QUANDT, Albert L. Zip-Gun Angels.

(New York, NY): Original Novels, 1952. First edition. Softcover. 19cm by 13.6cm. 130 pages. Pioneering work of ‘bad girl’ fiction in a subgenre in a broader flood of cheap and lurid ‘juvenile delinquency’ novels that traded on contemporary anxieties
about youth crime and gang violence.2 For the most part, 1950s teen crime was characterised as a male problem—the stock delinquent portrayed as a swaggering, leather-jacketed hoodlum with a duck-tail haircut and a bad attitude. But the belief that girls were becoming ‘tougher’, ‘harder’ and ‘more vicious’ was also widespread; and novels such as this, Tomboy and Gang Girl rode the wave of these concerns. Successfully exploiting contemporary angst surrounding girls, morality
and crime, ‘bad girl’ fiction took the febrile newspaper headlines and condensed them into potboilers of sensational sex and violence of which this is a perfect example. This a good copy, some pages with old crease lines, cover with artwork by Herb Tauss, has some old creasing, rubbed at edges.