Swedish paperback covers

I found some Swedish paperbacks and other books in our house's trash bin. Took them out, but decided that I had no use for them, so tossed them back. I scanned the covers, included are some tidbits on the books and writers.

Two crime covers for American paperbacks.
The right one is by the great Bertil Hegland. 

James Morris was, if I recall, the pseudonym of Niels Meyn (in the other photo),
under which he wrote a series of Tarzan copies with Jukan.
I don't know who Jack Morris was.
Alibi-magazinet was a Swedish digest-sized fictionmag,
devoted to crime stories. Each issue had one story.

Niels Meyn was a Danish author, mainly of children's books.
This scifi title means "Around the World in 80 Hours".
See his Wikipedia page here.

Vernon Warren wrote pseudo-American private eye books
in the fifties, his hero was called Brandon. Not quite bad, actually,
I've read one and would possibly read another.

Friday's Forgotten Book: My Bonny Lies Under the Sea

Ray Alan was the pseudonym of one Joseph Lawrence Valls-Russell (born probably in 1922, died in 2007) of whom not much is known. Seems like he was a career soldier at one point, but the only thing that's most assuredly known about him is that he wrote two spy thrillers under the Ray Alan by-line. The earlier book came out in 1963 under the title My Bonny Lies Under the Sea, the latter, The Beirut Pipeline, came out in 1980. I don't know what he did between those books.

Ray Alan is the also the name of the hero of My Bonny Lies Under the Sea. He's a British journalist who's asked to come to Lebanon by a friend to investigate some fishy affairs. Of course there are murders, chases, mysterious tough guys, beautiful ladies etc. The book is pretty talkative and repetitive and also a bit too complicated as I lost myself in all the schemes, but there are also some better scenes throughout. At times the book resembles a hardboiled private eye novel, but it's still firmly a spy novel. The big stakes are about the Cold War stuff, uranium and other minerals used in nuclear weapons. Seems like "Ray Alan" knew quite a lot about the Middle East, which makes me wonder if he served there during the WWII or worked there as a diplomat. If someone knows something about Valls-Russell, I'd like to hear more.

Sorry, couldn't find the original cover, so you'll have to do with the Finnish cover. It uses a Bertil Hegland cover that, for all I know, might be the original Swedish cover for Ray Alan's book.

More Forgotten Books here.