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The Best Crime Novel Covers Ever

The Best Crime Novel Covers Ever

The Best Crime Novel Covers Ever
23 October 2013

You're not meant to judge a book by its cover, but that rule goes out the window with crime novels. Frequently the cover is the best part. It started with the pulp novels, which would put a lurid image with lots of cleavage and knives and looming death on the front in order to sell a cheap story. It worked. So much that the style has now been appropriated by 'proper' books. But not all crime novels have pulp covers. Some are modern and minimal, some solely text-based, but any good example needs a sense of intrigue and excitement.

Here's a gallery of some of the most spectacular covers in crime fiction, from the beautifully tacky to the just plain beautiful.

Blood On The Moon

Author: James Ellroy

Year: 2005


Halloween Party

Author: Agatha Christie

Year: 1969


Joyland

Author: Stephen King

Year: 2013


Mr. Peanut

Author: Adam Ross

Year: 2010


Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Author: John Le Carre

Year: 1974


The Death Wish

Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Year: 1949


The Hound of the Baskervilles

Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

Year: 1902


No Country For Old Men

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Year: 2005


Strangers On A Train

Author: Patricia Highsmith

Year: 1950


The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death

Author: Charlie Huston

Year: 2009


The Hollow Man

Author: John Dickson Carr

Year: 1935


Farewell, My Lovely

Author: Raymond Chandler

Year: 1940


The Big Sleep

Author: Raymond Chandler

Year: 1939


Red Harvest

Author: Dashiell Hammett

Year: 1929


The Prisoner of Guantanamo

Author: Dan Fesperman

Year: 2006


Crime

Author: Alix Lambert

Year: 2008


The Twenty-Year Death

Author: Ariel S. Winter

Year: 2013


Zoo City

Author: Lauren Beukes

Year: 2011


The King of Methlehem

Author: Mark Lindquist

Year: 2008


In Cold Blood

Author: Truman Capote

Year: 1966


T As In Trapped

Author: Lawrence Treat

Year: 1947


Villain

Author: Shuichi Yoshida

Year: 2011


Case of the Deadly Kiss

Author: Milton K. Ozaki

Year: 1957


Sharp Objects

Author: Gillian Flynn

Year: 2007


Never Say No To A Killer

Author: Jonathan Gant

Year: 1956


The Murder

Author: John Steinbeck

Year: 1934


The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Author: Anthony Berkeley

Year: 1929


Pscyho

Author: Robert Bloch

Year: 1959


American Psycho

Author: Bret Easton Ellis

Year: 1991


The Case of the Haunted Husband

Author: Erle Stanley Gardner

Year: 1941


Sunset and Sawdust

Author: Joe R. Lansdale

Year: 2005


Brighton Rock

Author: Graham Greene

Year: 1938


The D.A. Calls It Murder

Author: Erle Stanley Gardner

Year: 1937


Child 44

Author: Tom Rob Smith

Year: 2008


The Thin Man

Author: Dashiell Hammett

Year: 1934