THE MEMORY OF EVA RYKER by Donald A. Stanwood

"APRIL 14, 1912: The great TITANIC sinks after striking an iceberg.  NOVEMBER 1941: In one of Hawaii's most sensational unsolved crimes, a middle-aged couple is brutally slain.  NOW: A multimillion-dollar salvage operation works to raise the TITANIC... while a London couple schemes to take the fortune they know is waiting in its rusty hulk. What links these events? One woman, Eva Ryker---an aging heiress who survived the TITANIC and spent a lifetime erasing a night of horrors from her mind---has the answer. One man, journalist Norman Hall, is determined to raise the truth of the monstrous plot hatched aboard the doomed ship---a plot that has already taken seven lives---and whose solution lied deep inside THE MEMORY OF EVA RYKER."

IF ENTERTAINMENT is the measure of a novel, than Donald A. Stanwood's The Memory of Eva Ryker is the length, width, and height of the TITANIC itself.

That said, it's not without some rough water. No novel, no matter how sea-worthy it may appear, is entirely safe from sinking. Find me a perfect novel and I can probably find someone who can punch an iceberg sized hole in it. Still, other than the final unmasking of Eva's repressed memory, the horror of which I found to be disturbingly gratuitous (though necessary to the story, one might argue), and the abject brutalizing of two otherwise benign characters for no apparent reason that I could discern, there's absolutely nothing else in the book that I thought was either weak or disappointing or dull. From my perspective, The Memory of Eva Ryker was grand reading on a grand scale. At some point I know I'll be reading it again.

Dell published this paperback first edition in 1979 (its stepback illustration is seen just below).

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

 

 

Dell's cover and stepback art were painted in oil and graphite by Fred Pfeiffer (Roger Kastel also used this mixed media technique in almost the exact same way while producing for Pocket and Bantam). Pfeiffer was an extraordinarily talented artist, who despite a limited time actually working in publishing, managed to produce an exceptional amount of high quality cover art. He entered the book business in the late 1960's, but within just a short time he had developed his painting style to be among the very best that there was. In the early 1980's he left the business to try his luck in California, producing movie posters and whatever else he could find, and when he attempted to return to the fold in 1995 he suddenly and tragically passed away. Pfeiffer was only 55-years-old. 

As with all collages, I try to figure out who's who, but it's not as easy as it might seem. Obviously, the policeman is our main protagonist, Norman Hall. However, the woman on his left I can't quite place (actually, there are several to choose from), but the lady in the hat is almost certainly Eva Ryker. To her right is the ship's steward. But the bearded man does not match the description of the 85-year-old patriarch, William E. Ryker---and yet, it must be him. To his right are the "blonde man," a significant character, and the "hired" thug, another important character manipulating events. And finally, sketched in graphite on the far left, are Claire and Eva Ryker, shown lounging onboard the Titanic during its fateful crossing.

 

 

 

The first U.S. hardcover edition of The Memory of Eva Ryker was published by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., of New York, in 1978. The jacket art was produced by Norm Walker. In addition to his many covers for CMG, Walker supplied dustjacket art for G. P. Putnam throughout the 1970's and 1980's, as well as cover and interior art for magazine publications such as Vertex and The Twilight Zone.

 

Below is the SYNOPSIS from the U.S. dustjacket flap---but take heed; if you haven't read the novel yet, this synopsis will provide too much SPOILER information for your own good:   

