Two Complete Detective Books

Time for another pulp cover.  This is from a 1955 edition of Two Complete Detective Books.  It was a very accurate title, as each quarterly edition featured two crime novels, which had usually already been published as books.  Sometimes they managed to acquire the magazine rights to a novel prior to its book publication, though.  Occasionally, they would have to cheat a bit and one of the featured 'novels' would actually be a novella, either an original or a reprint from another magazine.  During the fifties it was a popular concept, allowing readers without the finances to buy hardbacks the opportunity to read novels in a cheap pulp format.  For authors, it meant an additional fee on top of those they received for the book publication.  The two novels featured here are interesting as they are by reasonably well known authors.  The Bride Wore Black is actually one of Cornell Woolrich's most celebrated works, filmed by Francois Truffaut in 1968.  By the time it was reprinted here, it was already fifteen years old

The second novel, a retitling of Operation Pax, is part of Micheal Innes' long-running 'Inspector Appleby' series and was of more recent vintage, dating only from 1951.  It is a somewhat unusual choice, being more of a traditional British crime mystery rather than a true pulp novel.  Two Complete Detective Novels was one of a series of such titles from the same publisher.  These included Two Western Books and Two Complete Science Adventure Novels, both following the same format.  The latter is notable for featuring  Isaac Asimov's first novel, Pebble in the Sky in its first issue.  The publisher, Fiction House, were prolific publishers of pulp magazines, most notably the notorious science fiction pulp Planet Stories, famed for its covers featuring women in brass brassieres being menaced by tentacled aliens.  Sadly, by the late fifties, the pulp market was in severe decline and Fiction House, like many of its contemporaries, went out of business.