Paperback 1150: The Hollow / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 485)

Paperback 1150: Pocket Books 485 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Hollow

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10

[Still more Agatha Christie from this summer, Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY, 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• She criticized his taste in statuary once too often!
• She criticized his Brylcrem obsession once too often!
• "Hold still, darling, while I smother you in THE HOLLOW of my neck"
• Man they are really doing battle for "worst hair."
• Huh. It doesn't look like he "inspires dangerous passion" so much as he "lavishes unwanted attention on women such that they are inspired to drive knitting needles into his neck."
• What are those things in her hand, anyway? I honestly have no guess. Part knitting needles part riding crop part busted umbrella. Whatever it is, I assume she's about to plant it right in his cherubic face.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Most accusations "for all to hear" are not "whispered," in my admittedly limited experience of guys dying near swimming pools.
• This is a pretty weak teaser. Also, a truly unnecessary explanation of what Hercule Poirot is going to do. "Oh, is he going to ask questions and gain insight into the character of suspects!? How novel!"
• I'm no legal scholar, but I'm pretty sure that a detective cannot "convict the guilty one."

Page 123~

"Oh, Gudgeon," said Lady Angkatell, "about those eggs. I meant to write the date in pencil on them as usual. Will you ask Mrs. Medway to see to it?"

This book is truly committed to insane names. Gerda and Gudgeon and Angkatell, and then of course there's Henrietta: "Henrietta Savernake [!] — a talented sculptress who sometimes cheats at cards" (per the "Cast of Characters"). As long as one of them writes the damn date on the damn eggs, I'm sure everything will be fine.

~RP

P.S. sorry for the two-week hiatus. Surgery + a cold + a threefold increase in teaching responsibilities really put me back on my heels. But I'm back at it now, 2-3x week for the foreseeable future.

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Paperback 1149: Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective / Agatha Christie (Dell 550)

Paperback 1149: Dell 550 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Rafael de Soto

Condition: 7+/10

Value: $8

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY, summer '25]

Best things about this cover: 

• Hey, alright, balding middle-aged bespectacled guy gets to be semi-heroic. You don't see that every day.
• This lady is really bringing the hand action. Fear Hand™ reaching out toward us, while the other hand clutches her throat. Meanwhile, the guy's hands are also pretty busy, one of them holding and guiding the young woman, the other holding a handkerchief to his face (surely a more effective survival strategy than self-strangulation)
• I assumed they were fighting their way through poisoned gas, but maybe it's just a smoke from a fire. But if it was a fire, I assume we'd be getting more clearly FIRE iconography. Where are the flames? Since when do fires give off a kind of mauve miasma?
• Rafael de Soto was one of the artists who jumped from pulps to paperbacks, and you can really see the pulp expertise here. So good at conveying drama and action, so many nice little details—the wrinkles in his brow, for instance, or her bracelet, or his surprisingly stylish purple tie. If he's gonna die, he's gonna die in style! 

Best things about this back cover: 

• Mapback! God bless Dell for the Mapback period. Every back cover a cartological adventure!
• If ever there was an image of imperialism ... Great Britain is barely on this map, but the Houses of Parliament, seem to have invaded and absolutely crushed eastern Europe and Russia.
• The iconography is perfect. Paris has the Arc de Triomphe, Britain has Parliament, Turkey's got minarets, Egypt's got pyramids, and then there's Iraq, which is represented, of course, by its world famous bus.

Page 123~

    "Oh, yes! Edward's a perfect angel." She hesitated. "Not, perhaps, very much go to him. Just a little—well, I'd call it strait-laced. Lot of Puritan ancestry and all that. But he's a dear," she added hastily.

"Where oh where did my go go? Why is it so low? I'll never know"—Edward

~RP

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Paperback 1148: Murder at Hazelmoor / Agatha Christie (Dell 937)

Paperback 1148: Dell 937 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Murder at Hazelmoor

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Milton Glaser

Condition: 8/10 

Value: $12

[Part of my Big Christie Haul from Autumn Leaves, late summer '25]

Best things about this cover: 

