John Wyndham Covers Part 5: Foul Play Suspected

The last cover I did in the series was for a pretty obscure, early work of Wyndham’s written before he settled down into the speculative/sci-fi mode that would define his mature career. In the last post I mentioned that Plan for Chaos starts out as a kind of standard issue mystery novel. Foul Play Suspected, as the title suggests, starts out the same way… and then doesn’t deviate. A woman returns home to England after a failed marriage abroad and finds her scientist father missing. She gets kidnapped, escapes, and then some other more or less familiar early 20th-century mystery conventions follow. It’s a perfectly enjoyable, well-constructed story, even managing to squeeze in a romantic subplot. In line with his work’s characterization as “cozy catastrophe” the mounting grisly death toll never disturbs the breezy good humor of the main characters. Wyndham could have done fine as a mystery novelist if he’d been slightly less ambitious as a writer.

The final cover is above. The sketches I submitted are below.

I’d really hoped to bring the first sketch above to finals, but after some deliberation the editors and art director decided it gave away too much, plot-wise. And way back at the very start of the commission they had originally asked me avoid ‘horror’ in my treatments as much as possible. And then the first cover I did, for Day of the Triffids leaned decidedly in that direction. They didn’t quibble, then, but in this case… well, an actual cadaver might be considered over the mark. But I thought it worked.

The second sketch references the same cadaver-in-a-box scene from the book, as well as a poison gas situation that pops up at a certain point. My first version of this image had an actual skull surrounded by the yellow gas. When I showed it to my partner, Jackie, she said it looked way too much like the gas was an elaborate blond wig the skull was wearing. Not ‘horror’ exactly, but only because of a heavy overlay of ‘camp’. Not the vibe anyone was going for. So I ditched the literal skull.

The main change from the sketch they picked to the final was the change in color they requested and making the little falling figure a bit bigger and more clear.

Here are few of the roughs:

There really isn’t much to be found online of previous covers for Foul Play Suspected. When I was looking for a copy to read the only one I could find for sale was a first edition for $3200. I settled for a scanned PDF sent by Modern Library. Apparently it really has been unavailable for a very long time.

And that’s it. That’s the last Wyndham cover I did. It was kind of an amazing job to get to do. Doing such a deep dive into the genuinely interesting and often great work of a singular author, work that spanned such a consequential, transformative stretch of time, and who remains curiously relevant — it was an honor. Many thanks to Robbin Schiff and everyone else at Modern Library.

I might put together a poster of the covers all on a single sheet to put in the shop. And/or a postcard set, or something. Watch this space.