Ep 13 – Ross MacDonald and Black Money
Ep 12 – Four Favorite Vintage Paperbacks 2022
Episode 12 of the Paperback Show is our final podcast of 2022. In this episode, I look at the four vintage paperbacks that were my favorite reads of the year. I read a lot and don’t choose books randomly, so there was a lot of competition. These four paperbacks stood out for their originality and
Ep 11 – James M. Cain and Double Indemnity
James M. Cain is one of those great mystery/suspense writers that everyone interested in good writing should read. The problem is that film versions of two of the novels were made into Hollywood films that are so popular they have overshadowed their sources. As our guest, Richard Brewer, put it in the podcast, “Well, I’ve seen
Ep 10 – Daphne Du Maurier & My Cousin Rachel
Daphne Du Maurier is best known for the film adaptations of her novels. Her bestselling novel Rebecca became a very popular Alfred Hitchcock film starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontane. The novel itself has never been out of print, but most people remember the movie and not the original novel which is much, much different than the
Ep 9 – Dan Marlowe: Neglected Gold Medal Crime Novelist
Dan J. Marlowe is a master crime novelist who deserves to be part of the pantheon of crime writers like Jim Thompson, Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake), and Patricia Highsmith. Why has he been forgotten? Probably because he wrote his major crime novels for a paperback publisher (Gold Medal) and never had a hardback publisher. Also,
Ep 8 – The Film Guide Paperback (BFI & Cultographies)
Show Notes The history of paperbacks is the history of paperback fiction primarily. Little research has been done on the non-fiction side of paperback publishing. I decided to include non-fiction as part of the Paperback Show to address this missing history. Episode 8 covers the history of the Film Guide primarily focusing on the study
Ep 7 – Dashiell Hammett and the Hard-Boiled Paperback
Show Notes Although Dashiell Hammett is a major influence in mystery fiction, his novels and stories (with the sole exception of The Maltese Falcon) are often left unread. It’s a shame because they all hold up well even in 2022. I urge you to get one of Hammett’s paperback novels and just sit down and
Ep 6 – Sexy Sleaze Paperbacks and Orie Hitt
We discuss the history of this unique paperback genre, how the books were written and distributed, and the people who read them (primarily men). The era (excuse the pun) “peaked” in the 1960s when new readers and marketplaces emerged (the adult bookstore). Even established authors like Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison wrote (using pseudonyms) these
Ep 5 – Gold Medal Paperbacks
This week we’ll be talking about Gold Medal Paperbacks. Founded in 1950 by Fawcett Publications, this company was the first successful publisher of paperback originals. That means they didn’t reprint already published hardback books which every other paperback publisher did, but original works of fiction. And they were incredibly successful. We begin the show however
Ep 4 – The Armed Services Paperback
In this episode, we look at the history of the Armed Service Edition (ASE) paperbacks made specifically for American soldiers fighting in World War II. The background of America’s response to Nazi book burnings, the formation of various groups to provide soldiers with reading material, and the final creation of the group that would select, edit,
