. As you can see the gun used seems to be either a double-action Colt automatic derivate or one of its various clones. The cover of Moonraker shows the slide in such detail that there is a manufacturer's engraving reading "Collins & Broecke 9mm" and a stamped circle, quartered and reading "A/B/I/S".
For years I wondered why I never heard of that manufacturer and that particular gun before or again. Today, I decided to give up and just ask here. One last hopeless effort before accepting defeat was googling for the covers of these paperbacks instead of for the deadly "Collins & Broecke 9mm".
Guess what? The splendid blog Existential Ennui served the riddle of that gun for me.
Anyway, perhaps Le Barrow's crowning achievement were the covers for Triad/Panther's paperback range of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, issued (out of sequence, I believe, i.e. not in their original 1953 Casino Royale to 1966 Octopussy order) from 1977 to 1979. The concept for these was audaciously bald, even by Beverley's standards. Gaze upon their magnificence and you can almost see Le Barrow's mental processes at work; when she (he?) was handed the assignment to create covers for fifteen Bond books, naturally her (his?) inclination would be to round up a bunch of leggy models, dress them – or even underdress them – in the finest '70s clobber... and then... and then... Hmm. What to do to make the covers distinctive? Well, one of the Bond novels is called The Man with the Golden Gun... so... how about draping the leggy models over a great big model golden gun? Brilliant!
To realise this twisted vision, Beverley was assisted by a team of very well known creatives. Jewellery was provided by retailer Hooper Bolton; shoes – where they were worn – were by Terry de Havilland; and make-up was applied by, er, some bird called Bonny. Ahem. The giant gun, meanwhile, was designed and built by David Collins and Floris van den Broecke. Van den Broecke is a furniture designer of some note, but I'm not sure which of the many David Collinses that pop up when you Google his name is the right one. However, years ago, when I was doing an Art Foundation course at Ravensbourne, I attended a lecture by a visiting designer who created massive models of everyday objects to be photographed for advertising billboards. Because back then (1988, I think), the only way to photograph, say, a Polo mint, and blow it up to billboard size, was to create a huge man-sized model of said mint and photograph that instead. I've got a sneaking suspicion that that designer was David Collins. I could, of course, and as is often the case, be completely wrong. But a gigantic golden gun.... what are the odds?
Existential Ennui offers an enormous amount of interesting articles regarding books, comics and the woes and blessings of the collector. I can recommend this blog wholeheartedly.
