Sunday, June 28, 2009

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

5 comments:

JamiSings said...

What stands out to me is the "Rooms to let" sign.

And now I have King Of The Road stuck in my head.

Thank you SO much.

Off to iTunes to see if they have any Dean Martin to buy....

Katie said...

Why do I get the feeling that this and "Terror in the Streets" are criminology master's theses gussied up with a pulp cover?

Kevin said...

The cover: What Judy Garland did on the weekends.

The last sentence from the excerpt - ouch!

Dirt Diggler said...

WOW!... this book sucks! The title, the taglines, the text, the colors, the subject/cover art dissonance ... it's all here in one little revolting miasma of pulp fiction-dom! ---Yours for only 25 cents!

Imagine, you too can curl up with this heart warming murder anthology and feel cheered about the World and your place in it!

The only thing missing is the typical obscure news blurbs. Such as:

"The best feel-good self-help book of the year!"
--- Joel Ickschleib, Pittsburgh Voyeur

Or,


"Sensational ... spellbinding ... I couldn't keep it down ..."
--- Billy Belcher, Baltimore Blotter Gazette

Anonymous said...

I believe that's Russel Crouse, of the playwriting team of Lindsay & Crouse, most famous for the extremely long-running adaptation of Life With Father and the book for Sound of Music. Crouse was also the father of Lindsay Crouse the actress (see what he did there?), best known the movie House of Games and for being married to David Mamet (who wrote the movie for her). I'm not sure exactly why I know this.

Cristiane