Paperback 249: A Bit of Fluff / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F256)

Paperback 249: Midwood F256 (PBO, 1963)

Title: A Bit of Fluff
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $60


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the word you're searching for is "Dang ..."
• Paul Rader is possibly the best sleaze cover artist that ever was. He and Robert Maguire are like gods to me.
• I love how "Lesbian" is capitalized, like "Mason" or "Scientologist."
• Strategically placed towel means that I cannot see any bit of fluff.
• I absolutely love this cover — the color, the design, the steam, the casual nudity, all of it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh lesbians. Always with the careful soaping.

Page 123~

There it was again. Only it wasn't a slip this time. She was practically informing me that she was a Lesbian. But her tone was meek and humble — and I wasn't afraid of her any more, now that she knew her place.

Again, I say: Dang.

~RP

Announcement: Paperback 250 will go up on Wednesday. To celebrate this milestone ... a contest. It will be Twitter-related, but I will add a Luddite option for those of you who can't be bothered with Twitter. You'll see. I'm off to conscript some other people to help me judge the contest. Oh, the prize will be the book itself — Paperback 250. And it doesn't suck, as my paperbacks go.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 248: Murder Won't Out / Russel Crouse (Pennant Books P24)

Paperback 248: Pennant Books P24 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Murder Won't Out
Author: Russel Crouse (... and somewhere, a letter "L" runs free ...)
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• That's the French whoriest French whore that ever French whored her way from here to French Whoretown. Not sure how she ended up in NYC.
• "Tiny trashcans for sale! ... who will buy ze tiny trashcans? ... I call zem 'Can Cans' ... yes, zat is why I'm dressed like zis ... clevair, no?"
• After "Nights in Rodanthe," Diane Lane decided to start taking much darker roles.
  
• "Murder Will Out" is an old phrase — Chaucerian old — in case you weren't sure what the title was going for here.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Yes, but what's the book about?

Page 123~

It was no longer the Broadway of the Lombardy poplars and the convivial taverns. The trees had long since given way to lamp posts to light its darkest corner. The Great White Way, to coin a phrase, as somebody had once upon a time.

That passage starts out OK, but the wheels really come off in that last "sentence." "... as it were, so to speak, as they say ..."

~RP

Paperback 247: Terror in the Streets / Howard Whitman (Bantam A964)

Paperback 247: Bantam A964 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Terror in the Streets
Author: Howard Whitman
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $10


Best thing about this cover:

• Ah, 1950s paranoia at its finest
• Can't a pretty girl get a haircut at 1 a.m. without being team-stalked by tough guys in olive drab suits anymore? What a world ...
• Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" was based on this book cover
• Maguire would eventually learn his lesson: Put Girl In Foreground!

Best things about this back cover:

• You can tell even from this crowded array of scenes that Maguire is a masterful illustrator. Great faces, action, use of light...
• Love the action in the alley by the garbage cans. Smacked his fedora off with a blackjack. That's about as 50s as 50s violence gets. Fedora still in mid-air. Rich.
• Every quote reads like it's coming out of the mouth of Maude Flanders: "Won't somebody please think of the children!?"

Page 123~

The police are hardly interested in, nor would the average police mentality be capable of understanding, such psycho-dynamics. Police are interested in end-results. When an old homosexual is found dead in his hotel room after picking up a man at a bar, the police just put it down as a "fag murder" and go on from there.

~RP

Paperback 246: The Disenchanted / Budd Schulberg (Bantam A1051)

Paperback 246: Bantam A1051 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Disenchanted
Author: Budd Schulberg
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Her pose! One shoe! Awesome. I think I love her.
  
• Book should be called "The Dissolute," or "Yeah, I'm Drunk, Whaddya Gonna Do About It, Ya Impotent Bastard? Get Me Another Martini"
• Harry Schaare Loves his Floating Heads — we'll see more in the future.
• Love the little maniacal dancing / jazz club scene in the background
• The novel may be set in the 20s, but these people are not believably from the 20s. Except for emaciated Clark Gable in a tux back there, hitting on the girl who's reclining on the hair of Floating Head. He's 20s all the way.
• "What Makes Sammy Run" is a classic Hollywood novel. Fantastic.

Best things about this back cover:

• LOVE the guy admiring the rack of his drunken lady friend, up-close! "Yes. These will do nicely."
• Toga party or religious visitation? "This angel came into my candle-lit room last night ... man, she was hot."
• I love Michener's precision — like he remembers exactly where he was, three years ago, when he read a novel better than this one.

