Export and Books in Print! - Part III

I had just finished looking at the books Export Publishing Enterprises published that are or might be in print when my favourite blog The Dusty Bookcase found another one. Montreal Confidential by Al Palmer has just been published by Vehicule Press of Montreal. It was originally published in September 1950 by Export as News Stand Library 134. This edition was dedicated "For EDDIE QUINN the noblest Hibernian" and comes in four variants of which I'm aware.

The first two have the same back cover but different coloured inner covers - one blue, one black. The third and fourth have a reset back cover and the same two colours but the pattern on the inner cover in inverted. The original art still exists - in Palmer's archives at Concordia University.

Palmer was a newspaperman for many years in Montreal and one of his buddies put a couple of free plugs in his column.

The first was “[d]on’t expect to see Al Palmer around these parts for a long time to come. His new book, Montreal Confidential, hit the news stands yesterday. It tells a lot of stories about what made the wheels click in this town in Al’s day, and it names names.” (“Fitz”, “On And Off The Record”, Montreal Gazette, September 21, 1950 p. 11). A few weeks later an update, “Al Palmer’s Montreal Confidential the fastest selling two-bitter ever to hit Montreal news-stands. Predictions are 25,000 copies plus locally, a record. Sales in the hinterland also good.” (“Fitz”, “On And Off The Record”, Montreal Gazette, October 3, 1950 p. 18.)

NSL 134

Variant 1 back cover

Variant 2 back cover

Al Palmer - the Dr. Timothy Leary of Margarine

"Al Palmer, with the now-defunct Herald, campaigned intrepidly for our right to buy margarine over the counter [italics in original] - margarine once as illicit in Quebec province as marijuana is today. Al Palmer, who was, in his time, the Dr. Tim Leary of artificial foods."

Mordecai Richler, The Street (Toronto, Montreal: McClelland & Stewart, 1969), p. 13.

Al Palmer was a well known police reporter and commentator for Montreal newspapers who was 36 when the first of his two books for Export Publishing Enterprises Inc. was published in 1949. This was the novel Sugar-puss on Dorchester Street. In 1950 Export published his non-fiction work Montreal Confidential as News Stand Library (NSL) 134.

Sugar-puss is a thinly veiled autobiography where Palmer is Jimmy Holden "a reporter [for The Chronicle] who would rather buy clothes than eat - and frequently did". Sugar-puss is "Gisele Lepine - fresh as the cool clean air of her Laurentian village and eager with the realization of a five-year dream - Montreal."

Sugar-puss was published in two editions - as NSL 84 in November 1949 and NSL 20A in February 1950. The first edition was for sale in Canada, the second in the US. There were two different covers, the first by D. Rickard, the second by Sid Dyke. In addition the US edition was published with a dust-jacket by an unknown artist.

NSL 84

NSL 20A

NSL 20A with dust jacket

NSL 134