Spotlight: The Empty Trap by John D. MacDonald. Popular Library No. 830 1957.
Cover art by Raymond Johnson This copy of John D. MacDonald’s The Empty Trap stands out as a high-grade snapshot of mid-century hardboiled noir paperback publishing. Long before MacDonald became a household name with his Travis McGee mystery series, he honed his craft in the pulp magazines and stand alone novels like this one. Front-cover teasers like "He Sold His Soul For Another Man's Wife" were classic publishing tropes designed to lure the buyers in. So were incestuous "reviews", like the one on the cover from Real magazine, a publication owned by the same publisher, gushing about how the book is "impossible to put down." The striking vintage cover art—crafted by prolific paperback illustrator Raymond Johnson—delivers classic "Good Girl Art" imagery. Capturing the core conflict, the artwork pairs an alluring blonde femme fatale with ominous figures lurking in the background. Th...