Hard Case Crime Strikes Again!


Hard Case Crime publishes novels about crime.  Some of them are reprints of classics from pulp era.  Others are new works by authors paying homage to hard-boiled detective and crime stories of the 50s and 60s.  The retro covers also pay homage to the pulp era.  Some of the best cover artists around — from Robert McGinnis to Glenn Orbik to Chuck Pyle and many others — have done covers for Hard Case Crime and I absolutely love them.  There are many people who buy these books strictly for the covers.  I’m one of them.

I’ve shared several Hard Case Crime covers on this site.  Here are a few of the more recent covers to come out of Hard Case Crime:

by Claudia Caranfa

by Claudia Caranfa

by Claudia Caranfa

by Paul Mann

by Paul Mann

by Ron Lesser

Artist Profile: Stockton Mulford (1886 — 1960)


Born in Pennsylvania but raised in California and Oregon, Stockton Mulford lost his right eye in a childhood accident but he never lost his ambition to become an artist.  With a glass eye and a painter’s easel that was given to him by his father, Mulford worked part-time as a bank clerk while taking art classes during the weekend.  In 1907, deciding that it was all or nothing, Mulford moved to New York City and devoted himself full time to art.

After studying at the Art Students League,  Mulford found quick success as an illustrator and become one of the busier artists of the pulp era.  After he retired from illustrating in 1946, he moved to Connecticut and, at the age of 60, he became an expert cabinet maker and found a second career restoring furniture for local museums.  He eventually passed away in 1960, at the age of seventy-four.

Below is just a small sampling of Stockton Mulford’s work:

Happy Dracula Day!


Today is the 125th anniversary of the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula!  Since 1897, Dracula has ruled supreme as the king of the Vampires.  In honor of this day, here are some of the way that Dracula has been imagined over the years.

The Dangerous Lives of Models


by Enoch Bolles

Sometime glamorous.  Sometimes sordid.  Sometimes dangerous.  The life of the model has always been a popular subject for the pulps.  Below are some pulp covers that deal not only with the experience of being model but also the weight of being an artist.   There’s a price for everything.

by Ann Cantor

by Arnold Kohn

Artist Unknown

by Bernard Safran

by John Drew

by Paul Rader

by Rafael DeSoto

by Robert Bonfils

by Verne Tossey

by Hugh Joseph Ward