"An eccentric billionaire, a bestselling author, a beautiful, self-destructive woman: three lives linked by the tragic sinking of the TITANIC---and the fragile memories of a ten-year-old girl.  April 11, 1912---The gala sailing out of Southampton of White Star Line's peerless luxury liner, R.M.S. TITANIC. Among the dazzling, doomed names on the passenger list for this, the Titanic's maiden voyage, is Clair Austin Ryker, lovely and dissolute wife of billionaire industrialist William Ryker. Clair is returning to her husband from a round of expensive dissipation in the fashionable spas of Europe with her ten-year-old daughter, Eva. Also on board, Jason and Lisa Eddington, a young couple whose fresh beauty and sheer magnetism even Clair Ryker's jaded sensibilities cannot fail to feel. And deep in the liner's hold a crate labeled RYKER INDUSTRIES that carries important cargo. All are bound for the Titanic's fatal midnight rendezvous of April 14th with the iceberg that will cost the lives of 1,490 of the 2,201 men and women aboard.  November 30, 1941---Honolulu, Hawaii, twenty-nine years later and six thousand miles distant, the apparent accidental death of tourist Albert Klein and the brutal murder of his wife confound the promising career of a young rookie cop. For the rest of his days, even when he has become securely established as a best-selling author, Norman Hall will never be able to erase from his consciousness the grisly sight of the dismembered body of Martha Klein.  What possible link can connect the macro-- to the micro-tragedy? Two slender strips of tape---one a faded film capturing the sunny pleasures of a shipboard party; the other, a terrifying tape of a child's shocked voice describing a night of darkest infamy and moral outrage.  It is Norman Hall's plum assignment, fifty years after the liner's sinking, to cover for WORLD magazine William Ryker's multimillion-dollar salvage expedition to recover the lost riches of the TITANIC. It is Norman Hall's dangerous obsession to understand the billionaire recluse's motives and to exorcise his own demons by uncovering the truth that lies locked in the memory of Eva Ryker."

 

 
The first British hardcover edition was published in 1978 by Hamish Hamilton. The jacket art, with its glittering diamond acting as a mirror of the story, was produced by the prolific and oft-celebrated Agatha Christie artist, Tom Adams.

 

 

 

The first British paperback edition was published by Corgi in 1979. The cover has a die-cast keyhole shaped like a porthole, revealing a glimpse of the stepback art just underneath. The artist is unknown, and copies of this paperback edition are almost impossible to come by in the States.

 

DONALD A. STANWOOD was born in Glendale, California, in 1949. He was a student at California State University at Fullerton when he started writing The Memory of Eva Ryker. Eight years later he finished it. Stanwood published only one other novel after that, The Seventh Royale, a serpentine, quasi political crime thriller, with historic 1930's overtones (Atheneum, U.S., 1987; Bodley Head, U.K., 1987; Arrow, U.K., 1988; Dell, U.S., 1988).  The so-called "Car of Kings," a Bugatti Type 41 "Royale," figures heavily into its plot. Only six were supposedly built, hence the mythical and clearly coveted seventh. Publisher's Weekly called the novel "engrossing, moving and heavily atmospheric."

Atheneum, 1987, jacket art by Paul Bacon

Bodley Head, London, 1987

Dell, 1988

"The winds of war brought Italian race car driver Elio Cezale and American movie maker Alan Escher face to face on the North African desert. An obsession would keep them together across four decades and three continents. For the world believed that only six Bugatti Royales---the most fabulous and expensive car ever built---existed. But somewhere there was a seventh... and finding it would lead a desperate man and a passionate woman back into the decadent center of Hitler's most intimate circle and forward into a vortex of sex, betrayal and death."  --- DELL edition, 1988.

After the success of both novels, Stanwood, allegedly, became an editor-in-chief at Oxmoor House. They publish books about cooking, crafts, holiday, gardening and home-improvement, while also representing books for Sunset Magazine. Rumor has it that a third novel was begun by Stanwood, but apparently never finished, though the two he did complete are good enough to be the envy of anyone.

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IN 1980, CBS and Irwin Allen produced a Made-for-TV movie of The Memory of Eva Ryker (it aired on May 7th of that year), starring, among others, Natalie Wood, Ralph Bellamy, Robert Foxworth, Roddy McDowall and Morgan Fairchild. This was Wood's last film before her death in 1981 off the coast of Catalina Island. The film was directed by Walter Grauman and the teleplay was written by Laurence Heath. * One significant change in the movie was the doomed ship became the LUSITANIA and not the Titanic (my guess is the producers felt that torpedoes are way more thrilling than icebergs).
 

