Seven books by Mazo de la Roche (Pan, 1962-1966)

File these under, "I don't like the books, but oh boy, do I like the covers!"  Someone must have loved the series back-in-the-day however, because I found these as a set on a charity bookstall.

Morning at Jalna (1963)

1863 -

South of the Canadian border from Jalna, the American Civil War rages.

Into the peaceful, budding Ontario settlement come intriguing visitors with the polished manners and soft accents of Old Carolina—

Are these elegant newcomers genuine fugitives from war, or, far more alarming to Philip and Adeline Whiteoak, are they agents of the slave-trading Confederate States?

Whiteoak Harvest (1962) 

RENNY and his wife ALAYNE—their marriage near disaster...

FINCH and SARAH return from their honeymoon to upset the household with Eden Whiteoak's love-child... 

WAKEFIELD, engaged to Pauline Lebraux, but tormented by religious doubts... 

A complete and captivating story in its own right, Whiteoak Harvest is one of the famous WHITEOAKS series—world sales total over twelve million books!

Wakefield's Course (1963) 

'You must tell her who she is—and that you can't marry her'

Two star-crossed lovers face an agonizing decision in this surging episode of one of fiction's best-loved families—  

The Whiteoaks of Jalna

Young Renny (1962)

'I thought I was dead to men till you came along' 

A strong and compelling story of the Whiteoaks of Jalna—of a bitter feud, and a shattered love—and of Renny in his fiery youth and first passion.

Finch's Fortune (1962)

YOUNG FINCH—AND $100,000

At twenty-one Finch Whiteoak, proud, sensitive, reckless, becomes the bewildered inheritor of his grandmother's fortune.   

In this enthralling episode from the Whiteoaks saga, the ever generous Finch takes his two Uncles to England, and against a lovely Devonshire background, falls in and out of love with the bewitching Sarah Court—suffering all the youthful agonies of disillusion and frustrated passion.

Mary Wakefield (1965)

EARLY DAYS AT JALNA

Second of the world-famous, world-loved "Whiteoaks" novels, MARY WAKEFIELD tells of the beautiful young governess who came to Jalna in the warm summer of 1893 and of the struggle that awaited her with the pillars of the Whiteoak family, still dominated by the matriarch Adeline... 

Soon Mary became the centre of a family dispute, and it was not until a flood of emotions both violent and tender had been released that life at Jalna could resume its fertile course.

Whiteoak Heritage (1966)

The New Master of Jalna

Captain Renny Whiteoak returns from World War I to find a challenging heritage:

His father and step-mother have died.

The old uncles, Ernest and Nicholas, have been running the estate with a blissful disregard of economics. 

Young Eden, now a student, is involved in a strange and damaging love affair.

To help put Jalna on its feet, Renny employs a brash and beautiful horse-woman, and soon finds that he too is in love... 

Old Adeline wants to see Renny happily married—but who can fill the role of mistress of Jalna?

The Case of the Restless Redhead by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pan, 1962)

 

She had a neat figure, plenty of bad luck--and red hair.

They caught her with stolen diamonds--but as she told the story it was a frame-up, and Perry Mason believed her.

Then came news of more serious crime--and Mason found the charge against his client was murder.

It never fails.  No matter what a client initially hires Perry Mason for--to settle a parking fine, to get a divorce--before the end of the book they're up on a charge of murder.

My advice to anyone thinking of consulting Perry Mason?  Don't.

Cleopatra by Carlo Maria Franzero (Panther, 1962)

 

TEMPTRESS!

'A gift, Great Caesar,' the big man said, prostrating himself, 'from a devoted admirer.'

'H'm,' Caesar murmured, fingering his chin.  'You can't mean Ptolemy...!'  

'Judge for yourself, Master,' Appollodras invited, and unrolled the carpet; out of it sprang to her feet the little Cleopatra, apparently as fresh as a daisy and as bright as a newly minted coin.  She stretched her slim, shapely arms above her lovely head, arched her perfect back so that her perfect young body stood out deliciously under the translucent gown, and smiled provocatively at the mighty Caesar.

An Elizabeth Taylor lookalike poses on the cover of this book--not inappropriately, as Joseph L. Mankiewicz loosely based his 1963 movie version of Cleopatra on this novel.  However, at the time this paperback edition was published the movie was still in production--running grossly over-budget and mired in production problems. 

Sadly, anyone expecting "wantonness" in this version of Cleopatra's story (as promised by the cover blurb on the paperback) will be disappointed.  The titillation value of this book is low, even by the standards of the early 1960s.  You might pick up some history, however, as the main characters spend a lot of time playing politics, 1st Century BC style.

 

Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie (Fontana, 1962)

One more from the Lifeline Bookfair!

 

Sir Charles Cartwright, the distinguished actor, had invited the local vicar and his wife to a house-warming party  at his new country cottage.  The Reverend Stephen Babbington unaccustomed as he was to strong liquor, nervously sipped his cocktail with a slightly wry expression on his face.  The other guests continued to chatter.  Suddenly Mr Babbington's hand clutched at his throat, and, in a moment, he collapsed--dead.

This was only the first act in the drama--a three-act tragedy, with a mysterious death in every act.  It is Hercule Poirot, the indomitable Belgian detective, who moves behind the scenes of this play and who finally rings down the curtain.

 The man on the cover of this book is either dead drunk--or just dead!  Since the author is Agatha Christie, I'm guessing the latter.

(See also my post on the 1964 Pan edition of the same title.)

