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Cover Story: Blackridge: The Dark of Hearts

Writer's picture: Joseph DelmariJoseph Delmari

Growing up, I was a big fan of Agatha Christie. I was fascinated by the fact that this author, who had been so incredibly kind and surprisingly modest, could come up with ALL of these murder mysteries over and over again for so many books.


There was a time when there were 2 types of covers for her books that I really, really liked. One just had her golden profile (some anniversary edition if I recall) and the others had little illustrated images on the covers, something that was in the novel or that featured in the plot in some way. It was Pocket Books who published those in the mid to late 80s.


I ... HAD ... to have them.


I went everywhere. I went to every vintage bookstore that I could find in the city that carried them and I was extremely lucky to have found them all, both the vintage covers and the anniversary ones, because I liked those, too. In them, I found treasure. I found stories of life, not death. I learned a lot from her books about people and living. I really liked her heroes and I identified with them. When it came time for my own suspense thriller covers to be made, I wanted my own look for them, which is where that signature 'tearing' of the cover look came in. (Drove poor Kevin crazy as I've probably said before :) He obliged me and we set about trying to find a way to capture this look for the Blackridge series.


The Dark of Hearts was NOT an easy cover to come up with. There is a lot going on in this book that begins to reveal the darkness that lurks in the Blackridge Saga, both in the villainy and the title ... the 'dark' of hearts. There are shadowy revelations to be found in the pages and we struggled to come up with a design that would not reveal too much of what was going on. That is something that I usually battled with because there's so much we could do, yet we had to be restrained as to not give away too much in the story.


Thus I went back to my roots. I went back to the days when I was faced with the quietness, reading books and learning about life. For my cover, I decided on the playing cards, blood, and gun barrel because it captured the vintage look of those beloved mystery novels that had captivated me because I was completely unable to solve any of those crimes.


There was only ONE book of Agatha Christie's that I ever solved and I honestly did. It was "A Murder is Announced." I think it was because the plot was similar to another book that she had written and I remembered it. I figured out who the murderer was and that was like, the greatest thing ever. I felt so close to this author and I understood what she was doing with her work. I saw past Poirot and Marple. I saw past the crimes and the sleuthing. I saw the people affected and the people in between. Those were the ones that really captured my attention. I felt like my book deserved a vintage feel to the cover, and since a casino is featured, I opted for the cards. There's also some gunning involved too, but I'll leave that to my readers to discover who, what, where, when, and why.


The Dark of Hearts is where the Blackridge Saga gets dark. It doesn't stop from there. It only gets more and more shrouded in shadow and mystery. The vintage feel of the cover suits it perfectly and I was happy with it when Kevin came up with it for us. He does a good job of knowing what works in his cover designs. It's always a lot of fun to work with him when he creates and the Dark of Hearts worked. I was really pleased with the mystery look.

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