I've not had the pleasure, or displeasure, of seeing this movie in its entirety, but a short trailer and a clip or two can be viewed freely on youtube. To my knowledge, it has never been officially released on DVD, but I'm sure there are bootlegs that exist.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE. Note the name Lusitania on the bow

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BONUS COVER ART BELOW, from Norm Walker and Fred Pfeiffer:

NORM WALKER

The August, 1974 issue of Vertex: The Magazine of Science Fiction, with cover art by Norm Walker. Vertex was a heavily illustrated U.S. monthly and bi-monthly magazine, in slick, saddle-stapled format that ran from April 1973 to April 1975, and tabloid format from June 1975 to August 1975. It featured fiction and non-fiction pieces by the biggest names in the genre, along with interviews and stories by newcomers George R. R. Martin, Steven Utley and John Varley, among others. The high cost of production forced its eventual demise.

The Chanting of Children was Margaret Sand's first novel. It was published in hardcover by Coward, McCann & Geoghegan in 1978.  Norm Walker produced the jacket art. It's a "harrowing story of supernatural terror and suspense," in which a woman returns to her hometown to claim a family inheritance, but finds that she must first lay to rest the tormented spirits of her youth.

The Mirror was published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1978. This was the first of two novels by Marlys Millhiser that Norm Walker would produced the jacket art for. Longtime Boulder, Colorado resident Marlys "Marty" Millhiser, who died in 2017 at the age of 79, was the author of 14 published mystery, suspense and fantasy novels. The Mirror is considered to be her most popular. 

"On the eve of her wedding in 1978, Shay Garrett peers into the antique mirror in her family's longtime home, the famous Victorian Gingerbread House on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado and falls unconscious only to wake in the body of her own grandmother Brandy on the eve of her wedding in 1900. The virginal Brandy, in turn, awakes in Shay's body in 1978 to discover herself pregnant. What follows is a fascinating look at how two women-- and their families-- cope with this strange and even humorous situation."

Nightmare Country was the other novel by Millhiser enhanced by Norm Walker's excellent jacket art. It was published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1981.

"A young man in a tropical paradise dreams of an unknown woman on a mountain far away... And as he dreams, the young woman envisions him-- and the great danger moving ever closer to enfold them both... A force as strong as destiny and twice as fatal binds Thad Alexander and Tamara Whelan together long before they ever meet. It is a force that will unleash the evil power of the universe on them and those they love, drawing them into a close encounter in a land where the dead return to claim the living as their own... where hideous shapes rise from the sea to engulf men and women in eternal oblivion... where mountains come to life and the past and present co-exist in agony... and where the great battle between love and destruction will be waged by a man, woman and a child-- against an evil more appalling than any other mankind has ever known."
     

Alicia II by Robert Thurston was published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1978. Norm Walker supplied the jacket art. Robert Thurston is perhaps best known for his many stories and novelizations of television's Battlestar Galactica, but he is also the author of three standalone science fiction novels. His Alicia II concerns "an existential problem involving identity transfer; the brain of an old man is implanted into the body of a young "retread" and the new amalgam must come to terms with the kind of society which legitimizes this obscene method of attaining longevity for an elite few."

Golf enthusiast John Coyne is the author more than 25 non-fiction and fiction books, most of which are horror related. G. P. Putnam's Sons published his novel The Piercing in hardcover in 1979. Norm Walker produced the jacket art.

"Betty Sue is an innocent young hillbilly girl who acts out the agony of Christ once per week, vis-à-vis a stigmata. Some says it's a miracle. The Church says it's fake. But this is no charade-- from her head, hands, feet and side pours her blood. Witnessing this agonizing phenomenon is Father Stephen Kinsella, a Catholic priest whose faith is already unsteady [yes, you guessed right: he couldn't stay celibate]. Is she divine? Or damned?"
  

Robin Cook is a physician and the bestselling author of over 35 medical thrillers, with sales surpassing 400 million copies. Mindbend was published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1985. Norm Walker produced the jacket art.

