Sunday, January 27, 2013

Paperback 599: Wild Drums Beat / F. Van Wyck Mason (Pocket Books 977)

Paperback 599: Pocket Books 977 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Wild Drums Beat
Author: F. Van Wyck Mason
Cover artist: Richard Cardiff

Yours for: $7

PB977

Best things about this cover:
  • "Uh ... he was like this when I found him."
  • "Shhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. We're hunting wabbits..."
  • Real men make snow angels "Indian-style."
  • Margery made the rather large mistake of trying to ride the Black Horse of Death sidesaddle. 


PB977bc

Best things about this back cover:
  • "Renegade trapper" would look great on a business card.
  • Random trivia: Googling ["scalp-hungry"] returns 4100+ hits. So ... it's an adjective with a life beyond this cover.
  • Remember when men's courage and women's love could solve world problems? And now look at us. Lousy Obama.

Pag 123~

He nodded, mimicked the shadow of his head wrought black and distorted upon the lean-to's roof.

Grammatically, I'm not really sure what to do with this (how do you mimic a shadow that you yourself are creating?), but I do love a good lean-to reference.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker at Twitter and Tumblr]

4 comments:

Karl said...

Is she riding sidesaddle, or is the artist doing some weird-ass (literally) cubist thing? Her butt seems to have no possible anatomical connection to her torso, and none of her is in any way influenced by gravity.

"Aha!" says R. Cardiff. "First Picasso, then Braque, and now me! We reject your bourgeois, classical, single-point-of-view reality, and substitute our own!"

Greg M. said...

"America's Forgotten War?" Canada would be so outraged at that slight on one of our most treasured historical events, if we weren't so gosh-darned polite.

Anonymous said...

mmmmmm, dazzling toast!

infoqueen said...

All I can hear is Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally":
"Do it to me Sheldon, you're an animal Sheldon, ride me big Shel-don."