Well, dear reader, I’ve recently been contacted by a long-time Brian Flynn enthusiast who has been collecting his work for much longer than I have. He has graciously sent me scans of some dust jackets and I thought I’d share them with you. I’ll update my cover gallery when I get the chance, but in the meantime, here are the new additions. In order:
The Billiard Room Mystery – UK edition
Never seen any of these before, but this one is very important. The original cover of Brian’s first book!
The Case Of The Black Twenty-Two – UK edition
This is the third dustjacket image I’ve found for this title, which raises the question – did hardback second (or later editions) have different dustjackets? Why is there a third one – the second being the US dustjacket.
Murder En Route – UK edition
Dean St Press used the US cover for the recent reprint – it’s a little more sinister than this one, but I love the dead body on the top deck here.
The Triple Bite
We had to pinch a later cover for the recent reprint of this Holmesian homage – interesting given the detail on the previous cover (and The Billiard Room Mystery) that this has the wrong sort of bite on it.
The Padded Door
Interesting, this one. Seems to be presenting Bathurst as a generic private eye.
The Spiked Lion
The start of a brief phase of animal and paperwork clues…
The Sussex Cuckoo
Presumably that paperwork is part of the plot. Another eye-catching image, very similar in style to the previous one.
The Ebony Stag
What a marvellous cover – so distinctive. Absolutely love this one.
The Running Nun
No sign of the elusive nun, but I wonder – is that Inspector MacMorran on the cover?
Out Of The Dusk
No idea what this book involves – apparently Vincent Price leering at a female photographer…
The Shaking Spear
There’s a mild spoiler on the cover of this one. Not a massively important one, but a spoiler nonetheless.
The Dice Are Dark
Bit of a generic thriller cover, this one…
So, hope you enjoyed those – I certainly did.
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel 
Any luck finding book #11 in the series?
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Idiot that I am, I realised the other day that The Edge Of Terror is in fact Book 12. I’ve a couple of speculative leads on it – nothing more – but do bear in mind that Dean St Press haven’t said anything about another ten titles to me… we can but hope
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Very nice. I’m happy to see these and I’m intrigued by the way cover art can reflect what is happening in crime books as a whole at the time they’re produced, even when the art is inappropriate for that specific book, such as the generic PI on the final cover. I have a 1959 paperback edition of MY NAME IS MALONE by Craig Rice with a similar pic of a girl behind an armed male. I suspect that both are the result of the success of Mike Hammer as the preeminent detective of the day.
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I am loving the new Dean Street Press covers, and am wondering if you have a specific recommendation for one of the books to hook a new reader?
It also sounds like you are in some way involved with Dean Street Press itself, and, if so, let me just share how much I love DSP! Between the Golden Age crime and the Furrowed Middlebrow books, I think I could spend years reading nothing but their reissues! If you aren’t involved with DSP, cheerfully ignore..!
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Consider me a useful helper to DSP, rather than being directly involved – I’m just (fairly heavily) involved with the Brian Flynn books, but they do all the heavy lifting. I very grateful to them as well.
As for a start point, it’d have to be The Mystery Of The Peacock’s Eye, but, as it’s almost Christmas, why not try The Murders Near Mapleton as that’s a festive one?
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That will assist me in indulging my obsession with golden age holiday mysteries, so thanks for the suggestion!
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Very nice! Thanks both to the anonymous collector and to you for sharing with us. The UK edition of MURDER EN ROUTE is so much better than the US one. Love that the bus (with advertisements!) and the corpse both are featured. The only two I’ve seen before are BILLIARD ROOM MYSTERY and THE SPIKED LION. The only thing I don’t like is that you don’t identify the publisher for each one. Is THE SPIKED LION a UK edition? Why do I think it’s the US one? Maybe my addled memory is getting mixed up.
To answer your rhetorical question: Yes, both in the UK and the US reprint editions often had different dust jacket illustrations on them than the first edition, even if they were from the same publisher.
In response to Ron’s surmise: The image of a male detective protectively holding a woman on the cover of mystery novels or posing with a gun and looking as if protecting a woman is as old as the hills! It has nothing to do with Spillane and the way his books were illustrated. I have hundreds of book with a similar poses. One in particular I know is on an Edgar Wallace title from the early 1920s — a full decade before the private eyes of Chandler, Hammett and their ilk, and long before Spillane ever appeared on the scene.
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These are all U.K. editions. The US Spiked Lion is similar, but without the lion in the background – it’s on my Cover Gallery post, which I forgot to link to here. When I merge the two, later today, I’ll put which is which.
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These are wonderful Doc!
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Some of these are among the finest GA covers that I’ve seen. I love the detail on Billiard Room and Murder En Route.
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