Bear Alley: The Art of Reginald Heade Volume Three

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Sunday, July 19, 2026

The Art of Reginald Heade Volume Three

When volume two of this series of books detailing the works of Reginald Heade arrived in 2020, it was widely thought to be the final word on Heade and his career as one of Britain's premier cover and dust jacket artists. Six years later, we have an update that not only offers further insight into his life, his family and the agents and publishers he worked for, but an astonishing collection of previously unknown dust jacket illustrations, most of them dating from the 1930s and impossible to find these days, puzzles, sketches and advertising.

Some of the images, especially of paperbacks from the Hank Janson-era—although not HJ himself, as that is a separate book, Hank Janson Under Cover (2021)—you'll recognise as having appeared in earlier volumes, but here they are often printed full page and from superior scans. An example is The Tenderfoot by W.H.B. Kent, previously in volume 1 (Special Edition, p.154) which was comparatively dark and muddy up against the new version (Volume 3, p.211). A quarter page scan of Ladies of the Red Lamp by Roland Vane (Special Edition, p.77) is now a full page (Volume 3, p.373) and the quarter page White Slave Racket by Vane (Special Edition, p.79) has now been scanned from the original artwork (Volume 3, p.372).

There are many more full page images this time around, and these images are 15-20% larger than the original paperback covers. I don't have many dust jackets for comparison, but it looks like they vary from life size to a little smaller where the spine image is shown. I'm certainly not complaining, as the reproduction is sharp and someone (Stephen Walker?) has gone to a lot of trouble to make the images free of any defects. All the images are identified and often accompanied with a light-hearted comment—many Heade couples show a tendency for the men to be laser-focused on their lady, while the women seem preoccupied with other things.

Fans of Heade's work will find plenty of new covers that they have never had an opportunity to see before and, even if you recognise the cover, chances are you've never seen it looking so good. The whole thing is an unexpected delight for those of us who thought volume two was the final word.

The Art of Reginald Heade Volume Three. Telos Publishing ISBN 978-1845-83261-2, July 2026, 390pp, £49.99. Available from the publisher and via Amazon.