I--Alien by J. Michael Reaves (Ace Books)
Checkmate used in tightly spaced caps, with a double hyphen, an overlapping AL pair, and a nested I. The top serif in I has been trimmed.
The debut novel by Michael Reaves was produced by Byron Preiss, a Tempo Star Book, and distributed by Ace Books. The cover painting is credited to Kenneth Smith and the book design to Byron Preiss. Chances are that the cover typography was provided by Ace Books’ art department, though. Interior illustrations (not shown) by Terry Austin.
Note that the blurb on the front is by Theodore Sturgeon, whose own Case and the Dreamer (Signet, 1974) uses Checkmate on the cover, too.
