{"product_id":"gang-girls","title":"Playtime Reading 626 Gang Girls to Rand Crawford, with cover art by Robert Bonfils 1963","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe basics.\u003c\/strong\u003e Gang Girls is credited to Rand Crawford, with cover art by Robert Bonfils, and it's dated 1963. It came out as a paperback original. It wasn't a reprint of a hardcover. The 60¢ price fits that period for \"adult\" paperbacks. They cost more than mainstream titles, which usually sold for 35–50¢.  Fine Cond.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe cover artist is the big deal.\u003c\/strong\u003e Robert Bonfils was the house artist for William Hamling's Chicago-based paperback empire: Nightstand Books, Midnight Reader, Ember Library, and related imprints. Hamling started Nightstand Books in Illinois in 1959, and from 1961 on the line was edited by Earl Kemp and featured cover art by Harold McCauley and Robert Bonfils. The hundreds of covers Bonfils did for the group are now fiercely sought by collectors. Yours shows his style well: the loose, painterly figure in front, a flat blue sky, and dark silhouettes of the gang on the boardwalk fence. The Ferris wheel suggests a Coney Island–type amusement park. For many collectors, the art matters more than the text.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe genre.\u003c\/strong\u003e This is a \"JD\" (juvenile delinquent) sleaze novel. The genre cashed in on 1950s–60s panic about teen gangs, the same wave that produced \u003cem\u003eBlackboard Jungle\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eTeenage Doll\u003c\/em\u003e. Men's adventure magazines and paperbacks of the '50s and early '60s ran lots of stories about female \"juvenile delinquents.\" The cover tagline follows the usual formula: a tough girl scheming her way up to become the gang leader's girlfriend. Books of this kind were mild by modern standards, suggestive rather than explicit, but publishers in the field regularly faced obscenity prosecutions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"vintage paperback","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67557784191273,"sku":null,"price":75.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0969\/9052\/7785\/files\/PXL_20260929_173659902.jpg?v=1790790164","url":"https:\/\/captainaero.com\/products\/gang-girls","provider":"My Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}