On the Trail of Frank Cranmer

Following what is now referred to solely as "The Harborside Incident" and the demise of the Daily Express, former publishing executive Frank Cranmer had achieved a level of infamy not often associated with a man who has not, strictly speaking, killed anyone. Always working under an assumed name, Cranmer appeared to have become possessed of a drive to run as many businesses into the ground as possible by making crucially atrocious decisions, always using only the authority afforded him by his position. This fact made it frustratingly difficult to drum up efforts to apprehend him, for though it was clear that he had intentionally brought ruination to any number of innocent lives, no one involved was quite sure where to find him or exactly what to charge him with once they had. While debate raged, Cranmer struck again.

Under the name Roy Kramer, the mad editor took up employment at the headquarters of Keyhole Books, a small press that specialized mostly in putting out romance novels under their Blue Crescent imprint. He did a solid, workmanlike job of general production on several novels, and everything seemed all right. However, when he was entrusted to secure the cover for up-and-coming writer Janelle Hagerty's (pen name: Marie DiPaola) novel Passion Play, Cranmer struck. The first several batches of books were already on the way to distributors before the change was noticed, and for reasons that are not clear to this day, the frantic calls from Keyhole's heads of operation were not returned until a few days too late. Thankfully most of the books were safely recalled, and when told exactly what had happened and who had been responsible, Keyhole's execs considered themselves fortunate. Cranmer had been told to see about a fairly generic cover featuring a painting of a beefy man and a breathless woman. The cover he'd made, though wholly inappropriate, contained no seriously offensive content. Meanwhile, Cranmer had disappeared as expected. Though all copies of the book have been destroyed (and at great cost to Keyhole) or are now in private collections, Cranmer's layout had been saved and passed on, and is reproduced here.