Paperback 175: Murder After Hours / Agatha Christie (Dell 5922)

Paperback 175: Dell 5922 (1st ptg, 1965)

Title: Murder After Hours
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: William Teason

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Worst Weapon-Hiding Place Ever
• "Hey, watch me make the horse shoot bullets out his butt!"
• This cover was painted using primarily leftover "Exorcist" vomit
• Teason specializes in these odd little still lifes featuring unlikely groupings of objects. There appears to be, in addition to the horse sculpture/gun, a riding crop, a rag, a tabloid story about someone who was "MURDERED," and a bent playing card (King of Hearts)

Best things about this back cover:

• They always suck me in with their geometry teasers: "It looked like an ordinary triangle ... but it was scalene!"
• Apparently the "triangle" is a sculpture of human flesh
• "Sculptress"! Remember when the idea of a woman's doing anything of note outside the home, especially anything creative, was so unusual that it required flagging with a suffix? Why they don't call Christie an "authoress," I don't know.

Page 123~

Oh no, thought Midge, it can't be true. It's a dream I've been having. John Christow, murdered, shot - lying there by the pool. Blood and blue water - like the jacket of a detective story. Fantastic, unreal ...

~RP