Title: Hill Girl
Author: Charles Williams
Cover artist: Barye Phillips
Yours for: $20
Best things about this cover:
- This is my nominee for "Most Phallic Gun Ever"
- "Maybe if I just sidle along this wall *very* slowly, that yokel standing four feet in front of me won't see me ..."
- Tori Spelling is ... Hill Girl!
- Guy in background: "Excuse me, I was just On The Road and I was wondering if ... oh, I see you're having some kind of altercation or mating ritual ... I'll just move along."
- This book is credited as "the first original paperback" by Jim Silke (Dames, Dolls & Gun Molls: The Art of Robert A. Maguire). But ... there are 40 Gold Medal pbs published before this one, almost all of them paperback originals (as far as I can tell). So ... I was confused by the claim. Maybe it's the first paperback to say, on the cover, "an original novel — not a reprint"? The wikipedia entry for "Gold Medal" confirms that it was publishing original paperbacks in 1950.
- Here's a nice write-up of Charles Williams by Bill Crider.
Best things about this back cover:
- I like back cover copy that gets right to the point.
- Who is "I" in this scenario?
Page 123~
The flowers were there in the room when we came in. She put her arms around my neck and pulled down hard, with the way she had, like a drowning swimmer, and with her lips against my ear she whispered fiercely, "Hold me tight like this, Bob. Don't ever let me go." [end of chapter]
~RP
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8 comments:
Phallic Gun Guy: "Take that dress off, or I'll shoot. You aren't as hot as your sister, but you'll do."
Woman: "OH NO YOU DI'INT!"
Background Guy: "Awk-waaaard." *backs away slowly*
How nice that they changed the cover art on the "Hill Girl" from paperback 64 (later printing) but kept the front and back blurbs.
I prefer the art from the 1961printing: There's less characters and color but there is something in the position of the Dame and the earth colors that radiates despair, whilst the original 1951 printing radiates more of a discombobulated feel - "who me? no, I'm not here at all. Here, I'm gonna turn my head and hug the wall and you won't be able to see me..."
Guy in back, "Huh?"
Man with gun, "Bob, what are you doing?! Don't you know a cornered Hill Girl is the most dangerous kind?! Back! Back I say!"
Hill Girl: "Grr!"
Considering how strained those buttons are her dress looks awfully loose fitting everywhere else, or there's something wonky with the way her torso is drawn. Look under what would be _her_ right arm.
Dude's trench coat is too long in the arms.
This novel reminds me of ZZ Top's 1981 hit: "Tube Snake Boogie".
"I've gotta girl that lives on the hill... she won't do it , but her sister will, when she boogies ... she do the tube snake boogie ..."
* Alas, the liner notes to "ZZ Top's Greatest Hits" ('92) compilation lays to rest the mistaken lyric of "tube steak boogie" claiming, " 'tube snake' is gnarly lingo for a surfboard."
Damn! After all these years...
This girl is wonky, all right. I think her head's on backwards. Also, are those breasts or pecs?? Girl's been hittin' the gym too hard.
A dress like that, where else can a girl keep her colostomy bag except under her right arm?
Hill Girl: "No! Don't hurt my two-storey pink shack! Do anything you want to me but leave my hovel be!"
Guy With Gun: "Lookey here, lady. We'uns ain't puttin' up with no high fallutin' South Beach pastel colours 'round here. You'uns is gonna have a brown shack like everyone else or we'uns is burnin' it down!"
Live long and prosper, Hill Girl.
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