The Secret Woman by Victoria Holt (Fontana, 1972)

 

Voyage into mystery...

When Anna Brett sets sail for a Pacific island, she is already in love with Redvers Stretton, captain of the Serene Lady.  Stretton has lost an earlier ship in mysterious circumstances, and with it some priceless diamonds.

On the primitive island of Coralle, with its beliefs in witchcraft and the powers of darkness, the truth about Captain Stretton comes to light.  And the haunting riddle of the Secret Woman is finally revealed...

Here we have a variation on the Women Running From Houses theme--Woman Standing in Front of a Palm Tree.

This book actually got me thinking: namely that Gothic Romances share a lot of the ingredients of crime fiction, but they're mixed in different proportions.  Here we have a story filled with crime--murders, attempted murder, sabotage (the hero's ship is blown up), theft (the priceless diamonds mentioned above), blackmail and identity theft (the plot's resolution turns on the swapping of two babies many years before).  Yet none of these seem really important--instead the story focuses on the emotions of our rather passive heroine.

Again, unlike in crime fiction, no one actively seeks to solve the crimes or bring the perpetrators to justice in this book .  The heroine, as I said, is rather passive and very naive.  She lets things happen to her rather than directing events.  The hero is absent through most of the book and if anything, is even less interested in investigating mysteries than the heroine.  There's an anti-heroine (in another kind of story she'd be a femme fatale!) who is responsible for the murders and attempted murders.  However her misdeeds take place offstage--and her downfall is recorded in a short chapter and is brought about by accident.  None of her co-conspirators are caught or face any kind of punishment for their crimes.

So I'm left imagining the story as written by a different author: a story where hard-boiled Captain Stretton searches for the men who blew up his ship and stole the diamonds, and tangles with the shady dame who tries to poison him....

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (WDL Books, 1959)

Found in a dusty corner of "The Green Shed:

 

In 1857 when Madame Bovary was first published, the detailed realism of its love scenes shocked and horrified the entire populace of France; and Gustave Flaubert, its author, was made to stand trial for "immorality".

Since then, the brilliant, cynical story of Emma Bovary, who revolts against her bourgeois surroundings and her marriage only to find profound disillusionment in the arms of a shallow lover, has come to be regarded as one the masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature.

Flaubert's aim was to give an impersonal, objective account of emotions and events, without any of the moralizing which was then the literary fashion.  His Madame Bovary stands today as the perfect model of fictional "realism".

Flaubert's infamous adulteress is sexed-up, 1950s style, on the cover of this paperback.  Maybe it's her anachronistic makeup, or her backless nightwear (and seriously, how is she keeping that garment from falling off?) but this picture does not say "nineteenth century novel" to me.  It doesn't even say "notorious nineteenth century novel" to me.  I could imagine an ignorant reader mistaking this one for contemporary sleaze, and finding himself with something quite different!

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.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (Scholastic, 1971)

 

The desperate men cling to the giant hulk in the water.  Suddenly its iron body begins to move - to sink!  They'll all be drowned!  But a panel slides open and the terrified men are drawn inside - inside Captain Nemo's incredible underwater ship.

Have you seen the exciting film based on this book?  (Walt Disney Productions)

Another version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea--this time abridged for young readers, and with the adventure aspects of the story played up.

(The "exciting film"  mentioned on the back cover of this book is the same film James Mason starred in in 1954.  It leads me to wonder how the children of 1971 were expected to watch it, long after the film's initial release but years before the advent of home videos.  Did Disney re-release at some stage?  Was it shown regularly on television?  I guess I'll never know for sure.)

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!

Killer's Wedge by Ed McBain (Permabooks, 1959)

 

SQUADROOM 87TH PRECINCT 

Four cops getting through a routine day.  Complaints, interrogations, reports--holdups, beatings, rapes, murders.

Then in walks a dame in black.

"Yes?" asks Detective Cotton Hawes.

She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls out a cold, hard object.

"This is a .38," she says and points it at the four men.  "Give me your guns."

"Look, Lady," says Hawes, "put up the piece.  The joke's not funny."

The dame's eyes narrow to slits.  "Shut up, Copper.  I've come here to kill.  One phony move and I keep shooting until every man in this place is dead."

And the award for All Time Most Awkward Posture goes... to the "dame" on the front cover.   Seriously.  I think she's supposed to have one of her feet resting on a chair rung, but it looks like she's doing some kind of seated can can dance.

(Incidentally, at no time in this book is she referred to as a "dame".  We're spared that cliché at least.  Nor do the cops in the book commit any beatings, rapes or murders.  It's not that kind of story!) 

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (Fontana, 1955)

 

A remarkable thing about 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is that it forecast the submarine some thirty years before this class of warship was invented.  It is strange, too, that when Jules Verne wrote this book the world should be on the threshold of a new era of steam and electricity.  For now, as we enter the atomic age we find ourselves preoccupied with the same fascinating and frightening dilemma--the onslaught of science on Nature.

This exciting story, narrated with all the gripping realism of modern science fiction, opens with an eminent French scientist, his servant and a famous harpooner embarking on a U.S. warship in search of the unknown monster at large in the oceans.  In the disaster of their first encounter with it, the three men are washed overboard and are taken prisoners in what is revealed to them as a monster submarine, propelled by electricity generated from the sea itself.  They also meet the proud and mysterious Captain Nemo, whose grievance against mankind has caused him to seek solitude in the depths--a forceful character brilliantly portrayed by James Mason in the current film success.

Wow!   I have memories of reading this one many years ago as a child.  This edition is prefaced by a Very Serious Introduction to the work, touting its literary credentials, but I remember the book as an adventure story.  I wanted a submarine of my own after reading it!

(Interestingly, the back cover of this paperback mentions James Mason in the 1954 film adaption of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but there is no other hint that this might be a movie tie-in!)