The golden age of pulp noir detective novels is long gone, but their covers -- hand-painted, dramatic, misogynist -- have become symbolic of a genre and an aesthetic that speak of guns, broads and crimes of passion.
Yet at closer inspection, so many of these covers don't make any sense at all. We've picked out a handful of covers from the 30s to the 50s, and spotted more than a few things that made us go "hmmmm..."
For more pulp covers, visit the various pulp pools on Flickr, Pulp Covers and Jaap van Deijk's pulp art palace.
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