Miami Neon

Following Chester Himes and Ross Macdonald, Penguin Modern Classics' latest crime novelist gentrification project is the Hoke Moseley series from Charles Willeford. I'd never encountered these novels before (the only Willeford I'd read, the wonderfully titled The Shark-Infested Custard, is a complete blur in my memory), but I've just started on the first, and am enjoying it immensely. This is how it opens: from this, I imagine you'll know whether this is your cup of tea or not...

In any case, these books were first published, and are set, in the 1980s: more specifically, gaudy and crass 1980s Miami. Penguin commissioned Edward Bettison (who did their Macdonald covers too--see the link in the first paragraph) to provide appropriately neon-glowing retro cover designs. (And this time they remembered to credit him, too.) Click for huge versions.

Lew Archer: New, Newish and Old

The Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald are some of the best private-eye novels written, forming a sort of gumshoe Holy Trinity with Hammett and Chandler. Penguin UK have snaffled some of them for their Modern Classics range (to go with some other surprising but welcome crime-writing additions to that series), and have employed Edward Bettison to do the cover designs, with more than a hint of a stylish late-'50s, early-'60s vibe.

It's a pity the excellent Black Money isn't part of the set.

I'm also rather partial to the current US covers for the Archer books, put out by Vintage US/Black Lizard, which do a great job of playing up the noir aspects of their atmosphere.

All of these are quite a step away from the skin/boob-tastic covers inflicted on the books by Fontana at the tail end of the 1970s.

That last cover troubles me: is the target trapped under a breast? Between the cheeks of an incredibly lopsided arse? Clutched under a bingo wing?