I came to hardboiled noir in the mid-'70s valley between Gold
Medal's prime (I knew Fawcett as the publishers of
anthologies of the Peanuts comic strip) and Black Lizard. One
of the first I read was The Long Goodbye with the movie
tie-in cover, then moved on to Avon's other Chandler
reprints, which had very nicely painted covers, though hardly
lurid. Then on to Ross Macdonald, with the still lifes Kevin
mentioned. and Hammett, with Vintage's awful covers,
especially of The Maltese Falcon, which featured an ugly
falcon that looked nothing like the one in the movie (the
cover of The Thin Man, with its photo of Hammett himself was
okay). Man, as I thrilled when I found some Dell Mapbacks in
a used mystery store. Vintage's late '70s Cain reprints
looked pretty good, though. And I was finally introduced to
Gold Medal when I started reading the Travis McGee
series.
A number of late '70s and '80s PI series had pretty
distinctive cover art, like those by Arthur Lyons, Jack
Lynch, Stephen Greenleaf, etc.
Mark
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