Page 123~

When he finds out the commercial tie-up he feels like a jerk for having fallen for her. Then, in the finals of the ski-jump, he's injured.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 245: Over My Dead Body / Franklin Mayfair (Book Co. of America 009)

Paperback 245: Book Co. of America 009 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Over My Dead Body
Author: Franklin Mayfair
Cover artist: some guy who sold paintings at swap meets in the early 70s

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Well ... parts of it look finished. Specifically, the eastern part contains elements that one could reasonably call "people." As for the western half ... I think I see a topless dead chick. The rest is a blur. In mid-left section, it looks like the artist was going for bathtub, then changed his mind to tea cup, then just tried to scratch the whole thing out.
• Fans of puke green will be especially drawn to this cover.
• I actually love the expression on the guy's face: "Are you fucking kidding me, lady? You really think that's sexy? Put the flower back in the vase and get out of my office. Why can't you be more like that elegant lady with the white gloves that I sometimes dream of and who is possibly standing right behind us?"

Best things about this back cover:

• Hyphen party!
• "Pub—" = HA ha. "O man, what was he gonna say? Was it "Pubic?" "Pubic something?" Come on!"
• There appears to be punctuation missing somewhere near the end of that first pargraph. I think a period might be in order after "location" (love the scare quotes around "location" — like they're not convinced it's a real term).

Page 123~

"Not so strange," Pesek pontificated from the depths of a chair.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 244: Split-Level Love / Carlton Gibbs (Softcover Library B1057S)

Paperback 244: Softcover Library B1057S (2nd, 1967)

Title: Split-Level Love
Author: Carlton Gibbs
Cover artist: uncredited [Ernest Chiriaka ("Darcy")]

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "This is a rather odd lap dance ma'am ... ma'am ... why are you looking in my ear, ma'am?"
• I wonder what the pink "V" stands for?
• Her lower leg is scary thin.
• Adoption and abortion ... how topical!?
• Carlton Gibbs ... was that the doorman on "Rhoda" or the cousin of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air?

Best things about this back cover:

• Brig Doncaster? Seriously, my paperback collection is killing me with these names! Tell me "Doncaster" doesn't sound like "Dong-caster."
• There's a whole subset of 60s sex paperbacks about "Suburbia" and the goings-on there. Suburbia is to 60s paperbacks what Juvenile Delinquency is to late-50s paperbacks.

Page 123~

She let him divest her, just the same, of the flimsy fluffs he had given her. She trembled at his touch. His was the kind of diabolical male charm a woman could hate and yet become heedlessly intoxicated with. She could stand there loathing the fact that he had taken hundreds of bras off scores of women [pausing ... doing math ...] and yet thrill to his removing hers. She could grow faint when he touched his lips to her taut breast regardless of how many others he had kissed. She could shiver visibly when his hands slid away her final garment although they were far too practiced.

Brig Doncaster, divester of flimsy fluffs and irresistible asshole extraordinaire.

~RP

Paperback 243: Twilight Women / Les Scott (Beacon 156)

Paperback 243: Beacon 156 (1st, late 50s)*

Title: Twilight Women
Author: Les Scott
Cover artist: uncredited

*[dated 1952, but I don't think Beacon was even publishing then ... probably late 50s, probably first Beacon printing ... and a Gorgeous one at that; slight spine lean, but apparently unread]

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• "This tree makes my pits smell awesome!"
• If you are going to adopt a pseudonym for your first lesbian softcore effort, might I suggest "Les"?
• They Worshipped at the Shrine of Passion — this either made them gargantuan or shrunk them to the size of a bonzai tree, I can't really tell.
• Free Mini-Twilight Woman with every Twilight Woman purchase!

Best things about this back cover:

• From the Unbelievable Names Department, we bring you ... Lakla! Aletha! and introducing ... Rance!
• "But Lakla soon thrust upon him her adorable little companion Aletha" — So that's who the small woman on the cover is. Wow, they're not foolin' about "little companion." "You'll love her, Rance. She fits right in your pocket. You don't have any cats, do you?"
• "Punishment by death for penetrating ..." — insert lesbian joke here.

Page 123~

On and on the quivering ship staggered blindly, strained to the limit of her brave endurance, the sea bellowing around her, threatening disaster, savagely wrathful.

Oh yeah, just what I want from my vintage lesbian paperback: Hot Nautical Action.

~RP

Paperback 242: Kid Galahad / Francis Wallace (Bantam 133)

Paperback 242: Bantam 133 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: Kid Galahad
Author: Francis Wallace
Cover artist: Charles Andres

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• Unlike most Good and Bad Angels, Kid Galahad's Good and Bad Angels chose to reside in his armpits, not on his shoulders.
• Love how heads are crammed into every crevice of the painting. My favorite is the sweaty, neck-wiping Tintin lookalike (under the Kid's right glove, which appears to have been fashioned from the remains of an old football).
• This Kid has apparently been waxed within an inch of his life. "Behold my glistening torso!"

Best things about this back cover:

• LOVE the numbers of the ref's count on the ropes. Dramatic.
• Check out how lame the cover of the Little, Brown edition was!
• Jeez, first line of copy makes this novel sound like a slasher film. Or a tale of surgery.

