Here's a great cover for the Swedish translation of Talmage Powell's memorable novella-length story, "Sudden, Sudden Death" (AHMM, 1957; anthologized many times). The story was published in Sweden in 1971 in a series of mini-sized paperbacks (roughly 9 x 14 cm and 120 pages). The illustration, which I like very much and which is the reason I bought the book, is probably Spanish in origin. The Swedish title means "To Hate till Death".
The mini-paperbacks never really caught on in Finland. There was a series called Mikro-kirjat in the late fifties (they published three science fiction novels, may have to do a post about them later) and later on there was only one series, aimed at female readers.
What an odd format this was - these little 'uns look really strange on the book shelf next to normal sized pb's. Anyway, the series existed from 1971 to 1973 and AFAIK there were roughly 90 titles published. Counting from late '71 to early '73 that's one title every week, just like the name "Lördagsdeckaren" implies. Odd thing is that quite a lot of it was rather old even back then, e.g. some Cornell Woolrich from the mid thirties.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Anders! I gather that in these Scandinavian paperbacks they really didn't care about how old the stuff was - some of David Dodge's books from the fourties were published in the seventies, etc.
ReplyDelete