Thursday, April 20, 2006

Misleading cover photo?

This example of the "headless woman" style cover (okay, she's not gowned...) intrigues me, but not in a good way. Unlike most other books with this type of cover, John MacLachlan Gray's The Fiend in Human does not feature a strong female protagonist. Rather, it's a Victorian-era thriller about a tabloid reporter determined to unmask a serial killer... who has been going around strangling prostitutes with a white silk scarf. Hence the cover photo.

What I ask is: does this cover play fair? Do you think it's horribly inappropriate, or do you find it diabolically clever?

3 comments:

  1. Well, it's clever in the sense that the cover would have gotten me to pick it up and leaf through it. (I would have guessed that it was a novel like The Crimson Petal and the White, just from looking at the cover.) But once a flip-through alerted me to its true subject matter, it would have been back on the bookshelf for it.

    Seems to be that it's a cover that will fail to attract male readers, though.

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  2. Maybe the artist was going for the antithesis of covers like the one for The Birth of Venus. Instead, we have The Death of Venus.

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  3. I'd find it misleading. It doesn't suggest 'thriller' or 'crime novel' to me, I'd be expecting a book about a courtesan or some aristocrat's mistress.

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