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, Alastair Maclean, Hammond Innes, Helen MacInnes and Eric Ambler. I would imagine that if you’re a successful writer 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 covers.

Adam Hall is one of my favorite spy authors. While he generally avoided photo covers, a few did sneak through. Some were connected to the Quiller TV show that was released in the early 70’s, but the real beauties are the ones that were released for the Dutch editions. Thanks to the folks in the Quiller email group that made those available.

Have you seen more wacky Quiller photo covers? Let me know!