Page 123~

She looked at him coldly. "Don't flatter yourself. I don't care whether you burn or freeze."

~RP

Paperback 241: Mother, Daughter and Lover / G.G. Fickling (Softcover Library B1069S)

Paperback 241: Softcover Library B1069S (2nd ptg?, 1967ish)

Title: Mother, Daughter and Lover
Author: G. G. Fickling
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• "Does my bra strap smell weird to you?"
• "The Intimate Confessions of a Beach Boy" — Brian Wilson at his nadir ... or apex, I guess, depending on how you look at it.
• We've seen Fickling's work before — they (yes, they) wrote the Honey West novels. I like that their name is a mash-up of "fickle" and "fucking" ... and "finger-licking," sort of.
• I like the idea that there is a ranking system for the relative explosiveness of Sex Triangles.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Well preserved?!?!" HA ha. Like a mummy.
• "Her eyes ... stopped at my wet trunks and narrowed." That's pretty good, as sex fiction cover copy goes. "Youthful, upthrust flesh," less so.

Page 123~

Her voice cracked shatteringly, like a pane of glass.

It's bad enough that you have to use the painful adverb "shatteringly" — do we really need the simile? Glass is the First thing evoked by "shattering." I mean, what else is the shattering supposed to signal? "Her voice cracked shatteringly, like a pot pie."

~RP

P.S. I was thrilled recently to hear that my blog had inspired one of my readers to start her own vintage pb collection. Check out one of her initial purchases here. It's ... jaw-dropping.

Paperback 240: The Sour Lemon Score / Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) (Gold Medal R2037)

Paperback 240: Gold Medal R2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Sour Lemon Score
Author: Richard Stark (pseud. of Donald Westlake)
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $39


Best things about this cover:

• I appear to have hit a super sweet pocket in my collection — an original Parker novel with a McGinnis bondage cover!? Wow... book's got some minor scuffing, but is otherwise in gorgeous, barely read condition.
• Is that look in her eyes fear? Or maybe the man with the gun is the good guy, and what she's really thinking is, "Uh ... little help, Captain Handsome-pose?"
• Actually, she's not tied up — she's a puppeteer who is operating her marionettes remotely via a (really) complicated system of pulleys and levers. You can tell she is backstage at an old theater, as she is clearly reclining on the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Best things about this back cover:

• Look, real blurbs from actual, marginally credible news sources!
• HA ha — love the "(back)" part of the second Boucher blurb. "Oh ... paperback ... I see. How modern."
• If you have never read Westlake, you could do worse than to start with the Parker novels. They were all recently reissued by Chicago Univ. Press (see here), and this summer, you can check out Darwyn Cooke's comic adaptation of the first Parker novel, "Hunter" (preview available here), a first edition of which is also in my paperback collection ... somewhere.
  
• See Man Booker-prize-winning author John Banville rhapsodize about the Parker novels here.

Page 123~

The thumb out there jabbed and jabbed at the bell. She couldn't ignore it, no matter what.

~RP

Paperback 239: The Lady Kills / Bruno Fischer (Gold Medal 148)

Paperback 239: Gold Medal 148 (PBO, 1951)
Title: The Lady Kills
Author: Bruno Fischer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Sometimes, you just have to stop and recognize awesomeness when you see it. This cover is everything I love about vintage paperbacks in one beautiful package: a paperback original from a very good author, in beautiful condition ... a girl with a gun and a guy with a whip ... a dynamic composition with cool depth of field perspective ... shredded clothing ... a title that is also a complete sentence. My only response when I pulled this off my shelf was "Damn, that's good."
• That's some serious violence; he seems to have @#$ed her up good with that whip, despite the fact that he's holding it in a way that would not be conducive to hurting someone. He's gotta let go of the tip. It's like threatening someone with a gun that has the safety on. Looks cool, though.
• She looks a little like that actress ... what's her name ... star of "Medium" ... like a young version of her ... Patricia Arquette? Is that right?

Best things about this back cover:

• "Old Cleave" = great name for an axe murderer
• This copy is nuts. Makes almost no sense. Is Old Cleave her father? Her husband? What is the "it" in the penultimate sentence? Did our narrator literally see Beth's husband "learn the truth." How exciting, watching someone learn something.
• "Understood least of all" — yes, that's clear

Page 123~

My laughter had broken through the crust of her where words couldn't.

I love a girl with a good graham cracker crust.

Now I'm hungry.

~RP

Paperback 238: She Woke to Darkness / Brett Halliday (Dell 867)

Paperback 238: Dell 867 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: She Woke to Darkness
Author: Brett Halliday
Cover artist: Robert Schulz

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• "She Woke to a Massive Head Wound"
• Doesn't everyone wake to darkness from time to time? I mean, when you gotta go ...
• Her left hip has grown its own hand. Creepy.
• That's one big, rectangular pool of blood.