Cop Hater by Ed McBain (Permabooks, 1962)

 

The headlines screamed:
KILLER SLAYS SECOND COP!

First Mike Reardon--his face nearly blasted away.  Then young Dave Foster, sprawled on the concrete with a chest full of slugs.  Only a maniac could have done it, people said.  Only a raging cop hater.

With only one meager clue, Detective Steve Carella began his grim search: a search that led him through the city's low life to a notorious brothel, to the apartment of a beautiful and dangerous widow, and finally to a room where the cop hater was waiting--waiting with a .45 automatic loaded and ready to kill again.

The back cover invites us to watch "the compelling television series based on Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels each week on NBC".  Doing a quick search on IMDB I learned that the series was called "87th Precinct" (very original!) starred Robert Lansing and Ron Harper and ran for all of one season in 1961-62.  Clearly the TV audience of the time didn't find the show all that compelling.

Enemy of Rome by Leonard Cottrell (Pan, 1962)

Another paperback from The Green Shed:

In May, 218 B.C., Hannibal of Carthage set out from Spain with over 100,000 troops--the most tremendous fighting force assembled since the days of Alexander the Great.

His destination--Rome.  His aim--the destruction of its great empire.

So began an immortal campaign that lasted sixteen fierce and bloody years...revealed Hannibal as an inspired military genius...and culminated in a battle of giants which was to decide the fate of European civilisation.

 It's an epic story all right--so why is the cover so bloody dull?

I mean, it was a military campaign that abounded in such picturesque things as Roman legions, Gaulish warriors fighting "naked to the navel", the Alps, pitched battles and elephants--and the best the cover artist could do was squeeze a few of these into the background?  You have to look very carefully even to see the elephants!

0/10 for your cover design, Pan.  0/10!

Head of a Traveller by Nicholas Blake (Fontana, 1962)

Yet another prize from my Lifeline Bookfair Crime Spree!

 

They found the body in the Thames--the head, weeks later, in a string bag hanging on a tree.

 Short and sweet--and oh, boy, doesn't it make you want to read more!

Mind you, the blurb makes the book appear more hardboiled and gritty than it is.  And if it had been published in America, and started with the discovery of a headless corpse floating in the Hudson or San Francisco Bay, this book probably would be that kind of detective story.  One would expect the hero (either a jaded PI or a world-weary cop) to track the murderer through the mean back streets of the city, encountering various underworld types along the way.   However, Head of a Traveller was written by a British author, and the detective is a gentleman amateur who tracks the murderer to the country estate of a poet!

The Golden Hades by Edgar Wallace (Hodder, 1962)

Another book acquired during my Lifeline Bookfair Crime Spree.  This one I definitely bought for its cover:

 

The banknotes marked with the sinister little yellow sign of the Golden Hades were not just state money. 

Wilbur Smith of the F.B.I. had seen the sign twice before--

The first time they involved a masked gang; the second time, they meant murder.

Edgar Wallace is one of those authors whose life is more interesting than his books.  Born into poverty as the illegitimate child of actors, he became a war correspondent during the Boer War, then took to writing thrillers to make money.  In the 1920s his publishers Hodder and Stoughton began promoting him aggressively, and he pretty much became a one-man fiction factory, eventually churning out around 170 novels:

Needless to say, the quality was NOT high.  This particular example of his work concerns a Satanic cult in New York.  To be fair, a book on a similar theme today would probably have more graphic violence and a lot more sex, but the characters might be equally cardboard.

Wallace eventually died in 1933 of untreated diabetes, and few of his books are in print today.

Always Say Die by Elizabeth Ferrars (Fontana, 1962)

Another gem from Lifeline:

Violet Gamlen had been missing for a year.  Speculation and rumour ran wild, but one person thought he knew her whereabouts-

'Don't you see, that man's started gardening again.  He couldn't bury a body amongst all that weed without the signs of digging betraying him, but when it's been all freshly dug...'

 I kept trying to work out what was wrong with this cover, until I realised that the artist had problems with both perspective and proportion.   The cat leaping out at our frightened heroine is seemingly enormous, and meanwhile the lady herself appears to have a very large right arm and a very small left one.

Not that it matters, because the mystery of what happened to Violet Gamlen and who was responsible for it was enthralling and kept me guessing until the end.  Elizabeth Ferrars is one of those writers who is now less well known than she should be given the length of her career and the number of books she wrote.  However, unlike some of her better known contemporaries (Ngaio Marsh, for example) most of her books are standalone novels.   The lack of a continuing detective hero probably made her "brand" less memorable than it could have been.

Footsteps in the Night by Dolores Hitchens (Pocket Books, 1962)

I found this at the Lifeline Bookfair - source of over 50% of my best finds:

 

Sheriff Ferguson found plenty of skeletons in the closet in the new Dellwood houses--who was prim Miss Silvester's midnight visitor?  Why was Mr Holden terrified of his wife?  Where was tight lipped Mr Arthur's grandfather on the night of the murder?  How did the crippled Dronk boy fit into the picture???

And why was everyone so anxious not to talk?????

This was another book I bought for its cover--and I found a tightly plotted, suspense-filled little murder mystery inside.  It kept me guessing who the guilty party was and worrying about the innocent suspects, right until the very end.  That's exactly what I look for in a whodunnit!

One thing about that cover, though.  If the young lady on the cover is meant to be the murder victim  (and that seems the logical inference) then the artist got it wrong.  The victim was meant to be a fifteen-year old girl wearing capri pants.  Maybe that wasn't glamorous enough for the publisher!