• Look, I know there's not a lot going on in this painting, but the more I look at it, the cooler it gets. It's by legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser (creator of the I 🩷 NY logo among many other iconic images), and the composition and details are really compelling if you give them the time of day.
• I love the tiny details, like the fringe on the rug, and the two little untied laces. The tread on the heels of those shoes is also amazing. Those shoes seem expensive, as do those (exquisite) socks.
• The dude's pants, though, are the coup de grâce. They are perfectly, stiffly triangular. No wrinkles, no folds, an impossible fabric that defies gravity and gives the whole picture an air of whimsy (and despite all the murder in Christie stories, whimsy is never far off)

Best things about this back cover: 

• Oh hell yes, Mapback (advent calendar edition)!
• Look at those damned trees. The little stylized trees holding up perfect little arcs of snow. Where do you find those? Probably the same place you find those pants on the cover. And the little gingerbread houses, and the stars. Gorgeous.
• I know (from the cover of another version of this same paperback) that there's a seance involved, and I'm newly obsessed with seances and hauntings and ghosts and people's belief in ghosts, so I think I'll put this away and save it for a nice midwinter read. Something to lighten the gloom of midwinter.

Page 123~

    "The only other person in the village is Captain Wyatt. He smokes opium, I believe. And he's easily the worst-tempered man in England. Anything more you want to know?"

    "I don't think so," said Emily. "What you have told me seems pretty comprehensive."

Disagree. I need to know more about Captain Wyatt right now. He sounds fascinating.

~RP

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Paperback 1147: Lord Edgware Dies / Agatha Christie (Fontana Books 719)

Paperback 1147: Fontana 719 (5th ptg, 1962)

Title: Lord Edgware Dies

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 8/10

Value: $20

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY, August 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• OK so I have a theory about how Lord Edgware dies
• I love this woman. I love her hat and her veil and her refusal to let anything (anything!) else be in the picture except her. I want to marry this woman, I'm sure it would be fine
• If I see British vintage paperbacks, or any non-US vintage paperbacks, and they're in any kind of condition, I buy them. This one was part of a massive Christie haul that I took out of Autumn Leaves a couple months back. So, yeah, prepare for a Christie onslaught!

Best things about this back cover: 

• "Was it really she who committed the murder?" Me, looking at front cover: "Yeah, pretty sure."
• Actually, if you ask "was it really she who committed the murder?" on the damned back cover, I'm gonna rule out precisely one person as the murderer. Thanks a lot.
• Shoulda called it Poirot Probes Industriously. Everybody dies, but how many probe industriously? Bloody few, I'd say.
• The layout here is inexcusably messy. Non-indented, non-separated paragraphs, all crammed down low on the page. And "effects a startling denouement"?! Were Brits just not fluent in pulp patter? You're selling murder mysteries here, not reviewing Chekhov, come on!

Page 123~

"I do not play games. You know that. Murder is not a game. It is serious. And anyway, Hastings, you should not use that phrase—playing the game. It is not said anymore. I have discovered that. It is dead. Young people laugh when they hear it. Mais oui, young beautiful girls will laugh at you if you say 'playing the game' and 'not cricket.'"

Wait, you mean 'not cricket' is out of style!? Since 1933!? No wonder young beautiful girls are always laughing at me!

~RP

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Paperback 1146: Sexbound / Dean McCoy (Beacon B460F)

Paperback 1146: Beacon B460F (PBO, 1961)

Title: Sexbound

Author: Dean McCoy

Cover artist: Uncredited [Clement Micarelli]

Condition: 6.5/10

Value: $12-15

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca NY, Aug. 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• This novel combines two things I love: motels and frankness.
• Not just "frank"—"WHOLLY FRANK." No partial frankness here, nosiree. You get the whole frank and nothing but the frank. 
• Sexbound! It's a play on "snowbound." Get it? Like when you're trapped in a motel because of the sex storm outside. Only it's a sex storm inside, and your extremely lifelike partner has her head awkwardly propped up by a giant pillow while she chews her nails, sexily. That kind of "sexbound."
• If you ignore her hands, and her head, and the fact that she looks like she fell into this position from a great height, this is great girl art (GGA).
• A sleazy book in a sleazy condition. Very well read. Solid, with a tight spine, but with lots of edge wear and mild creasing. Some grime. This book looks like I imagine this motel feels. Like, is it sexy, or is it just ... dirty?
• "Grappling with the problems of infidelity created by America's roadside inns"—I love when sleaze poses as a public service message. "You'll definitely want to read this in order to stay informed about one of the great social ills of our day and definitely not because it will mildly arouse you while you are unsexbound in your sad and lonely motel room."

