EXTRACTS: Illustrators Crime Comics Special © 2020 Book Palace Books (144 pages in full edition)

9 great detective’s covers being painted by Eric Parker—without doubt the greatest of the many illustrators to work upon the series. In the US, ‘dime novels’ were catering to followers of the exploits of the Dalton Gang, Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Purple prose was further enlivened with illustrations of dastardly deeds being enacted by protagonists adopting mannered poses, arms aloft, best foot forward, head back and guns spouting hot-lead, with ethereal smoke trails wafting in their wake. With the arrival of talking pictures in 1927, during the era of prohibition, and the onset of the Great Depression a year later, the seeds of a US-led ABOVE: While fog-lined streets were a favoured domain for UK crime fiction, the ‘dime novels’ of the US were replete with stories of gun-totin’ outlaws against a backdrop of purple sage and rolling prairies.