The Mystery of Ruth Belew: The Dell Mapbacks
The Mystery of Ruth Belew The Dell Mapbacks As a kid in the 1940’s I was fascinated by the piles of paperback mysteries that sat around my grandmother’s cottage. I poured over them in the flickering yellow light of the “coal-oil” (kerosene) lamp while playing Hot Pretzels or The Pennsylvania Polka on the crank-up Victorola. I studied them carefully, but I wasn’t reading the stories. Instead I was fascinated with the covers. Specifically the back covers. The mysteries were 25¢ Dell paperbacks, those we know today as “mapbacks.” Over the years I have accumulated two dozen or so of these graphic design classics. They were produced from 1943 to 1953. They had a style all their own. Dell Books was a venture of George Delacourte, a New York publisher, and Lloyd Smith of Western Printing and Lithography in Racine, Wisconsin. (Much of this information comes from The Dell “Mapbacks” by Piet Schreuders, Uitgeverij Publishers, Rotterdam, the Netherlan