Friday, November 16, 2007

Paperback 44: Graphic 149

Paperback 44: Graphic 149 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Murder Without Tears
Author: Leonard Lupton
Cover artist: Roy Lance

"Games without frontiers ... murder without tears"

Best things about this cover:
  • "I'd love to stay with you longer in this rock quarry, but my ride's here now, so I better go..."
  • Purple Sky, Tree of Death! (my suggested alternate title for this book)
  • Hey lady, it's a gun, not a pet.


Best things about this back cover:
  • Everything
  • What the hell does "Need a Body Cry" mean?! I need a grammatical explanation
  • "Need a body? Cry: 'Murder Without Tears'!" - does that make sense?
  • This lady has forced me to create a new blog tag: "Bad Hair" (see also Paperback 43)
  • I love the "Brady Bunch" feel of the back cover - it's like Bobby's trying to shoot Marcia

RP

5 comments:

Orange said...

"Need a body cry" appears to hail from a Robert Burns poem. I didn't check to see whether "Murder without tears!" is also poetic, but I'm thinking not.

Haiku:

Need a body cry?
A very Brady cover:
Murder without tears!

Michael5000 said...

"His favorite corpse"?

Rex Parker said...

Yeah, I know. Best not to think about it too much.

Anonymous said...

Is she a brunette (front) or blond (back)?

--Tony

Anonymous said...

No, "Need a body cry?" is the last line of the chorus in "Coming Through the Rye," an old Scots ballad. Lads and lassies...tears... surely it ties together somehow?