Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Paperback 559: The Promoter / Orrie Hitt (Beacon Books 142)

Paperback 559: Beacon Books BB142 (PBO, 1957)

Title: The Promoter
Author: Orrie Hitt
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $20
Beac142.Promoter
Best things about this cover:
  • "So ... you're here for the free Tai Chi lesson?"
  • I love his smugfuck face: "What can I say? It's like the tagline says, I love my work."
  • I like her. I really hope she takes all his money and leaves him tied up and half-naked in that room.
  • Love the trash can peeking out from around the corner. Just in case you thought this story was classy.
  • "On the surface she was all smooth legs and orange sweaters, but deep down inside, she was ... the Teen Temptress of Trash Town."

Beac142bc.Promoter

Best things about this back cover:
  • ZZZZZZZddZZZzzzzZZZZZZZap!
  • Oh, you crazy kids and your cellar clubs (!?!).
  • "Cellar club" sounds like a serial killer's euphemism for "place where I keep the bones of my victims."
  • "His best weapons were women ... sure, they're a little cumbersome, but once you learn to swing one you can do some Serious damage."

Page 123~
Nothing further was known about her until she had appeared in the city, five years previously, and had set herself up in the model agency business. Her credit rating vouched for the fact that she had been successful—No one had any outstanding bills against her. Her association with Andy Willis who, by the way, was from Billings, Montana, had been a routine thing.
People forget there was a time in American history when being from Billings, Montana was considered fascinating and exciting, possibly because that time never actually existed.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you please give us page 122 also? I'm just dying to know what was know about here up to the point where nothing further was known about her until she had appeared in the city, five years previously. There's just so much unknow past that any one man can take.

DemetriosX said...

What a great cover. Frank Sinatra sneaking a peek down Anne Francis' top. I also like the way she's unbuttoned her sweater in the middle to show off her cleavage while leaving the button at her neck closed.

The only real problem is the way their shoes obscure parts of the tagline. His shoe wiping out the "OF" isn't quite so bad, since you can easily tell there has to be a word there. But her shoe wiping out the "AT" is more problematic. It makes it really easy to read the tagline as "A novel of innocence, the mercy of syndicated lust." Which is something else altogether different.

JRSM said...

I need to say that "smugfuck" is an expression I've been needing for years, to describe those faces that are crying out to be slapped or punched. I know the Germans have a word that means something like "a face that needs a fist in it", but until now I didn't think English could come up with something similar. Thank you, Rex.

Graham Powell said...

Anne Francis? Looks more like Veronica Lake to me. Peekaboo!