The Girl Factory

The Girl Factory series by Robert Franklin Murphy was originally published in the USA by Zebra in 1975; the first book was reprinted in 1976 as The Man Made Woman, but the British reprint retained the original title, The Girl Factory. These are Robert Franklin Murphy's only two credits, which makes me suspect the name is a pen-name, despite Hubin giving the author a year of birth (1924).

The titles are copyright to Script Representatives Inc., who also represented a number of authors around that same period, including Janet Louise Roberts and her pseudonym Janette Badcliffe, Parley Cooper and his pen-name Josephine Freytag, Barbara O'Brien and Betsy Winston in the 1970s. As far as I can tell, in 1979-84 Script Representatives were almost exclusively representing various novels in The Butcher series by Stuart Jason and the novels of Paula Fairman, both known pseudonyms.

Script Representatives was set up in New York in October 1972. Rights to their 56 titles were assigned to Jay Garon-Brooke Associates Inc. in 1998 and the company was dissolved in 1999.

Paul Fairman was the pen-name of Paul W. Fairman, whilst Stuart Jason was a house name used by various authors, including Michael Avallone, James Dockery and Lee Floren. Of these, Michael Avallone was born in 1924 (he died in 1999), which makes me wonder if Avallone was behind the Murphy pen-name.

The Girl Factory
Mews Books 0452-00031-9. Aug 1976, 160pp, 45p. Cover by W. Francis Phillipps

Somebody, somewhere was manufacturing Duplicate People and posing a major risk to the peace of the world. Something had to be done.
__Su-Lin Kelly, the beautiful, wealthy playgirl who headed a global espionage network inherited from her husband, took on the job.
__Su-Lin – trained in the arts of the ancient East, Oriental fighting and the Kama Sutra – brought a murderous skill and sexual prowess to her work which made her almost unbeatable.
__But just how was she going to cope with the seemingly unending attacks of the clones...?

King's Mate
Mews Books 0452-00043-2, Oct 1976, 142pp, 50p. Cover by W. Francis Phillipps

Su-Lin Kelly can fight like a man – but she's also a beautiful, sexy woman.
__Just ask the scientist who created her, out of a handful of cells, in a super-secret process for duplicating an individual from a single cell.
__Su-Lin is also the head of a world-wide espionage agency which can get her into many bizarre and dangerous situations.
__And the most bizarre of all is when she's called on to track down a defected Russian scientist ... and finds her 'life' on the line in a chess match where the players are human – and to be check-mated is a fate worse than death!

The Spider by Grant Stockbridge

"He moves in the shadows, strong and deadly. A man of courage and cunning. A man unafraid of the dark powers of this world – or any other. THE SPIDER."

Grant Stockbridge was a house name created to disguise the work of a number of authors who penned the adventures of The Spider in his eponymous pulp magazine. "Over 20 million copies of this series have been sold," claimed the back covers of the Mews reprints. That sounds like a low total for the original pulp, which ran for 118 issues. An attempt by Berkley to reprint the books in 1969-70 fizzled out after only four titles. The Pocket Books series in the mid-1970s also reprinted four titles, in turn reprinted by Mews. All four were penned by Norvell W. Page, an extremely prolific pulp writer who wrote all but a handful of the Spider's adventures.

There have been many other attempts to reprint the series since then, including a facsimile series by Girasol.

Spider No.1: Death Reign of the Vampire King (Nov 1935)
Mews Books 0452-00002-5, Apr 1976, 128pp, 40p. Cover by Tony Masero.

All his resources are required against this hideous new menace. For Battalions of trained vampire bats, starved so that they would attack any living thing, their teeth anointed with deadly poison, are being set loose in dozens of cities. Thousands have succumbed to their lethal kisses. No one knows where they will strike next...
__Only The Spider could discover their hideout and stop the man who controlled them and was bent upon total domination of mankind. But would he be in time before the deadly kisses of the vampire legions brought a whole nation to its knees?

