Paperback 1168: The Red Right Hand / Joel Townsley Rogers (Pocket Books 385)

Paperback 1168: Pocket Books 385 (2nd ptg, 1946)

Title: The Red Right Hand

Author: Joel Townsley

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6/10

Value: $4-5

Best things about this cover: 

• The "thumb" ... it ... it just ... look, that's not a thumb, is what I'm saying. Look at it in total isolation. It is astonishingly, in every way, not a thumb. The more you look, the more obscene it gets.
• That hand does not look particularly red. Perhaps it is Communist.
• This looks like someone got buried alive in a granary, like in Frank Norris's The Octopus. How did he get buried? Like the cover says, it's "A Mystery."

Best things about this back cover: 

• "There was a little man—who got away"—well that's the worst nursery rhyme of all time. Did the little man go to market at least? Come on, give me something.
• St. Erme!? Really? St. [hesitation noise]!? Do you pronounce it "ERMIE?" Forget what the little man did with St. Erme's right hand, what did he do with the rest of the letters in Erme's name?!
• The writing here is terrible. Choppy, awkward. Who are these people? Why do I care? Why is the book talking to me!!? "You'll keep going on excitedly..." Well now I definitely won't. Just to show you that you're not the boss of me.

Page 123~

"You live around here, Dr. Ridder?" he asked me, making coffee.

"Riddle," I said. "No, I live in New York. I'm on my way down from Vermont. I wonder when that car passed me." 

"You saw it passing you?"

"No," I said. "I didn't see it."

"And you say you're the Riddler, is that right?" "Just Riddle." "Justin Griddle?" It goes on like this.

~RP

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Paperback 1167: The Devil Threw Dice / Amber Dean (Pocket Books 1090)

Paperback 1167: Pocket Books 1090 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Devil Threw Dice

Author: Amber Dean

Cover artist: Lou Marchetti

Condition: 6/10

Value: $5-7

Best things about this cover: 

• Norman Bates lookin' like "aw, geez, not again." 
• "She was the kind of gal that many men might kill." Oh, one of those.
• "OK, sure, I threw dice at her, but since when has that ever killed anyone? I've thrown dice at lots of girls and none of them ever died!"
• I assume that's the girl's ghost looming over him. "Thought you'd be rid of me, did you? Ha. I'm gonna haunt this stairwell til doomsday, brother!"
• Even in death, the woman must be portrayed in a way that emphasizes her shapeliness, even if that means that her left breast levitates comically skyward.
• Amber Dean ... is a woman. Not a lot of women writing this kind of hardboiled fare midcentury. She published over a dozen crime novels with Doubleday between the mid-'40s and mid-'60s. I just discovered that a. I own other books by her, and b. she was from western NY (specifically Rochester, only a few hours drive from me). The University of Rochester has her papers. The academic / detective in me wants to Start A New Project...

Best things about this back cover: 

• "Someone had killed her. And it had to be a guy!" I mean, statistically, yeah, pretty much.
• I'm calling it right now. It was Putt Perry. That guy is two little arcs away from Butt Berry. Who knows what depravities someone with that name could get up to!?
• "She had an excitingly evil face" ... not one of them depressingly evil faces you see sometimes. No siree, this was an evil that could really rev a guy's engine, if you know what I mean [yeah, we get it, Putt, we get it]
• Artist credit! Lou Marchetti! A titan. Can't say that this is my favorite cover of his, but the man generally does great work.

Page 123~

Somewhere a bird twittered sleepily, and an answering twitter said "Darling, I'm here. I'll be here when you wake."

What the hell kind of twisted avian fantasy is this?! 

~RP

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Paperback 1166: Asking For Trouble / Joe Rayter (Pocket Books 1132)

Paperback 1166: Pocket Books 1132 (1st ptg, 1956)

Title: Asking For Trouble

Author: Joe Rayter

Cover artist: James Meese

Condition: 6/10

Value: $6

Best things about this cover: 

• "I call this dance The Karate Robot! Hey, where are you going? Come back here!" 
• I know there's a lot happening in the foreground, but I can't stop staring at the ghost waiter, wtf? "I have come to steal souls and serve drinks ... looks like we're about out of drinks."
• James Meese is probably a Mount Rushmore-level cover artist, but I take him for granted. I don't think of him as having a distinctive style, but man every one of his paintings just look like "yep, that is gold-standard '50s action pulp action." The woman in particular is a work of kinetic beauty, with the double Fear Hand™ and everything. The dude ... well, you can't say he's not unique.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Someone decided to pull the price tag off with something less than care.
• Kinsey Report reference, mwah! A+ topicality. The one on male sexuality came out in '48, the one on women in '53, and they gave people a way to talk more openly about the whole range of human sexual behavior (beyond procreative sex). And man did they talk. I used to specifically collect pbs that referenced the Kinsey Report on their covers, or that featured sex studies à la Kinsey—most of those books were, uh, not put out by mainstream publishers.
• By brining up Kinsey, the book kinda sorta vaguely hints that Christy might've had female lovers. Or queer friends. Or both. I'm adding a "Lesbian" tag to this write-up. I'm never gonna read the book, so the tag may be wishful thinking, but so be it. You tell me she's "wild," I feel like I got license.
• This cover copy tells me nothing except I hope to god the author doesn't actually write this way

Page 123~

I passed a saloon that had a big oil painting of a heavy-breasted nude reclining on a red couch over the bar and decided that it looked like a good place to have breakfast.

I've made breakfast decisions for worse reasons.

