ABSTRACT
Detective novels have enjoyed a lurid association with fabulously cheesy pulpfiction art. In its glory days, the 1930s-50s paperback covers featured platinum blonde lushes and throbbing, grimacing heroes in rumpled white shirts and disheveled ties. They were corrupt cops or restless accountants lured into shady schemes, with their bad-girl companions in push-up bras, all of them evoked with garish ink strokes and rusty shades of blood.1