"Future doctor Adam Schonberg loved his wife. That was why he took a job with the giant drug firm Arolen, for the money he needed for the coming baby. His wife, Jennifer, felt she would get the best of care at the Julian Clinic as her pregnancy progressed. It seemed a happy coincidence that the Julian Clinic was owned by Arolen... until Adam slowly began to suspect the terrifying truth about this connection... and about the hideous evil perpetrated on the wife he loved by the doctor she helplessly trusted... "
 

Norm Walker created this poster for P. D. James's A Taste for Death, An Appetite for Murder in 1988, a six-part mystery series that was produced in the United Kingdom by Independent Television (ITV), for ultimate broadcast on PBS's Masterpiece Mystery Theater.

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FRED PFEIFFER

The Beggars Are Coming is the first novel in Mary Loos' epic Barstow series (Belinda is the second novel). It was published in 1974 by Bantam; this 7th printing was published in 1977. Mary Anita Loos (1910-2004) worked as a publicist and an actress before she turned her attention to screenwriting, successfully collaborating with her first husband, the novelist, film director and screenwriter, Richard Sale. But after her divorce and on her own she was still quite productive. She became a co-creator, story editor, and chief writer for the Western television series, Yancy Derringer (1958-59), and she also wrote four contemporary novels, all of which were published in paperback by Bantam, with corresponding cover art by Fred Pfeiffer. However, Loos should not be confused with her famous aunt of the same name, Anita Loos (1888-1981), the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood and the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

The Barstow Legend by Mary Loos was published in paperback by Bantam in 1978. This was the third novel in her Barstow series, and the third book of hers to benefit from outstanding cover art by Fred Pfeiffer.

A Pride of Lovers was the last novel that Mary Loos wrote, and the fourth in her Barstow series. Bantam published this paperback edition in 1981. Fred Pfeiffer's wraparound montage is in keeping with the same composition he conceived on Loos' earlier novels, a mix of graphite sketching and rich oil paint.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

The Dirty Dozen by E. M. Nathanson was originally published by Random House in 1965. Bantam published this paperback reprint with Fred Pfeiffer's wraparound cover illustration on it in 1982. Erwin M. Nathanson (1928-2016) majored in Anthropology at New York University but found work instead in the publishing field, as a reporter, editor and freelance writer for various newspapers all over the East Coast. After moving to Los Angeles in 1959 he became an associate editor for Daring Detective magazine. He wrote six novels altogether while living in California, but none as successful as his first, The Dirty Dozen, which was made into an enormous hit film in 1967.  

"Twelve bearded, filthy G.I.'s wait behind barbed wire, prisoners of their own army. Murderers, thieves, rapists, they wait to be sentenced to death or hard labor for life. They are the damned of the American Army. But at the last moment they are offered the opportunity of salvation: a mission just before D-Day. The chances of their getting away with it are about one in a million, but the damned don't care, and certainly don't count chances..."
     

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

James Hilton's Lost Horizon is one of the best novels I have ever read. The 1937 film that was made of it is pretty good too, with one of the best plane crash sequences you will ever see in any film. This particular paperback edition, with Fred Pfeiffer's mountainous cover art (though his Shangri-La village is much too large for proper perspective) was published by Pocket Books in 1972.  

"Hugh Conway saw humanity at its worst while fighting in the trenches of the First World War. Now, more than a decade later, Conway is a British diplomat serving in Afghanistan and facing war yet again-- this time, a civil conflict forces him to flee the country by plane. When his plane crashes high in the Himalayas, Conway and the other survivors are found by a mysterious guide and led to a breathtaking discovery: the hidden valley of Shangri-La. Kept secret from the world for more than two hundred years, Shangri-La is like paradise-- a place whose inhabitants live for centuries amid the peace and harmony of the fertile valley. But when the leader of the Shangri-La monastery falls ill, Conway and the others must face the daunting prospect of returning home to a world about to torn open by war."
  

HAPPY SAILING !

[© September, 2021, Jeffersen]