Paperback 96: Jeopardy Is My Job / Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal s1214)

Paperback 96: Gold Medal s1214 (PBO, 1962)
Title: Jeopardy Is My Job
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: SOLD! (5/19/08)


Best things about this cover:

• "Jeopardy Is My Job: The Alex Trebek Story" - exciting!
• If you cover up or otherwise ignore the dot on the "i" in SPAIN, it really really looks like SPAM. I imagine that Chester Drum there is putting on his spam-handling gloves.
• What is he doing with that glove? Is he about to commit a crime? Or give some kind of probing examination? The whole thing is very O.J.
• I like how he's balancing Madrid on the very tip of his index finger

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, too much text
• "Robbie Hartshorn" - Well that's a silly name. I wonder if his heart (or hart) has been shorn, and if so, what that means.
• "They were paid a monthly stipend to do their drinking on foreign shores" - How do I get that job
  
• This whole description sounded boring to me until I got to "... the cave where Ruy lived with a gypsy woman ..." That has narrative possibilities.

PAGE 123~

"You are free to go," one of the Guardia said in English. "The Colonel says to tell you if you do not leave Rondo before dark," he added, the words heavily accented and hard to understand, "you are being in bad trouble."

~RP

Paperback 95: Come Be My O.R.G.Y. / Ted Mark (Berkley S1564)

Paperback 95: Berkley Medallion S1564 (PBO, 1968)

Title: Come Be My O.R.G.Y.
Author: Ted Mark
Cover artist: Sidney Booblover (I mean, "uncredited")

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Possibly the silliest title name in my entire collection.
• Q: How can a cover featuring so much breast flesh be so ugly? (A: urine-hued aura)
• I like to imagine that all these people on the cover are actually the same person, and we are seeing all of his/her different incarnations. Together, the four of them could all be each other's O.R.G.Y.
• If you have not heard of "The Man from O.R.G.Y." before, then I defy you to figure out what it stands for. (I'll reveal the answer in the near future) [A: Organization for the Rational Guidance of Youth]
  
• Smirky McDickerson there in the front is inspiring me to create a new Post Label: Douchebag Detectives. I know of at least one other candidate ... with thousands of books awaiting write-ups, I am confident there are more.
  
• "Steve Victor! ... anyone? No?"
• I can only hope that he is putting that shirt on.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• "Seriously, come be my O.R.G.Y."
• This guy clearly smells of gin, cigarettes, and self-loathing.
• "That delectable Tibetan" - Is her name really some mock-Asian version of "teeny bopper!?!?" Is it wrong that I hope "Steve" dies at the end (or, even better, the beginning) of this book?

PAGE 123 - is not nearly as good as PAGE 81~

She scrambled over my body until we were juxtaposed and her long blonde hair trailed over my thighs. That old Roman dinner gong had rung [ed.: ...?]. The feast of her nether chamber was spread before me and I raised up to sample its feverish honey. She responded by engulfing my edible root and I became dizzy with the delights provided by her womb at the top.

After reading that, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to eat a root again. The jury's still out on honey ...

~RP

Paperback 94: The Man from Scotland Yard / David Frome (Pocket Books 153)

Paperback 94: Pocket Books 153 (1st ptg, 1942)

Title: The Man from Scotland Yard
Author: David Frome
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• You can tell this cover was produced before sensationalism (sex and violence) became unstoppable forces of commodification in the paperback industry. This corpse is practically polite. In fact, I think he might just be sleeping after a tough day of pawn-brokering.
• Trench-coated woman! You don't see many of those. I love how incognito she is with her strategically placed umbrella. Is she going to pawn something, or just passing by?
• This book is from 1942, just three years after Pocket Books began. That is, the mass market paperback was exactly three years old when this book came out.
• The painting is subtle, smooth, understated, moody, detailed, elegant. Fantastic and respectable. Makes me sick - where's the action? the blood? the gratuitous partial nudity!?
• Books just held up better in the olden days. This book has been heavily read, but it is square, tight, solid. You could read it a million more times and it wouldn't change its appearance much. Eventually Pocket Books and all paperback producers lowered their quality standards, and books became much more susceptible to decay, fall-apart, and other cheapness-related injuries. I'm telling you, the interior pages on this thing are still Astonishingly white. Red color of the page edges has barely faded. This book may be quaint-looking, but it's tough.
• I love how the author's name is incorporated into the painting itself, made to look like the name of the dead/sleeping guy's pawn shop. That's just beautiful. Too bad that light fixture kind of ruins everything with its potent combination of insectiness and testicularity.
  

~PAGE 123

Leighton pressed the bell on his desk. A callow young man came in and took the paper. The firm had dispensed with the services of women in their offices since an attractive young lady typist had become the senior Mrs. Doubs, stepmother of the two younger Messrs. Doubs, each some ten years her senior.

~RP

Paperback 93: Darker Than Amber / John D. MacDonald (Gold Medal R1957)

Paperback 93: Gold Medal R1957 ([3rd ptg], [1968])
Title: Darker Than Amber
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: Ron Lesser

Yours for: $5


Best things about this cover:

• "He'd seen a lot of girls, but nobody ... DARKER THAN AMBER"
• Not surprisingly, this book has some racial issues (see back cover)
• OK, is her name Amber, or is she just "amber-eyed?" And I thought you said "Darker than Amber." What gives?
• I'm pretty sure it's an impossibility, or at least a paradox, if your "lily-white maiden" has "round heels."
• This girl is deep in the middle of a boob-pointing contest - the object: stand on your tiptoes, and then point your boobs toward the sky without falling over. Closest to straight heavenward wins. She's working on a 45 degree angle here (not bad).

