Friday, August 10, 2018

Paperback 1033: The Black Mass of Brother Springer / Charles Willeford (Black Lizard nn)

Paperback 1033: Black Lizard (no number) (1st ptg, 1989)

Title: The Black Mass of Brother Springer
Author: Charles Willeford
Cover artist: Kirwan

Condition: 9/10
Estimated value: $35-40

BlackLizNn
Best things about this cover:
  • An interesting variation on the "Killer's POV" cover. Hands that would normally be coming to strangle her are instead filled with Bible.
  • Those thumbs get creepier the longer you stare at them.
  • Willeford is a master. I have read stuff where he has written really interestingly and provocatively about race (and racism). I have no idea what kind of territory this book gets into, though...
BlackLizNnbc
Best things about this back cover:
  • He was white. She was ... ? So much white male gaze here. No idea if the book critiques or revels in this whole way of seeing blackness. I'd guess the former. I really should read it.
  • Jim Thompson is the author that got me into vintage paperback collecting (long story I'll tell some other time, when one of his books comes up ... or maybe I've told it already—I've been at this blog a long long time and there's lots I've forgotten about what stories I have and haven't told). Anyway, the irony here is that I don't care for Jim Thompson any more. He was the gateway ... but now the gateway has dissolved, or become irrelevant, or something. Weird how these things happen.
  • I think my next collecting effort will involve these '80s Black Lizards, before the imprint was bought out by Vintage (those early Vintage/Black Lizards were part of the whole Jim Thompson Gateway To Paperbackville...)
Page 123~
The shadow I stared at was not a part of the regular inventory I saw every day.
      And then the shadow stretched.
~RP

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Willeford was instrumental to getting me into noir fiction. Those Black Lizard paperbacks are hard to find.

Will Errickson said...

Oh God these '80s Black Lizards...! When I find one I buy it no matter what (well as long as it's under $10). I don't remember when these eds were coming out but I do remember the early '90s Vintage reprints w the noir covers in trade paperback. Definitely got me on the hardboiled/noir train...