Crime and Punishment #45

Charles Biro's cover for this December 1951 issue delivers exactly what the banner promises — "A Thrill a Minute" — with a sweat-drenched, wild-eyed gunman pressed against a brick wall dominating the foreground, revolver raised, as a squad of police officers close in from a tenement alley behind him, one shouting "Don't take any chances, men — he's a hop head killer!" The split composition, pairing that enormous panicked face with the tense backyard pursuit, gives the whole thing an urgent, almost cinematic charge. Lev Gleason's Crime and Punishment was one of the era's sharpest crime anthologies, and this issue — featuring Carl Wessler's story "Murder at a Price," illustrated by Dick Rockwell — keeps that reputation firmly intact.