Best things about this back cover:

• His pictures says: "What do you goons want?" or "Yes, I'm Professor McGrady. Can I help you?" Or "That damned roof is leaking again" or "How about now? Do I look like Popeye now?"
• A "Wounded Spook" is not (thank god) what it sounds like.
• "She chunked into the water..." That's more detail than I need.
• Technically, at the end of that second paragraph, "cop" should have quotation marks around it. I'm just sayin'.
• "Eurasian beauty" - awesome. We just don't have this rich, insane racial vocabulary anymore. Now ... we have three possibilities for the meaning of "Amber" - her eyes, her name, and her skin.
• "... a heart like an ancient gutter"??! Full of ... relics? Vomit from the many vomitoria? Maybe if she gave up chunking into the water ...

~PAGE 123

"She was about twenty-five?"
"Twenty-six."
"What did she do?"
"She'd been a prostitute for twelve years."
Merrimay's brown eyes widened. "My word, that's quite an early start, isn't it?"

~RP

Paperback 92: The Bowstring Murders / Carter Dickson (Berkley G-214)

Paperback 92: Berkley G-214 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: The Bowstring Murders
Author: Carter Dickson
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $7

"Oh, crossbow, I'm sorry. I love you but ... it can never work out between us..."

Best things about this cover:

• Man is it red.
• Her hair is the color of pink lemonade.
• "Do you like my outfit? I call it 'The Reverse Bumblebee!'" (My other bumblebee joke involved her being a referee at a bumblebee football game)
• Her left ankle is absurdly, grotesquely thick.
• Are those ... pants? Tights? Jodhpurs?
• As with all Robert Maguire women, this one has exquisite, detailed, realistic, emotionally evocative facial features. Why she's writhing around in Mao's basement dressed like a bee, I'll never know.
• Carter Dickson is a terrible name, in that Dickson Carter really makes far more sense. Much more believable as a name, I think.

Best things about this back cover:

• Gauntlets cannot be efficient handwear for strangling.
• "... the great criminologist John Gaunt" - laziest naming ever. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was a prominent nobleman in 14th-century England - the uncle of Richard II.
• This book description reeks of Englishness. It's clear that the Maguire cover is a total fake-out; I'm quite sure this book contains no mod, crossbow-loving bumble-ladies. Quite sure.

PAGE 123~

"Lady Rayle has been murdered," said John Gaunt, rising from the breakfast table.

~RP

Paperback 91: The High Window / Raymond Chandler (Pocket Books 50118)

Paperback 91: Pocket Books 50118 (5th ptg, 1965)

Title: The High Window
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $5



Best things about this cover:

• That dude's face - absolute comedy gold
• That dude's shadow
• The fact that that dude is upside-down (rarely seen position for anyone to be in on a paperback cover). If you turn the book upside-down, that guy looks like your dad pretending to be a monster after he's had a hard day at work / a little too much to drink.
• The prissy font of the title - contrasts nicely with the imminent death of the screaming man in the grey flannel suit

This book is not officially in my collection (it sits on my ordinary bookshelf with my meant-to-be-read books), but this cover is just screaming to be in the collection. So here it is.

PAGE 123~

The room had that remote, heartless, not quite dirty, not quite clean, not quite human smell that such rooms always have. Give a police department a brand new building and in three months all its rooms will smell like that. There must be something symbolic in it. A New York police reporter wrote once that when you pass in beyond the green lights of a precinct station you pass clear out of this world, into a place beyond the law.

~RP

Paperback 90: The Hot Diary (Howard J. Olmsted) / Ring Around a Rogue (J. M. Flynn) (Ace Double D-459)

Paperback 90: Ace Double D-459 (PBO 1960 / PBO 1960)

Title: The Hot Diary / Ring Around a Rogue
Author: Howard J. Olmsted / J.M. Flynn
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• Don't make Robert Stack angry. You wouldn't like Robert Stack when he's angry
• This cover is great - quintessential hard-boiled with a mod style (again, love pink in my hard-boiled covers). They are both dressed impeccably. Her dress is fierce (love the black accents, especially the band and bow toward the hemline), and he carries off a trench-coat way better than most dopey goons.
• Does this count as "bondage?" I'm counting it. I imagine that her hands are tied. That, or she lost her right arm in the war or a freak fishing accident.
• "Never Write About Murder" - uh ... you just did.

PAGE 23~

I wouldn't have minded if she'd slapped me or swore at me. But her calm, unmoved acceptance of the kiss frosted me. It hit me where I lived, in my pride.

Best things about this cover:

• These two covers make a nice pair: "Things To Do With a Girl When You're Armed": "You can grab her like this ... or kiss her like this ... it's up to you."
• Here's a sexless sex scene if I've ever seen one. He looks ... wooden. "Let's see, I put my gun ... here, and my left hand reaches around like ... so. OK. What do I do with my lips again?" Etc.
• The painting here does nothing to up the eros. The paint looks hastily daubed on. She has that horrid bottle-blond rubbery head look (see the "Finger Man" cover), and rarely have I been so unmoved by so much female skin.
• "A Car, A Girl and A Gun" - or "Copywriter Gives Up, Decides Life's Meaningless" - that's him there, plummeting over that cliff in the car.

PAGE 123~

Deal grabbed him by the shirt front, yanked him from the sofa, and backhanded the expressionless face. Blood trickled from the corner of the flat lips but Chiong did not cry out.

~RP