The Canadian and America editions of Neil H. Perrin's Death Be My Destiny, both published by News Stand Library, both bearing covers drawn by the same anonymous hand. How to explain the differences? Do Canadians prefer blondes? Do we choose hard liquor over red wine? Are our ties a touch more garish, our women more modest? Can it really be that our seedy hotels are so luxurious? It all seems wrong... even that bit about the ties.
Still no trigger on that gun, I see.
Update: Over at Fly-by-night, bowdler has posted an image of the uncommon dustjacket that adorned the American edition.
The anonymous hand has a partial name but nothing else - D. Rickard. He/she did sign many covers and has a distinctive style.
ReplyDeleteThanks, bowdler, I should have recognized Rickard. As you say, "a distinctive style", yet some seem so much better than others. The two Rickard covers for Ronald J. Cooke's The House on Craig Street, for example, are much better than the pair above.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why. Perhaps the explanation is simply that the artist had more time.
I find these paired covers you dig up fascinating--quite why they were done, why they're so similar/different, why they're entirely redrawn rather than just the original having bits repainted. All very odd, but very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThere's a good amount of weirdness surrounding Neil Perrin and NSL, which goes some way to explaining my interest in both. Another example can be found in Perrin's 1949 novel This Was Joanna. Published two months apart, NSL's Canadian and American editions feature not only different covers, but substitute the author's pseudonym (his real name was Danny Halperin) for "Grant R. Brooks".
ReplyDeleteYou can see here that the covers are entirely different. Are they by the mysterious D. Rickard? Looks that way to me. I add that the Canadian better represents the story.