Wednesday 8 December 2010

Melvilles & Murder

Melville House are really kicking seventeen brands of arse with their book covers these days (see here, for example). Here are the first eleven books in their International Crime series.












I absolutely love these. They work as a series, with the limited palette, bold shapes, unflashy (but attractive) type and big fields of solid colour common to all. But then each author also gets their own identity within the series. The Kurkovs play wittily (and Saul Bass-ily) with the dinner-suit/penguin association, and the Derek Raymonds are just brilliant, reminiscent of old Romek Marber crime novel covers for Penguin.

I could kiss this publisher.

UPDATE: Kelly Blair did the Jakob Arjouni covers, and Christopher King did the Derek Raymond covers.
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7 comments:

  1. Ian Koviak8 December 2010 at 15:02

    amazing. That last one with the paper woman is a terrific idea. The key with the bullet hole and the shattered plate—priceless, strong graphics. Who is doing these? They feel european.

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  2. Ákos Polgárdi9 December 2010 at 01:42

    I agree. Many of these are great.

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  3. A-Z9 December 2010 at 13:03

    Both of Andrey Kurkov's Penguin books are great, and these new covers are very accurate. New translations as well?

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  4. Rex Parker11 December 2010 at 06:36

    Wow, how bad do I wanna read "More Beer?" Thanks for these. Superhot.

    rp

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  5. Meytal Radzinski11 December 2010 at 10:26

    Death and the Penguin! And more Kurkov! Awesome covers, all of these.

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  6. Matthew Adams12 December 2010 at 00:00

    The Derek Raymond covers are lurid and clever. Love em.

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  7. JRSM12 December 2010 at 13:30

    Melvile publisher Dennis Johnson tells me that Kelly Blair did the Jakob Arjouni covers, and Christopher King did the Derek Raymond covers (I'll add this to the post).

    The Kurkov translations are the George Bird versions originally published in the UK. I'm not sure about the "Turk" books.

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