Wartime lewdness shortages meant that Dime Mystery had to recycle even fairly questionable cover-art ideas. In the 1940s, there was something we might call “murder carefully labelled.” In November 1944 they ran this cover:

And a little more than a year later, in February 1946, this:

I am unsure of how to comment exactly, except that I am reminded of a line in the Blackadder the Third episode “Sense and Senility,” which I recall as “Every criminal, no matter how ingenious, makes one subtle yet telling mistake. Theirs was to have written down their entire conspiracy in play-manuscript form.”

What can I say? It’s not like we can have naked women writhing in transparent tube in every post.