LA Bantam - The Blue Geranium and other Tuesday Club Murders

Bantam Publications, Inc. of Los Angeles published 29 mass market paperbacks in 1940 and 1941. Often called LA Bantam to distinguish it from the New York mass market publisher Bantam Books, LA Bantam is an obscure and intriguing publisher with complicated business and bibliographic histories. In this blog we'll take a look at the books, myths and history of LA Bantam.  

The best place to start is to describe one of LA Bantam's books.

The 26th book in the series is Agatha Christie's The Blue Geranium and other Tuesday Club Murders. It is a collection of five stories chosen from 13 that were published in The Thirteen Problems (London: Wm. Collins, 1932) and as The Tuesday Club Murders (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1933) when published in the US. There is a detailed publishing history and plot description of each story here. The stories are :

The Blue Geranium
The Companion
The Four Suspects
A Christmas Tragedy
Death by Drowning

In common with all but one of LA Bantam's books The Blue Geranium and other Tuesday Club Murders is 100 pages long and is 110 mm (4 5/16") wide by 152 mm (6") tall. Cover and pages are made from high acid pulp paper. The page collation is:

[1] title page,
[2] copyright page,
[3] contents,
[4] blank,
5-21 The Blue Geranium,
[22] blank,
23-41 The Companion,
[42] blank,
43-58 The Four Suspects,
59-77 A Christmas Tragedy,
[78] blank,

79-100 Death by Drowning.

Note that the cover shown below has a title different from the one on the title page. The copyright page states that the stories are from The Tuesday Club Murders and has four copyright dates - 1928, 1929, 1930 and 1933. The back cover lists 12 of the books from 1, The Spanish Cape Murder to 28, Strangers in Flight.

In common with most LA Bantams there are variant covers. In addition to the strong blue/vivid yellow and illustrated versions shown below there is a strong yellowish green/light blue version.