I just rediscovered a short piece I wrote some time ago about Jacques Futrelle. My friend Lou Boxer, organizer for Philadelphia's Noircon, posted this on the Noircon blog. I've written about Futrelle here before, so much of what you'll read will be repetition. But it's a fun piece - if I may say so myself.

Doubleday Crime Club, part 1

Beginning in 1928, the American publisher Doubleday, Doran began issuing titles under the imprint The Crime Club. These books were accompanied by a cute logo that looked, depending on how you stared at it, either like a man holding a gun, or a man falling (after having been shot?). A closer examination reveals that the logo is comprised of stylized versions of the letters C-R-I-M-E.The Doubleday Crime Club was not a book-of-the-month type of enterprise. They did offer a subscription service, and subscribers saved a little bit of money (what amounted to postage). But the books issued by the Crime Club were not inexpensive copies. In fact, they were among the finest hardcover editions of mystery and detective fiction of the time.

(In later years, the Book of the Month Club did work out an arrangement with Doubleday, so you can find Doubleday Crime Club volumes that are also what collectors call "Book Club editions." Confused yet?)

Above and to the right are several Crime Club volumes, mostly from the mid-1930s, showing some of the clever embossed spine art from that period. Even without dustjackets, these were beautiful books.

Here is a sampling of books from my shelves, all with nice dustjackets, and dating from 1928 through 1931.

As time permits, I'll be posting more trivia, artwork, and history of the Crime Club.

Meanwhile, be sure to visit my regular weekly blog-gig over at Criminal Brief. You'll find my column there every Friday.

Collecting
Dell Mapbacks

Between 1942 and 1962 (according to William H. Lyles, Putting Dell on the Map) Dell Publishing Company put out 2,168 paperbacks. Their first (Dell #1) was Philip Ketchum's Death in the Library The back cover sported an eye peeking through a keyhole, and the blurb:

This is a DELL BOOK
presenting a new exciting Mystery Series selected by the
Editors of America's Foremost Detective Magazines.

The second, third, and fourth books are pictured above, and bore the same back cover content. With Dell #5, Four Frightened Women by George Harmon Coxe, Dell decided to do something new. They included a "Scene of the Murder in 'Four Frightened Women'" on the back cover. It was a hit, and the tradition continued with a total of 577 maps, diagrams, or blueprints adorning their back covers.

(When Ellery Queen's The American Gun Mystery (Dell #4) was reprinted, a map was added to the back cover, replacing the original content).

Dell Mapbacks have fun cover art: sometimes gaudy, sometimes sexy, at times stunningly brilliant. The map on the back covers rarely adds anything but charm. (Notable exceptions are some of the more clever puzzle-mysteries such as Hake Talbot's Rim of the Pit and the mysteries of John Dickson Carr (AKA Carter Dickson). The map from Rim of the Pit pictured here was taken from sketch by the author).


Often the editors abridged the novels that they reprinted. According to Lyles, this abridgement was often pretty merciless.

On the positive side, Dell generally chose top quality mysteries to publish, with authors that included Margaret Millar, Dorothy B. Hughes, Agatha Christie, Brett Halliday, Rex Stout, as well as the aforementioned Queen, Carr, and Coxe. Dell also made it a tradition to include a list of dramatis personae, "The Persons This Mystery is About," before the title page.

The Mapbacks weren't all mysteries. There were some romance novels, adventures, science fiction novels, and some books that, if you judge by the cover, were only meant to titillate. I can't speak for the content of these books, but the covers are pretty fetching.

Below are a few interesting covers - some of them favorites of mine, others just curiosities. Note that the A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) novel pictured below, Fools Die on Friday, was later reprinted (as Dell #1542) the woman pictured was showing considerably less skin.





Below are a bunch of the back cover maps. Feel free to click on them for a closer look.

Found Things.

As a collector of old books, I sometimes find curiosities that have been left behind by past readers. Two such items came to light while I was cataloging books into LibraryThing.

ITEM #1.
I was comparing my two copies of Jacques Futrelle's final book, My Lady's Garter (published in 1912, shortly after the author perished in the sinking of the Titanic), when I noticed that my A.L. Burt edition had been stamped on multiple pages by a previous owner of the book.

In 1922, Edward A Froehling inscribed his name inside the front cover of the book, and sometime thereabouts embellished the book with this cute little rubber stamp impression:

E. A. FROEHLING
"AND PLEASE RETURN IT. YOU MAY THINK THIS A STRANGE REQUEST BUT I FIND THAT THOUGH MANY OF MY FRIENDS ARE POOR ARITHMETICIANS, THEY ARE NEARLY ALL OF THEM GOOD BOOK-KEEPERS."

ITEM #2

I am a book reviewer for several magazines, and receive a fair number of review copies. These review books usually come with a press sheet folded up inside the book, telling me about the book, about the author, and details such as publication date, price, and contact information. Tucked inside my hardcover copy of Dwight V. Babcock's The Gorgeous Ghoul I found this little item:

Collecting Jacques Futrelle

The notion of a writer, referred to during his life as the American Arthur Conan Doyle, who perished aboard the Titanic at the height of his career. . . well, I was intrigued.

During his short life, Futrelle produced 8 novels and 48 published short stories. He is best known for the 48 short stories and novelettes he wrote featuring Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., LL. D., F. R. S., M. D, the brilliant logician known popularly as "The Thinking Machine."

The Thinking Machine's "Watson" was news reporter Hutchinson Hatch. The most famous "Thinking Machine" story is "The Problem of Cell 13," in which Professor Van Dusen challenges the claim that the new cells at Chisholm Prison are completely inescapable. Sadly, five years after van Dusen proves the inescapable cell to be escapable, the "unsinkable" HMS Titanic would sink, leaving May Futrelle a widow.

I found the Scholastic Books collection of Thinking Machine stories easily. The Dover collection, edited by Everett Bleiler, was equally accessible. "The Problem of Cell 13" can be found in countless anthologies. But getting my hands on original Jacques Futrelle books proved to be more of a challenge, even in this age of eBay and Internet commerce.

About a year and a half of eBay searching yielded most of the non-Thinking Machine books.

Diamond Master (1909) (left) is a crime novel involving a conspiracy to upset world commerce by producing man-made diamonds. There's nothing Jewish about the story - no Jewish crooks, diamond-merchants, or conspirators. But the Saturday Evening Post serialized the story with the cover art shown on the right.













Other non-Thinking Machine titles include The High Hand (1911) and My Lady's Garter (published posthumously in 1912). The Chase of the Golden Plate (1906) was Futrelle's first novel, and while I haven't read it yet, I've been led to understand that it contains The Thinking Machine incidentally.

Here is my real prize: a nice, pristine first edition of The Thinking Machine (1907). I particularly like the portrait of Professor van Dusen surrounded by the scribbly signature-like design. Within a year of finding The Thinking Machine, I acquired a copy of the 1917 reprint (retitled The Problem of Cell 13) as well as the small volume The Professor on the Case (the British printing of The Thinking Machine of the Case)