EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 11 © 2015 The Book Palace (96 pages PAGES in Full edition)

62 ABOVE: Two of McConnell's covers for Cassell' s crime novels. Working within the constraints of cheap commercial printing in the late 1930s, the covers utilise strong dark shapes and bold, bright colours to grab the buyer's attention. FACING PAGE: Despite the more painterly technique, the cover for Collins publications, 'Murder in the Coal Hole', still limits its palette to strong oranges interplayed against the black elements of the cellar. trade as Collins, Cassell, Faber & Faber and Hodder & Stoughton . These novels were invariably of either the Western or Crime genre . His early illustrative work exhibits a definite sense of experimentation. Two of the covers he produced for Christopher Bush’s Crime novels, published by Cassell in the late ‘30s, illustrate this particularly well. His painting for 'The Case of the Green Felt Hat' is an atmospheric night scene set in a wood in which a young woman is pictured warily picking up the hat of the title. The image is highly reminiscent of contemporary railway posters with the paint laid on in large patches of colour. The other cover, for 'The Case of the Leaning Man', is again set at night with a similar sense of unease but this time it is executed in a loose, painterly style using mostly blue tones with small touches of yellow. A figure is leaning against a lamp post, which is the light source for the picture, while the shadowy figure of a policeman can be seen in the background. The light source was very important to McConnell. In 'Murder in the Coal Hole', another of his early covers, this time for the publisher Collins, he uses a coal fire as the source, as two figures (one murderously hovering behind the other) lean over towards the viewer, each rendered in subtle tones of