Spider No.2: Hordes of the Red Butcher (Jun 1935)
Mews Books 0452-00009-2, May 1976, 144pp, 40p. Cover by Tony Masero

The Spider was the only survivor of a horrifying slaughter – as beast men from nowhere had turned the train he was on into a gory shambles. He himself had grappled with these subhuman killers with their amazing strength and deadly primitive weapons.
__Somewhere, he knew, there must be a criminal genius controlling these dreadful creatures as they rampaged across the country like the hordes of Attila the Hun. But how long had he got to find the master-mind before the nation lay in ruins?

The Spider No.3: The City Destroyer (Jan 1935)
Mews Books 0452-00015-7, Jun 1976, 143pp, 40p. Cover by Tony Masero

A group of merciless killers have stolen the formula for a chemical that erodes steel – destroying skyscrapers, roadways and bridges without warning. Wherever they struck, hundreds of innocent people were pulverised as steel girders crumbled into powdery fragments and death rained from the skies.
__Desperately, The Spider scoured the city for the mad genius behind this plan – known only to his henchmen as 'The Master'. But could he find the maniac before thousands more lay dead?

The Spider No.4: Death and The Spider (Jan 1942)
Mews Books 0452-00037-8, Sep 1976, 126pp, 45p. Cover by Tony Masero

The terror began with just a few isolated, brutal crimes – nothing to signal what was to come. Then ordinary people, usually devoid of criminality, began perpetrating hideous acts of violence, often culminating in suicide.
__Spider, following a devious, dangerous trail, found the source of this senseless slaughter – a mystical organisation led by a man called Death. But how could he fight an enemy who knew how to enter and control the minds of his victims when he was nowhere near them?

The Satan Sleuth

The first in a series of cover galleries featuring series characters published by Mews, an imprint of New English Library. The stories were mostly reprints of American series from the likes of Lyle Kenyon Engel, who often used house names to cover the work of multiple authors contributing to a single series. I'll try to identify these where I can.

First up, tho', we have Michael Avallone's Satan Sleuth, who did what it says on the tin. Having the opening bit of the blurb – "The most powerful series since Dennis Wheatley's black magic novels" – in quotes makes it appear to be . . . a quote. But who from? And where? Well, actually, it was probably a quote from the guy writing the blurb. If it came to a demonic battle between Wheatley and Avallone, I'd put my money on Wheatley every time.

There was a third Satan Sleuth novel published in the US: The Werewolf Walks Tonight (1974). It didn't appear from Mews, so I have to presume that others felt that Avallone's take on Satanic sleuthing wasn't up to much either.

Fallen Angel (New York, Warner, Nov 1974)
Mews 0452-00001-7, Apr 1976, 144pp, 40p.

"The most powerful new series since Dennis Wheatley's black magic novels"
From the moment Philip St. George saw the butchered and mangled corpse that had once been his beautiful wife, Dorothy, he became a man with a terrible mission.
__For the bloody handiwork was that of an obscene and blasphemous cult of Devil Worshippers – and so Philip St. George dedicated himself to destroying all those who followed the way of Satan.
__He became a crusader against The Evil One and all his minions on Earth – THE SATAN SLEUTH!

Devil, Devil... (New York, Warner, Jan 1975)
Mews 0452-00014-9, Jun 1976, 159pp, 40p.

Philip St. George is The Satan Sleuth, a man who through terrible personal knowledge of the evils and debauchery of Black Magic becomes a lone fighter against Satanism.
__Now he is matched against Sister Sorrow, the Bride of Lucifer, who leads a coven of witches practising in the heart of New York, A she-devil whose hypnotic black eyes could change a man into a beast and command her subjects to commit murder.
__Five beautiful girls have already met their death at her command – five beheaded corpses, their severed bodies scarred with the Devil's markings. But The Satan Sleuth has vowed his own kind of magic and dedication that there will be no more!