Long before GPS in our phones provided direction and Google Maps provided illustrations, the Dell Mapback series of paperback books ruled the racks. If you would like an affordable hobby (especially if you aren't too fussy about condition) these colorful and downright cool paperback books with "scene of the crime" on the reverse are perfect. Graphic and lovely. I've put together groups of them all my life, then parted with them and started over. Many antique malls have a few. I will generally go 5 bucks each. There are, I believe, some 500 of them. Westerns, Romance, Murder and more, all with cute little "X marks the spot" maps.
Veteran News Photographer Kent Murdock stars in the very first graphic novel, published by Dell in 1950, as part of an intended mini-line of digest sized comic books. "Told in pictures" and it is. Not too many others were published, and the experiment failed. Consequently, the book is rare today and a $100 dollar item, but it was reprinted in full by Pure Imagination a few years ago. Look for the original. I found mine for three bucks at an antique mall.
Striking illustrations by Robert Stanley, who also did many of the covers for Dell's much-loved Mapback series, and the book was also published as one.
Kent Murdock was a fictional crime photographer from the early Weegee era. In the film "Murder with Pictures" you can see him portrayed by square jaw low-talker Lew Ayres. The flick is on Youtube in full but the book is better.
George Harmon Coxe created the character, and Kent Murdock was not his only crime shutterbug. He also created crime photographer Jack Casey. (AKA "Flashgun Casey")
Kent used his fists more than his camera, but he is always in the darkroom. The graphic novel is great, but the movie is the kind I haven't been able to sit through since college, when pot made any movie watchable.
Hardboiled, but soft back.
Four Frightened Woman by George Harmon Coxe (A Kent Murdoch Murder Mystery) illustrated by Robert Stanley 1950 Dell "Told in Pictures" book.
Books and ebooks by Jim Linderman are available HERE
CLICK TO GET HEP, JACK
I have written about Mapbacks before, those beautiful mystery books from the 1950s which always had a map on the reverse indicating the scene of the crime and spots where certain events took place. I've collected them several times over my life, and finding them is still one of the most beautiful cheap hobbies around. There was one anomaly in the series.
Number 1534 was not a mystery, but an actual guide book to the city which never sleeps, and it was a guide book which held back little. From "Party Girls" to "Where Men Wear Lace" it was, I am sure, a well-thumbed book in 1951.
Alas, nearly everything in it is gone now. Yet it still remains one of the most valuable little documents of a world now gone, and one could do worse than bring back the wonderful "Glossary of Harlemisms" in back, Jack.
More New York City Mapbacks HERE
New York Confidential! The Big City After Dark by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer. Dell Paperback 1951 (Mapback) Collection Jim Linderman
All great fake crimes take place in Manhattan. Sure, some happen elsewhere, but except for a few genre-creating masterpieces set in Los Angeles (okay...maybe they can claim a few) the dark, scary corners of the West Side are still the best place to fictionally stab or shoot someone. Dump them in the Hudson and they won't float up until spring.Maps are snoresville...GPS killed them, and piles of the once familiar gas station freebie now fill baskets at the flea market. All of us still have a few crumpled and stuffed in the back of the glove compartment, still as ungainly and unmanageable as ever. I once drove from Manhattan to Los Angeles, a trip everyone should do, not only to realize the scope of the country but to obtain major bragging rights. 6 days for me...and I traced every mile on my faithful USA road map until the Petrified Forest in Arizona, when a big wind grabbed it right out of the car. I watched it fly down an ancient ravine, just like a recent automobile commercial which has sullied my memory.
By far the coolest paperback books are the Dell Mapbacks which were published from 1943 to 1951. I recently disparaged them in a post about a more obscure publisher...but they remain most collectible, mostly affordable and mostly available. And they are cool. My father, who visited me in Manhattan annually, used to love reading them and he would shout "I was there" a few times in each volume. Most were hard-boiled mysteries, the greatest fictional genre EVER. Shown here are a dozen or so Dell Mapbacks located in Manhattan. I do not believe there is one placed in the Petrified Forest.
A complete directory to the Mapbacks in shown HERE. There were hundreds, and all are great...but the ones set in the Big Apple were always my dad's favorite.DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS complete catalog and previews HERE
