Publishers are always looking to refresh the backlist of authors and sell more copies. In the 70’s the beautiful painted book covers went out of fashion and photo covers came into vogue. The UK publisher Fontana had paperback rights to many of the well known thriller writers of the time like Desmond Bagley, Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes, Helen MacInnes and Eric Ambler. I would imagine that if you’re a successful writer for awhile the occasional wonky cover art comes with the territory but these covers in particular were very, very odd. Broken Covers is an occasional series looking at some of these crazy covers.
Previous posts include – Helen MacInnes and Eric Ambler
Alistair MacLean was one of the biggest selling authors of the 60’s and 70’s but that didn’t spare him from one of Fontana’s worst covers – Caravan to Vaccarès.
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You didn’t include the worst of the lot Puppet on a Chain, truly dreadful. The one for The Guns of Navarone has someone dressed as a German soldier climbing/abseiling in daylight in full uniform on a cliff – not in the book.
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