Paperback 1158: Easy to Kill / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 319)

Paperback 1158: Pocket Books 319 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Easy to Kill

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Hawes

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10

Best things about this cover: 

• Wow, he really is easy to kill. Just tickle his clavicle and there he goes. Done for.
• Some of the worst hand art I've ever seen. That reaching left hand ... it's kind of a Fear Hand, but it's also a ghost hand, as well as a "my thumb in a mini-croissant" hand. Is he reaching for a light switch? Making shadow puppets? Scratching a blackboard in hopes that the sound will drive the devil away? A truly bizarre monstrosity.
• And that other hand isn't much better. It's more like a tree branch, or a really bloody mop.
• Love a clear artist's signature. There's not an artist credit, and I don't have a single Hawes in my collection, so I don't know what the first name is.
• For an 80-year-old book, this one is in remarkably good condition. Very minor warping and surface wear, but otherwise apparently unread.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Oh, "It's very easy to kill." I see. Now.
• So the title is Easy to Kill and the back cover tagline is "It's Very Easy to Kill" and the last line of the back cover blurb is "It's very easy to kill." I've got just one question: is killing hard? I hear it's hard.
• If I could kill people with "a special look," the bodies ... my god the bodies ... 

Page 123~

"I'm pretty good at taking care of myself too. Hard-boiled, I should think you'd call me."

No, I won't be doing that. If you have to tell people you're hard-boiled, odds are that you're no such thing.

~RP

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Paperback 1157: Why Didn't They Ask Evans? / Agatha Christie (Pan X736)

Paperback 1157: Pan X736 (1st ptg, 1968)

Title: Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: [photo cover]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8

Best things about this cover: 

• The mise-en-place here is exquisite. I imagine this was all arranged with tweezers.
• I assume "Evans" is just out of frame, having been killed by a heroin overdose or a golf ball to the head or a golfball to the head while overdosing.
• I was gonna say "people who put price stickers directly on paperbacks are monsters," but they I carefully removed the sticker on this one without doing any damage. I could rescan it, I guess, but I like showing it as I found it.

Best things about this back cover: 

• If putting a price sticker on a cover is a crime, then writing on the cover in pen is a war crime. "30?" 30 what!?
• Agatha Christie looks like a sadistic Swedish nanny.
• This book is one of Aggie's poorest efforts. I know this because it's written on the title page of the book:

Page 123~

    "What's the matter with you, Bobby. You look as though you were miles away."

    "Sorry. As a matter of fact—"

    "Yes?"

    "Well, I was just wondering. I suppose—well I suppose it's all right?"

    "What do you mean—all right?"

    "I mean it's quite certain that he did commit suicide?"

Dun dun DUNNNNN!!

~RP

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Paperback 1156: The Under Dog and Other Mysteries / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 1085)

Paperback 1156: Pocket Books 1085 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Under Dog and Other Mysteries

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: James Meese

Condition: 9/10

Value: $12

Best things about this cover: 

• Me after three drinks and five pelvic lifts.
• Whodunnit? My money's on the giant yellow rectangle.
• Just a great dead-man-spilling-toward-the-foreground image here from James Meese. 
• On second thought, I don't think he's actually dead; I think he just got drunk and walked smack into the yellow rectangle. 
• I cannot figure out what the standing man is doing (besides looking suspicious)? He seems to be smoking a cigarette with his left hand but also holding what looks like a pipe (but is not a pipe) in his right hand? What is he holding? It's driving me nuts. [reader opinion is that he’s holding a lighter; I can live with that]
• I like how the lady combines Fear Hand with a kind of sexy hands-on-hips pose. Fear Hand, but make it shimmy.
• This book is in spooky-good condition. It's got some surface wear but otherwise it's square, sharp-edged and shiny.

Best things about this back cover: 

• That is possibly the most dramatic "For example..." in the history of the written word.
• I have questions about Submarines A through Y.
• "And in The King of Clubs Hercule Poirot's knowledge of bridge makes him even more insufferable than usual." No wonder the police are still looking for an answer—they probably couldn't bear to sit through his tedious explanation. 

Page 123~

"Think of that solid middle-class English family, the Oglanders."

I will not. You can't make me. Furthermore, if you're going to invent a family name, try to come up with something more plausible than the Oglanders. Next you'll be talking about the Blabfasters and the Foozengibbets and then where will we be? In a Dr. Seuss book, that's where?

~RP

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Paperback 1155: Poirot Loses a Client / Agatha Christie (Dell 6984)

Paperback 1155: Dell 6984 (1st thus, 1974)

Title: Poirot Loses a Client

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: [William Teason]

Condition: 8/10

Value: $5

Best things about this cover: 

• Found her!
• Rube Goldberg's grandma-killing machine—surprisingly effective
• Well, the bad news is that grandma has come back from the dead. The good news is that her flexibility has improved considerably!

