Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators: The Mystery of the Nervous Lion
This 1971 book cover uses a funky bold type that has striking similarities to Cooper Black Condensed: it’s West Cooper Nouveau. The small line at the top is in News Gothic. Headings in the book use classic Cooper Black. The text itself is set in Times, with chapter numbers added in the bold italic style of Caslon 3.
The Three Investigators is a juvenile detective book series, started by Robert Arthur in 1964. This book was written by Nick West, which is a pseudonym of Kin Platt (1911–2003). Harry Kane (1912–1988) provided the illustration. The series is continued to this day in Germany – under the title Die drei ??? – where it is particularly popular.
Title page with frontispiece
Detail of a chapter opening in Cooper Black. The number is in bold italic Caslon 3.
Detail of a chapter opening in Copper Black
2 Comments on “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators: The Mystery of the Nervous Lion”
Congrats, and thanks – you’ve found the first in-use example for the upright style of Dave West’s Cooper Nouveau!
We’ve previously documented about three dozen examples for the italic styles, see West Cooper Nouveau Swash, both for the lighter weight (which is the only one to be available in digital form) and the bold italic (which was the most popular of the three styles, and was emulated by Letraset Lazybones).
Oh wow. No wonder I couldn’t find an exact match :)
The italic styles sure were used a lot during the seventies—though I was only aware of Lazybones.
Good catch with Caslon 3 – I’ve looked into Caslon variants when searching for an exact match, but didn’t run into any specimen of Caslon 3.