appeared in 1960. We can't identify the artist, which is an affliction we've been dealing with quite a bit of late. But don't blame us—as we've mentioned once or twice before, including just a few days ago, Phantom didn't credit art, possibly because much of it was copied from U.S. editions. Many of the covers do, however, look like the same hand, so hopefully someone will be able to ID the owner of that hand at some point in the future.

Edward Ronns churned out about eighty novels over the course of his career, writing under his birth name Edward Aarons, and also as Paul Ayres. He wrote a novel called Death in the Lighthouse in 1938, which Australian imprint Phantom Books published as Cowl of Doom in 1954 with the curious cover art you see above. Plotwise, a man with a head injury—caused by a bullet—awakens in the apartment of woman he doesn't know and quickly realizes he's somehow lost three years. As usual, Phantom gives no artist info so we don't know who the brush behind this was. And yeah, we know we should stop ragging on Bieber, but we're getting better. Last time we compared him to Hitler.  

American Detective Magazine was a product of the Cleveland Publishing Company, which, ironically, was based neither in Cleveland nor anywhere else in the U.S., but in Australia. Or we should say is based, because the company launched in 1953 and still operates today. American Detective Magazine ran for several years, and featured exclusively stories by Australian authors, and awesome but uncredited femme fatale cover art. These examples are from the mid-1950s.

Above, a curious cover for Gwen Pearce's Deep Sea Nurse, from the Australian imprint Calvert Publishing, 1966. Pearce wrote several other novels, all about nursing, including 1970's Snowline Nurse, which we're guessing takes her protagonist to an alpine mountaintop. We found this cover on the University of Otago's medical romance page. They have a few more interesting examples if you're inclined to have a look.

We finally picked up a new scanner and life is good again. You may have noticed the difference in recent uploads. No moire patterns. No weird rainbows. All clean. You may also have noticed the website looks a bit different. We were making some changes over the holidays and got caught in the middle, but we'll finish everything as soon as we can and get it all working properly again. We know, we know. We're really slow with this stuff. But we'll get there.

Meanwhile, today we have for your enjoyment an issue of Australia's Adam magazine, published this month in 1972 with a cover illustrating Martin Rudyard's tale “The Mafia Oil Stakes,” about an organized crime cartel trying to take over a group of Oklahoma oil fields. Most of the owners sell out, but one stubborn cuss refuses, and sabotage followed by violence soon results. The climactic fight takes place against the backdrop of an oil well conflagration. A femme fatale is at the root of all this craziness, and her name is Angela Fierce. Sometimes writers try a little too hard, don't they?

The inside cover star, just above, is Lois Mitchell, someone we've been meaning to feature. She was a popular glamour model during the ’70s, and appeared in copious amounts of high quality images shot by men's magazine contributors Ron Vogel, Edmund Leja, and others. The photo appearing here is new to the internet as far as we can tell. We have thirty-some scans of today's Adam, forty-eight other issues inside the website, and about thirty more we plan on sharing down the line.

Above is a really nice cover for an issue of Australia's Adam magazine published this month in 1969. The art illustrates John Dean's story “Aces High,” which is about an undercover operative trying to take down an organized crime kingpin. His way in is a Casino Royale style high stakes poker game, where he's surprised to find that his girlfriend is the arm candy of the kingpin. In the final shootout the girlfriend helps the agent take out the crooks, and we and the boyfriend learn that she's also an agent working undercover—deep undercover—to set up the crooks for the police. We've read better. We've read worse. We'll give Dean credit for deftly working the titillation angle of the girlfriend repeatedly bedding the kingpin so that he would thrust fully in her—er, we mean trust fully in her.

Love in Dishevelment by David Greenhood deals with a man and woman in New York City who decide to live together, something that was severely frowned upon in 1948 when the book was first published, especially for two upstanding professionals like the couple in the story. There's also an out-of-wedlock baby, even more frowned upon, and these and other elements led to the book being banned in Australia, though on the whole you could call the story a romance. Greenhood, who also wrote non-fiction and poetry, takes a literary approach here, and he earned good reviews. This Fawcett-Crest edition appeared in 1955 with cover art from James Meese.

The Maltese Falcon is considered by most scholars to be the first major film noir. It was also one of the best, with legendary talents John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, and Peter Lorre coming together to make magic. Mary Astor was excellent too. This must-see film premiered in the U.S. today in 1941, but the poster above—one you don't see often—was made for its run in Australia. Put this film in the queue if you haven't seen it. And if you have, well, watch it again.

Love Me Sailor was originally published in 1945 by the Australian imprint Georgian House and what a bombshell it was. After much legal wrangling it was banned in 1948 and author Robert S. Close was tossed in prison. His sentence was three months but he served only ten days. He's the only Australian ever jailed for writing a book. After his release he left in disgust for France and didn't return for twenty-five years. Even then he stayed only briefly before leaving again and living the rest of his life on Mallorca.