Best things about this back cover: 

• Some take the low road, and some take ... the blow road ('cause of the snow! the snow, I mean! Look at it blowing there in that ridiculously small sketch)
• "Excuse me, I'm lost. Could you tell me how to get to Lydia Lane?"
• "No, not Barbara!," I imagine someone exclaiming as they read this. Someone who knows Barbara from, like, PTA meetings.
• "It remained for the lush waitress, Vinnie, to pick up the pieces." Surely one of the great pieces of back cover copy. Poetic in its ridiculousness, or vice versa.
• Again with the FRANKness, and again with the public service announcement: "Read this book so that you may learn (in detail!) the perils of fucking strangers in roadside inns!"

Page 123~

When he had poured whiskey into glasses, he said, "Here's to the mating of my Porsche with your T-bird."

There's euphemism, and then there's whatever this is. "So you're gonna put your car in my ... car? I think you've had enough whiskey, big boy."

~RP

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Paperback 1145: Ten Plus One / Ed McBain (PermaBook M-4304)

Paperback 1145: PermaBook M-4304 (1st ptg., 1964)

Title: Ten Plus One

Author: Ed McBain

Cover artist: [photo cover]

Condition: 9.5/10

Value: $15-20

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY, Sep. 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• [Original title: "Eleven"]
• Am I supposed to believe this guy has just been shot? It looks more like he just realized he forgot to pick up laundry detergent. "My wife's gonna kill me!" "Take it easy, Larry, take it easy!"
• This book is square and unread. Square unread—absolute collector bait. The only "wear" is edgewear. The spine is immaculate. I will pretty much buy *any* paperback published between 1940 and 1970 if it's in this kind of condition. Luckily, today, the cover happens to be supercool and unusual, and the author happens to be major.

Best things about this back cover: 

• "A tiny hole in the head"—or, if you're the guy on the cover, a big red blood splotch hovering about three feet above and to the right of your head.
• This is classic—some might even say "cliché"—thriller stuff. Buncha random shootings! What's behind it all? No one knows! Let's find out!
• Detective Steve Carella subsequently retired from the force, dropped the "a" from his last name, and had a fairly successful career as a comedic actor.

Page 123~

They had searched David Arthur Cohen's apartment from transom to trellis—the apartment boasted a small outdoor terrace overlooking a beautiful view of the River Harb—and found nothing at all incriminating. This did not mean that Cohen wasn't a very clever murderer who had hidden his rifle in an old garage somewhere. It simply meant that, for the time being, the detectives had found nothing in his apartment.

"From Trellis to Transom: The Searching of David Arthur Cohen's Apartment"—OK, it needs workshopping, but it's still a sight better than Ten Plus One. Also, do people really abbreviate "Harbor" like that? 

~RP

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Paperback 1144: Cassidy's Girl / David Goodis (Gold Medal 544)

Paperback 1144: Gold Medal 544 (2nd ptg, 1955)

Title: Cassidy's Girl

Author: David Goodis

Cover artist: Uncredited [Owen Kampen]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $40

[The Book Den, Santa Barbara, CA, Aug. 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• "Do these pants make my ass look fat?," Cassidy wondered aloud. Cassidy's girl grunted noncommitally, too absorbed in her blank book to care about her boyfriend's sullen insecurity.
• Everyone here is too rounded and ... globular to be sexy. This includes his shoulder blades and her hair. Her arm looks like it contains no bones. That cannot be a comfortable reading position.
• Did the pagans collide head on with life? Is that why they went extinct?

Best things about this back cover: 

• Black on dark green is hard to read. Also, the green makes it look like Cassidy's girl is lying on a billiards table. 
• Why bother to do a completely new sketch that is so close to the cover image? Maybe this was the original sketch that formed the basis for the cover painting. Still, they could've done something different here. Without the bed for context, she just looks like she's taken an awkward fall. On a billiards table.
• "Powerful, salty, elemental." Like mussels, or Cassidy's armpit after a night of fighting and drinking and loving.

Page 123~

    There was the sound of a chair scraping. Cassidy opened his eyes and saw Spann rising and Pauline rising also. Spann aimed the heel of his palm at Pauline's face and Pauline leaned far back to get away, then came in very fast to collect a handful of Spann's hair. She pulled hard, and Spann opened his mouth wide and screamed without making a sound.

Oh, pagan. I get it now. (I don't get it)

~RP

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