Thursday, July 25, 2013

Paperback 676: Rope / Alfred Hitchcock [No Author Credit] [Don Ward] (Dell 262)

Paperback 676: Dell 262 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Rope
Author: Uncredited [Don Ward] ("from the famous play by Patrick Hamilton")
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $25

Dell262

Best things about this cover:
  • Hello, handsome.
  • Fantastic early movie tie-in. Weird that there is No Writing Credit, anywhere. I do not think that Alfred Hitchcock "wrote" this, in any meaningful sense of that word. I thought "novelizations" got credit. But maybe not in this era (?).
  • Gerald Gregg's cityscape is an understated but gorgeous detail.

Dell262bc

Best things about this back cover:
  • Hell yeah, mapback! 3D mapback!
  • I've seen more interesting mapbacks, but I do like how much detail you can see in this house. The arc of the coffee table, the tile pattern in the bathroom. 
  • That keyhole eyeball really is one of the great icons in paperback history. Up there with the damned kangaroo.

Page 123~

Something seemed to be slowly tearing in Phillip's mind, destroying the fabric of his slim residue of control.

Wow. "The fabric of his slim residue of control" has all the elegance of a rusted-out Ford Fiesta.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

4 comments:

Jerry House said...

The author was Don "I don't need my stinkin' name on the book" Ward.

ukemon said...

Don Ward novelized the original play which was written by Patrick Hamilton.

DemetriosX said...

Great mapback, but the legend is kind of superfluous.

Karl said...

I imagine Patrick Hamilton wasn't too happy about his name being expunged from this book. Harlan Ellison has a rant in print somewhere about the injustice of Robert Bloch's novel Psycho having been unofficially retitled to "ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S Psycho."