~RP

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Paperback 1165: What D'Ya Know For Sure? / Len Zinberg (Avon T-093)

Paperback 1165: Avon T-093 (3rd ptg, 1955)

Title: What D'Ya Know For Sure?

Author: Len Zinberg

Cover artist: [George Ziel]

Condition: 3/10

Value: $2?

Best things about this cover: 

• "Who's got one thumb and no idea how to control his emotions? This guy!"
• "Did you run over my book with your car and then try to tape it back together? Did You!?" (this may be the worst-condition still-fully-intact book in my collection)
• Poor lady. She's got extreme "Sir, this is an Arby's" face.
• Avon first published this book as Strange Desires, and yeah, she definitely looks like she wants nothing to do with his strange desires.
• Not a big fan of the implied domestic violence here, but that dude's expression is an all-timer.

Best things about this back cover: 

• "Here is the Hollywood of WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN—the writing quality of WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN, sorry, we don't got none of that."
• Side effects of reading this book may include frantic bedlam of the underside ...
• "Full of awareness" LOL wot? "After reading this book, I am aware ... that it sucks."

Page 123~

Joe was busy changing into a sport shirt. His body was hog-fat with age.

Side effects of aging may include hog-fat ...

~RP

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Paperback 1164: And Sometimes Death / Jo Valentine (Pocket Books 1083)

Paperback 1164: Pocket Books 1083 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: And Sometimes Death

Author: Jo Valentine

Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10

Best things about this cover: 

• "A, E, I, O, U ..."
• What's the opposite of a peeping tom? Where you peep ... from inside the house ... at people who aren't hiding at all?
• "Hold me, Steve. My weird neighbor is freaking me out."
• LOL the original title makes it sound like a novel about the psychological problems of a misunderstood Norse god
• What is the ragged-edged frame supposed to evoke here? It's not torn paper, or an explosion. More like a stain. Or a country in the Balkans you forgot existed

Best things about this back cover: 

• Like Proust's madeleine, only shamefuler
• So ... behind his hands ... is his heart? How did that happen? Henry Duncane, anatomical wonder!
• That last paragraph is weird. Is he hoping for a disaster? What disaster? Does he see the disaster in the night sky "beyond her?" Is it an asteroid? I hope it is an asteroid.

Page 123~

Nobody bathed in Thor Lake.

See, that should've been the title of the book. 

~RP

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Paperback 1163: Savage Triangle / Louis-Charles Royer (Pyramid 134)

Paperback 1163: Pyramid 134 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Savage Triangle

Author: Louis-Charles Royer (tr. Lawrence G. Blochman)

Cover artist: Uncredited 

Condition: 7/10 

Value: $10

Best things about this cover: 

• The long-awaited follow-up to Cruel Square and Feral Circle!
• Pretty sure I know who the "bad girl" is in this scenario? I'm betting on the bespangled, dark-haired drunk with the breadstick fingers.
• Love when they make paperback covers out of discarded aftershave ads.
• Dude is looking straight down her dress. 
• Blonde: "Frank never stares down my dress like that!" [tears forearms savagely]
• [extreme B-52s voice] "Love Camp, / Baby, Love Camp!" 

Best things about this back cover: 

• Is this all she does? Stand around and watch her boyfriend make out with other ladies? She needs another hobby.
• Carmela! Stephan! ... Elsie!? Wow, you can really tell who the third wheel is here. Passion! Romance! ... Moooooo!
• I kinda like this little b&w watercolor sketch, actually. Better than just reproducing the cover art on the back.
• Ah yes, the passionate, dark Italian woman and the frigid, blonde virgin. "I fear womanhood, I desire womanhood, I'm a virgin who's going mad, what will they call me!?"
• "An act of murder brought them together." Classic meet-cute!

Page 123~

Neither woman dared question Kocheff, and he ate his soup in silence

Timeless story structure: Boy meets girl, boy meets other girl, boy eats soup.

~RP

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Paperback 1162: A Gentle Murderer / Dorothy Salisbury Davis (Bantam 1083)

Paperback 1162: Bantam 1083 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: A Gentle Murderer

Author: Dorothy Salisbury Davis

Cover artist: [Charles Binger]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $12

Best things about this cover: 

• "Oh, hello. You startled me. Hammer? What hammer? Oh, this hammer. Yes, well, um ... I'm the maintenance guy. Yeah, that's it. As you can see, the legs of her bed collapsed, and I'm just here to fix it. Totally normal. I'm sure she's just sleeping . . . you can go now."
•  Seriously, why is her bed slanted? Is that some new Tik Tok beauty trend—slanted sleeping?
• "Bud Cort is ... Peter Lorre in ... A Gentle Upholsterer Murderer!"

Best things about this back cover: 

• They're really puttin' all their eggs in the Anthony Boucher basket here.
• The design elements here are so random. Pink words here, blue words there, a floating right angle for framing purposes ... but all it's framing is an ugly block of text. PERHAPS ONCE A YEAR a back cover is designed this poorly.
• Well, if you squint, you can see why they decided to go a different way with the cover. What the hell was the artist thinking with that original cover. The floating head of deranged asylum escapee with a razor through his nose? Or is that a vacuum cleaner? A push broom? I refuse to believe that's a hammer. And even if it is a hammer, why is it attached to his face like a mustache??

Page 123~

    "I heard you singing."
    "I have a good voice."
    "Very good. It's like a cello."

    "A good cello."

    "Of course."

"A good cello." No, a shitty cello, what did you think he meant? Jeez, lady, learn to take a compliment. I'm starting to see why someone would want to kill you with a hammer.

~RP

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