Best things about this back cover: 

• Who Would Want to Kill a Nice Old Lady? A novice murderer, probably. Someone who's only just taken it up. An old lady seems like a good starter murder.
• Why are there always seven people and why are they always at a manor? You'd think they'd all have some kind of inkling, like "hey ... this feels ... kind of murder-y, right?"
• I want to read this just to find out why Poirot was (apparently) so horny for this client. "Poirot channels his sexual frustration ... into justice!"

Page 123~

"Poirot," I said, "I'll begin a sentence with 'Are you sure?' Are you sure you are not being carried away by professional zeal? You want it to be murder and so you think it must be murder."

To which Poirot replied, "Now I'll begin a sentence with 'Fuck off, you insufferable twit,' ..."

~RP

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Paperback 1154: The 1,000-Year Plan / Isaac Asimov (Ace D-110)

Paperback 1154: Ace D-110 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The 1,000-Year Plan

Author: Isaac Asmiov

Cover artist: Ed Valigursky

Condition: 7/10    

Value: $10    

[gift from a reader]

Best things about this cover: 

• John Houseman is ... Mr. Clean in ... The 1,000-Year Plan! 
• Is he just wearing a shitty t-shirt with a worn-out collar? How am I supposed to take Captain Eyebrows here seriously if he can't even keep his uniform tight.
• "Sir, we have a plan for waxing your head?" "Fantastic, how long will it take?" 
• Weirdly, this book was released both as one half of an Ace Double paperback (also numbered D-110, with Poul Anderson's No World of Their Own as the flip side) and in this standalone format. I have no idea why.

Best things about this back cover: 

• That's a nice shade of blue, I guess.

Page 123~

"A priest is at the head. He has been identified as High Priest Poly Verisof. He demands the immediate release of Mayor Salvor Hardin and cessation of the war against the Foundation."

Those names! Was this originally written as space porn? Come on. You're gonna tell me that these characters weren't originally named Polly VerySoft and Salvor Hard-On? I don't believe it.

~RP

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Paperback 1153: A Murder Is Announced / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 820)

Paperback 1153: Pocket Books 820 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: A Murder Is Announced

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Frank McCarthy

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10    

Best things about this cover: 

• When your CPR compressions are *way* too hard...
• Lady looks like she's competing in some kind of haunted house biathlon, and losing
• Dead guy's right hand is gonna haunt my dreams for days. I count five fingers, but somehow it looks like seven

Best things about this back cover: 

• Ah, the classified ads. I miss those. People advertising help wanted, selling furniture, announcing murders. The good old days.
• Pretty close to Halloween to being going to strange women's houses. Particularly strange women named Letitia Blacklock. Oh, did the lights go out? Were you "locked" in "blackness"? What did you expect to happen!? 
• God bless Pocket Books for the artist credit. Love an artist credit. Hate having to track artists down (or, worse, and more common, not being able to find out who did the art at all)

Page 123~

"If you'd been up against it, and then, rather like a shivering stray cat, you'd found a home and cream and a warm stroking hand and you were called Pretty Pussy and somebody thought the world of you ... You'd do a lot to keep that ..."

Boy, would I. You got that right.

~RP

P.S. My long winter hiatus is over. Gonna try to stick to a regular T/Th publishing sched. for the foreseeable future, with possible weekend posts if I have the time. Thank you to loyal readers. Tell a friend! xo

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Paperback 1152: Murder on the Links / Agatha Christie (Dell 454)

Paperback 1152: Dell 454 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Murder on the Links

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Al Brulé

Condition: 7/10    

Value: $10

Best things about this cover: 

• I'm sorry but the freakiest thing about this cover isn't Poirot standing in the doorway, it's whatever that get-up is that she's got on, holy cow.
• Carhop? Ballerina? Working as a waitress in a cocktail bar?
• Those are the gapingest fishnets I ever did see. Reasonable-sized fish could escape through those holes.
• Classic Fear Hand! Or else she's telling Poirot, "Just give me five minutes, you impatient Walloon!"
• In other news, I think 2026 might be My Christie Year. I know a year isn't nearly enough to read all her novels, but I'm hoping maybe I can polish off a dozen, at least.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Mapback!! Paperback design peaked with the mapback. All downhill since then. Every book should have a map on the back. If I started a publishing co., this would be the one and possibly only thing I cared about.
• Look at the detail. Tiny cabanas and beach chairs and umbrellas and everything.
• LOL "Bench." Thanks, map!
• Love the perspective on this one, with Calais visible in the far distance. And clouds! It's lovely, really.
• "Copes" is a weird word to describe what Poirot does. He's solving a case, not surviving a week-end with his in-laws.

Page 123~

    But at that moment a stir and bustle was heard outside, and our old friend, the examining magistrate, accompanied by his clerk and M. Bex, with the doctor behind them, came bustling in.

OK, a couple things. First, M. Bex, cool name. Second, was there no editor to say "absolutely not" to the repetition of "bustle"? "Bustling" almost seems like an intentional comical callback to "stir and bustle," but if that were so, I'd expect all the people to come "stirring and bustling in." "Bustling" on its own gives the appearance of laziness (both authorial and editorial).

~RP

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