Wednesday Paperback Cover

One from Reginald Heade. Note the gravity defying dress.

A shout out to Juri Nummelin and the ongoing saga of Spike Morelli

Juri Nummelin, who blogs at Pulpetti, made some comments, on this post and this one, that have been helpful with regard to the issue of the identity of Spike Morelli. He noted that Steve Holland, who wrote The Mushroom Jungle and a biography of Stephen Frances (Better known as Hank Janson) did not mention Frances ever writing as Morelli. I've tried to get in touch with Holland, but he's got two blogs and no public email address. If anyone out there knows how to reach him let me know.
So, with Frances eliminated as a suspect, that leaves this possibility, as well at the possibility that Morelli was more than one person.
While Morelli was probably not Frances, the two had their book covers done by Reginald Heade. The more I see of Heade's work, the more I am intrigued. He drew some rather lurid covers for a lot of witers. One of whom, we are all familar with. He had a knack for drawing women with gravity defying clothes. Not much is known about Heade. He had a thing for this one redhead. I wonder who she was.

An Ethical Question posed by my favorite author, and yours: Spike Morelli

I read another chapter of This Way For Hell by Spike Morelli this morning. As you will recall (If you don't recall you can read about it here) the book's protagonist, private investigator Shaun O'Malley, has just finished feeling up a dead girl under the guise of checking her pulse.
Now, in the very next chapter, O'Malley breaks into an apartment while following a lead. It's a woman's apartment. She comes home. Our, ahem, hero hides in the shower. You don't need to be psychic to see what's coming next: That's right the woman in question goes to take a shower. O'Malley, gentleman that he is, punches the woman when she pulls back the shower curtain. Then, this:

She was dead weight in my arms. I carried her into the bedroom and laid her down on the bed. As I covered her naked body with a sheet I ran my hands over her breasts and couldn't help thinking what a time I could have had if my visit had been a social one.

So, there you have it. One chapter he's feeling up a corpse. The next, a live, though unconscious, woman. My question to you, dear reader, is, which act is more reprehensible? Feeling up a dead girl or feeling up a live one? I'm being serious. I can't decide which act should repulse me more.

Some thoughts on Spike Morelli

I got the two books I ordered by Spike Morelli today. When I got home from work I read the first four chapters of This Way For Hell. It's nothing spectacular, but I wasn't really expecting it to be. It's a private eye story where the dead bodies pile up ( 3 in four chapters), and every woman is a "dame." Every one. Always. It's pretty sordid stuff, and by the fourth chapter the main character is beating the hell out of some poor woman to make her talk. Oh, and her dress comes off in the process. This woman gets shot by a mysterious assailant while being interrogated, which sets you up for this very funny bit of writing;

"I put my right hand down inside the brassiere and felt her breasts. The flesh was firm and under other circumstances I would have enjoyed myself, but right then it didn't mean a thing. She was deader than yesterday's front page."

Because checking her wrist for a pulse wouldn't have afforded a cheap thrill.


There's also jacket copy on the inside back cover promoting other books from the Leisure Library. See if you can resist:

White Slave Racket
by Roland Vane

From Britain to France to Spain vicious vice ring lures innocent girls to evil life in the foulest dens of iniquity. This tale is woven around the horror and sordidness one group of girls went through before they were rescued.


Hot Dames on Cold Slabs
by Michael Storm

Three hot dames from the sticks hit Chicago looking for suckers to support them in ways to which they were never accustomed. How they got their suckers and what happened to them among the tough guys of the underworld makes good reading.

No Prude
by Jules-Jean Morac

Parisian photographer's model can never be a prude--at least not for long. Embroiled with dope and stolen gems, young model leads life of luxury, sensualism and vice. Vicious sadism finally blows the top off racket. Real excitement on every page.

Spike Morelli, the mystery deepens, plus more book cover porn

I found the entry below on this page, which appears to be about British postwar paperbacks:

Spike Morelli (Stephen Frances), Coffin for a Cutie (1950).

A live one. A first-person “Southern” novel, with young white-trash guy fleeing the swamps with a black friend (who’s subsequently murdered) and taking up small-time crookery as photo-blackmailer. Several women are involved along the way, not to their benefit. There’s a sexy nightclub show, and a nude with a mutilated face swimming at night.The narrator has no problem with hitting, beating up, sleeping with, or in one instance shooting women. The style reminds me a little of Boris Vian’s I’ll Spit on Your Graves. The atmosphere is mostly unquiet, the course of events unpredictable. The book feels as though the author had been in the States . Six other titles are listed in BLIC, This Way for Hell isn’t among them.

I wrote the foregoing without knowing that Morelli was Frances.

As you can see the author claims that Morelli was one Stephen Francis. Unfortunately, the page's author does not say how he came to that conclusion, although he does mention this book.
Did I speak to soon in this post, when I said Morelli was William Newton? Or is the page excerpted above wrong? More research is required.

Here's the book porn I promised.

More About Spike Morelli

A while ago I posed the question, "Who is Spike Morelli?" after having seen some pulp covers of books by someone under that name. It turns out that Morelli was one of many pseudonyms of one William Newton, who wrote many books under many names from the early Fifties to the the mid-Eighties. The list on the last link is far from comprehensive, however, because I can think of two titles he wrote as Morelli that aren't listed. I'd imagine there are other books I don't know about that are missing as well.
Now that I know what Spike Morelli was Newton, I would like to find someone who has read something he's written. I asked on the Rara-Avis mailing list because I figured if there were somewhere on the Internet I could find a person familiar with an out-of-print crime author it would be there, but I struck out.
So, I'm throwing it open again. Has anyone read Newton under any of his names? Does anything ring a bell? If not, never fear. Newton's books aren't exactly rare, so I ordered a couple early ones off of Abebooks today. If he's worth reading I'll find out and let you know.

Who is Spike Morelli?

Spike Morelli wrote some books in the Fifties, including this one, which made it into my previous post. Beyond that, however, I can find nothing about him on the Internet. Does anyone out there know anything about him or his work? Does it deserve to languish in obscurity forever?
A Google search for Coffin for a Cutie turned up this, which is apparently a model based on the book cover. It also turned up this, which I'm certain has no relation to the question at hand.