Best things about this back cover:

• Love the caricatures of the characters. Second one looks more like an 80's fashion model than a 50's dame who likes capital-M Martinis.
• Here's where Mike Shayne and I differ: I prefer vintage broads and vivacious brandy.
• "Who Is This Girl?" - early, eventually discarded title of Madonna's hit "Who's That Girl?"

Page 123~

The duplicating office had been able to shed no light on Halliday's disappearance. He had left with the original manuscript under his arm about six o-clock, and that was all they knew.

That's right. Writer "Brett Halliday" is a character in a novel by ... writer Brett Halliday.

~RP

Paperback 237: Call for Michael Shayne / Brett Halliday (Dell D269)

Paperback 237: Dell D269 (1st thus, 1959)

Title: Call for Michael Shayne
Author: Brett Halliday
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "I'm holding for Mike Shayne, so you can just wait your damned turn for the phone. Here, stare at the side of my left boob while you wait."
• One of the oddest cover poses I've seen for a McGinnis girl — casual gun play + casual, inexplicable semi-nudity. Yet the net effect is still smoking hot.
• For my birthday, I would really love it if one of you could PhotoShop this baby and make it say "Call For Michael Sharp" (my "real" name)
• I love the floating head of Mike Shayne. Quintessential tough dick.

Best things about this back cover:

• The fact that I have left the store's ID tag tucked into the back cover all these years. I love when stores are fastidious about labeling their shit.
• "The night of June 8" is tomorrow, fyi.
• We didn't need the first set of parentheses, let alone the second. What, are you whipsering?

Page 123~

Knowing Masters's reputation as a domineering bully, it seemed reasonable to expect his secretary to be a weak-kneed yes-man, a sycophant.

~RP

P.S. just hours after I posted this write-up, reader "Tulse" gave me this:


I should ask for stuff more often. Now I want it on a T-shirt. You're the best, Tulse. I'm truly grateful.

Paperback 236: A Chosen World / Carl Corley (GSN PL524)

Paperback 236: GSN PL 524 (PBO, 1966)

Title: A Chosen World
Author: Carl Corley
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $75 (you heard me!)


Best things about this cover:

• What the hell is GSN? Gay Studies Network? Good Sex News? I have been over this book inside and out, and I can't find the publisher info. They must have been really afraid of hate mail or something.
• Looking around on-line, I see that the publisher is "Pad Library" — that name is not nearly as satisfying as my "GSN" guesses, above.
  
• I love (and I mean love) that their logo is a guy riding bareback. Or maybe there's a saddle on there. Who can tell? Either way, ride 'em, cowboy!
• "Twilight world" — my favorite code word for gay land
• In case you were wondering if homosexuality is a choice — now you know. Definitively. Thanks, "Carl."

Best things about this back cover:

• Yes, I believe that that guy is gay. And has had a lot of work done on his face. And possibly is genetically related to lizards.
• "Hmmm, let's see, what's another word for 'throbbing'...?"
• "He bares the hidden recesses of..." - oh dear lord stop right there.
• I want that typewriter. For real.
• Aside from some general, low-grade fading and scuffing, this "classic tome" is in !@#ing perfect condition.

Page 123~

Then I went to the house, my mind whirling like a treadmill's, my ambitions soaring.

Treadmills being notorious for their whirling minds.

~RP

Paperback 235: The Unfair Fare Affair (The Man From U.N.C.L.E. #18) / Peter Leslie (Ace 51701)

Paperback 235: Ace 51701 (PBO, 1968)

Title: The Unfair Fare Affair (The Man From U.N.C.L.E. #18)
Author: Peter Leslie
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Illya Kuryakin shows how he won first place at the Gun Shuffleboard Tournament of 1963
• "And then I swam over to my gun, like so..."
• "That fare was so unfair that ... oh ... I'm just going to lie here ..."

Best things about this back cover:

• I love that the publishers could give a flying !@##$ what stills they use on their covers. "Boss, we need two pics for the "Man From U.N.C.L.E." book. Which ones should we use?" / "I don't know, just grab two off the top." / "But ... in this one the guy's just holding a tape measure. That doesn't really conv—" / "Just do what I say and shut yer yap!"
• I was too young ever to have seen an ep of this show. I think that for some reason the paperback tie-ins numbered 14 and over are rarer than those with lower numbers. Forget where I heard this. Anyway ... maybe I can find the show on TV or DVD somewhere. I think I should at least see one ep — it was a huge hit in the 60s.

Page 123~

Now that the mechanics of Bartoluzzi's one-man escape network were known, now that he was morally sure that he had in fact been approached by THRUSH on the lines that Waverly had feared, Kuryakin felt justified in throwing the Corsican, as it were, to the wolves.

~RP