Cover of the Week: A Puzzle for Fiends by Patrick Quentin

The cover art for this 1964 mystery novel is striking. Imagine seeing this on a rack while waiting for your subway car to arrive. Shame that the artist is not credited. I tried like hell to find out, but I’m stumped. It was a common practice not to credit the cover artist for paperbacks in the 1950-70s. They were work-for-hire, and their contracts didn’t call for getting credit.

What I like about this cover is its sense of drama: a naked woman behind diaphanous cloth with the cropped image of a man in torment placed in the lower left corner. All suffused with a dense layer of colors (black, purple, green). The fonts are odd, too. The title font is almost italic, whereas the author and tag line are straight capital letters in white.

Patrick Quentin is a pseudonym for the writing team of Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987) and Richard Wilson Webb (1901–1966). They were among the most celebrated among mystery authors of the mid-20th century, although they are not well known today except among mystery fans.

Their early work in the 1930s was classic puzzle mysteries with clever clues, locked rooms and eccentric characters similar to the style of Agatha Christie. Later, in the 1940s they changed up and started writing suspense and Noir novels to fit the times.

If you were to starting reading these excellent authors, I’d recommend Black Widow (1952) which was made into a great suspense movie starring Van Heffin and Gene Tierney.

…..

Excellent entry on the two writers with extensive bibliography.
Clever and informative article Quentin

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