I was sorting through my bookshelves about a year ago and tidying up etc and I came to my shelves of Agatha Christie titles. A motley collection of paperbacks and old hardbacks with some recent editions among them. The covers I liked the most were, I discovered, illustrated and designed by Tom Adams. They are rather surreal and at times reminded me of Dali. When I checked it appeared I had about ten titles, published by Fontana, which featured Tom Adam’s work. I decided to do a bit of research on this artist about who I knew very little and came across a book Tom Adams Uncovered, the Art of Agatha Christie and beyond. It looked fascinating so I ordered it and when it arrived went through reading and checking the covers.
There were UK and US covers and though many of them are quite easy to track down there are a few which are trickier and which elude me. I decided I was going to get rid of my mixed collection and replace them with all the work of Adams.
I struck lucky when I visited a second hand book shop in Felixstowe and came across a cardboard box full of Fontana paperbacks and had a rummage. Came up with fifteen that had Adams as the illustrator. They were priced very competitively so I walked off with the lot. I arrived at home and started checking them using the Tom Adams Uncovered title and straight away discovered that not all the covers were by him. After doing a huge amount Tom Adams stopped doing them but because they had been such a good selling point the next illustrator who came along was instructed to use the same style and he/she did it very well indeed. It is quite difficult to tell the difference but if you look closely you can make out which is the original and which not. Most of the UK editions will have Tom Adams name on the back of the book but some of the US ones do not so you need to be careful.
(I should make it clear that the covers designed by Tom Adams only form part of this book - his other work is featured as well and is really interesting but I am just focusing on Dame A for the purposes of this post)
Agatha Christie has had so many wonderful book jackets and covers but I have found the later ones somewhat lacking. I have some of the early editions from Collins with their lurid but marvellous covers and illustrations from 2000 onward have been somewhat pedantic, in my opinion only of course.
I really dislike covers which tie in with a film or TV adaptation. I have already let rip about the recent Ordeal by Innocence tie in which features the actors used by the BBC. The adaptation was so changed that the book cover should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act. And I have no desire to look at the smirking face of Johnny Depp on the cover of the Murder on the Orient Express recent movie edition. (I will refrain from commenting on Kenneth Branagh’s portrayal of Poirot. The less said the better......)
I need to double check again and see which Adams covers I still have to obtain. I think it is about eight but they are the hard ones to get hold of, natch.
It is funny how you can decide you want to collect something and then get a tad obsessed about it but it does mean that every time you go to a second hand book shop you have that thrill of the chase and the thought that you never know what you might find.
I am also tracking down Freeman Wills Croft at the moment, ditto E C Lorac and Carol Carnac and am coming up with quite a few. I found an early EC Lorac title the other day and was delighted until I saw the asking price. £4000. I decided to leave it...
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