Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The Better Little Book...

The Shadow and the Living Death. Kinda gruesome for the audience that these little books were aimed for. I'm sure that the story and interior art were very tame but the title seems a bit lurid. However, I'm stating that from the viewpoint of a politically correct citizen of this namby pamby world we live in. Back then, a time when common sense seems to have been more in vogue than this new century embraces, I'm guessing that people didn't have such low tolerances for the salacious and sensational. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into a simple title from 1940.

1 comment:

  1. They used Gladney's second cover, BATTLE OF GREED, as the basis for this cover illo. Actually, Big [or Better] Little Books could be slightly violent: as a kid I remember reading Ellery Queen's THE LAST MAN CLUB as a BLB, with a guy getting crushed by a car...made a big impression on my young mind back then!

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