Title: Bury Me Deep
Author: Harold Q. Masur
Cover artist: William Wirts
Yours for: $20
Best things about this cover:
- A quintessential keyhole cover (yes, it's a thing) — and an early one. Turns reader into an implied voyeur / peeping tom.
- 1948 (or thereabouts) seems to be a turning point in cover art — covers start to become more sensational, more sexual, more lurid ... If you click on "1947" or earlier in the tags for this site (sidebar), you'll see what I mean. Not sure why 1948 should be that year [the year of the first Kinsey Report!] ... but by the '50s, lurid and sensational will be the norm.
- I wish I could hear her undoubtedly learned disquisition on the merits of half-naked whisky-drinking.
- That underwear looks painted on, like she was drawn naked but then repurposed for this cover.
- Something about her face is off-kilter and strange, and her thumbless whisky-claw is mega-disturbing.
Best things about this back cover:
- Even the tagline is sensational. Sweet.
- "The lawyer in him" has the better cliché—hey, "inner man," who looks at a sexy woman in her underwear and thinks "gift horse!?"
- "Newest detective sensation," HA ha. How did that turn out, Scott Jordan?
Page 123~
Another shot exploded. I saw a spurt of flame from the muzzle spit luridly into the darkness beside a tree not fifty yards away. I arched my back, screamed like a frightened horse, threw out my arms and tumbled drunkenly to the ground.
Mmm, manly.
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
6 comments:
"Mmm, manly."
Yes, and all this after having witnessed a phallic symbol spurt and spit.
"spit luridly" -- how he do that?
This one is in my TBR stack.
No matter how hard I try, that snifter looks like it's bent with the mouth open toward the viewer. Weird.
I'm not sure she knows so much about the merits of half-naked whisky-drinking. It looks very much to me like she's doing some half-naked Heinz 57 Sauce drinking. An acquired taste, I guess.
"Something about her face is off-kilter and strange..."; how about those Groucho Marx eyebrows and that towering forehead
To me, both the top and the bottom of the snifter seem to be tilted toward the viewer. It's very cubist... and very distracting.
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