Ali Karim, Bouchercon 2025

The Sailcloth Shroud (1972)

Stanley Borack’s original art for The Sailcloth Shroud, by Charles Williams.

Newspaper Notice, “A Thunder of Drums”

This is strange. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) does not credit Kenneth E. Shiflet’s The Valiant Strain as the source material for A Thunder of Drums, the 1961 film starring Richard Boone, George Hamilton, and Luana Patten. It notes only that James Warner Bellah (1899-1976) wrote the script.

However, the clip below, from the April 23, 1958, edition of the Northern Virginia Sun newspaper, makes clear that the movie was based on Shiflet’s novel.

Drum Beat—Berlin (1964)

Drum Beat—Berlin, by Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal, 1964).
Cover illustration by Stanley Zuckerberg.

Captain Blood Returns (1963)

This is Robert McGinnis’ original cover art for Popular Library’s 1963 paperback edition of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood Returns.

Captain Blood (1976)

Captain Blood, by Rafael Sabatini (Bantam, 1976). Front cover and inside cover (“stepback”) art by David Grove.

A McGinnis Match-up

Two different Dell paperback editions from Brett Halliday’s best-selling Michael Shayne private-eye series, both employing the same cover art painted by Robert McGinnis: The Homicidal Virgin (1967) and Marked for Murder (1969).

The Case of the Cautious Coquette (1949)

The Case of the Cautious Coquette, by Erle Stanley Gardner. Published in hardback in 1949 by William Morrow and Company. Cover art by Charles Lofgren.

McGinnis’ Curtains

Below: Revenge, by Jack Ehrlich (Dell, 1958); Kiss and Kill, by Ellery Queen (Dell, 1969), ghostwritten by Charles Runyon. Both covers were painted painted by Robert McGinnis.

The Convenient Coward (1961)

The Convenient Coward, by Kenneth E. Shiflet (Stackpole Books, 1961).