Title: Danger in Paradise
Author: A.S. Fleischman
Cover artist: Barye Phillips
Yours for: $15
Best things about this cover:
- Is she trying to crawl under some kind of tarp? What's that huge dark area above her right hand supposed to be? Pan back!
- Seriously, pan back. This woman was not meant to be appreciated at this distance. She looks scared. And smeary.
- "Her love was an invitation to death ... but first she needs to change her car's oil" (my new explanation for what she's doing on her back on the ground about to go under some dark object)
- I only just got the fact that the title is a play on the phrase "Stranger in Paradise."
- The right hand doesn't quite look like it belongs to her. And those talons are freaking me out.
Best things about this back cover:
- Oh, "Look Behind You, Lady"'s got a comma now, eh? Well, la-di-dah.
- Apollo Fry, the lost Fry Guy.
- "I flicked her chin with my knuckles" is a great euphemism for "I punched her in the face."
- "When we came out of the trance..." Wait, what? What happened between paragraphs. One second he's playfully abusing her, and the next, they're coming out of a trance?
- "... set in the troubled East." i.e. exotic downtown Trenton, NJ.
Page 123~
"She wouldn't be hard to fall in love with, would she?"
I clamped my jaws.
Well, that's an awkward sentence. All I can picture is him with his lower face in a vise.
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
9 comments:
There seems to be a problem with the back cover scan?... also I noticed that the lady's eyes aren't pointed in *quite* the same direction. Slightly disquieting.
I can't quite tell what's on her arms, but it looks like it might be Red Sonja-style battle armor...
Scan looks OK to me.
Red Sonja = hot.
rp
I'm with you. That right hand is a little too large to be hers, and the talons are a good half inch longer than the nails on her left hand.
I also don't see a problem with the scan, but that fat dashed line between the copy and the boilerplate could give it the appearance of an interruption or fault in the scan. Maybe that's what Erik meant.
I still want to know how a hack writer of noirish potboilers set in the Far East turned into a Newbery-winning author of children's books.
How DOES one invite someone to death? Would an E-vite do, or is hand-delivered heavy linen the only proper way?
Frank> You give them the Black Spot of course.
Maybe she's hiding under a pile of store mannequins. In the dark. Because that seriously is one random looking hand/claw.
But in truth the void appears to be a black negligee that's spread out behind her. Which if we weren't in extreme close up would look much hotter.
It's a shame she's on the smudgy side, I like her face. Has a kind of Gloria Grahame quality to it.
Already two adults on a rickety pier over "ruffled" (seriously?) water. If I was the approaching gunman I'd just shoot them and not run the risk of adding my weight to said pier. Remember the first rule of murder: Safety first!
Her left hand appears to be sporting four fingers but only three fingernails.
Alix, don't you know that one of the dangers in paradise is losing the nail on your ring finger?
I want to know what process (i.e. which drugs) a writer has to take before reaching "Apollo Fry" as a name for one of his characters. Also, is he willing to share?
The lady on the cover isn't frightened, she is just calculating the best angle to strike with her Red Talons of Doom
Pan back?
Pull back, zoom out, track back....
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