57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 56

Actually, I have no idea what the last two books are from the Book Sale. They appear to have sort of blended in with the rest of the collection. So the last two books will just be ones I can't place, not yet officially in The Collection — stuff that *could* have come from the Book Sale. Enjoy.

Title: Some Slips Don't Show (Pocket Books 6095, 1st ptg, 1961)
Author: A.A. Fair (aka Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Yours for: $8

• Expression on that guy's face is Nightmarish. That chair, however, is pure '60s gold, as is the Jackie-O style of Miss Primping there. I love the mysterious inscription over Dean Martin's ugly cousin's head: "Amy." It's as if he's thinking, "Amy, I'm sorry I barfed on your other dress."
  
• I believe this painting represents the seated drunk green guy's perspective. He's so sloshed that the objects of his ogling have huge, sickly, sweeping motion lines. Throwing back her hair creates a Pollockesque swoosh. Kind of looks like the number "9."
• On second, or third, glance, I believe that that is not a chair he's sitting in, but a hovercraft. He's reminding more and more of that Martian from the "Flintstones" every time I look at him.

• Seriously? You decide to reprise an image from the front cover and you choose *him*!? "Hey, [hic!], look at me! I'm flying through your doorways! Lady!"
• I'm not sure I get the joke? Is she naked under clothes? Is her slip really showing? Is there a pun on "slip," so that I'm supposed to understand that she's made an error of some sort. Is "slip" some horrible anatomical code word? Only the racially ambiguous drunk alien knows.

Page 123~

"And furthermore," I told her, "don't hand me that line about what I owe you. I don't owe you a damned thing!"

He's short, but Donald Lam can talk down to the ladies like nobody's business (I actually really like the Cool + Lam books by "Fair")

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 55

Titles: Catch-as-Catch-Can / Then Came Two Women
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artists: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $9

• Had mainstream cover artists / designers just given up by the mid-60s. I'm seeing a lot of slop lately. What is the concept here? Girl in pink dress running — OK. But then, what, a rough pencil sketch of her shins from a different angle, blown up as a background + random EMT running to check her gigantic left ankle + wee man tickling her right heel??? Maybe the lady in the pink looks so nauseous and is running so fast because she's trying desperately to escape from this cover concept. "Oh god, it's terrible, boo hoo, save me!"
• When Drexel Drake talks, people ... honestly, I don't know what people do. Drexel Drake is a porn name.

• Responsible housewife by day, trashy Cougar by night...
• Love the attire on the women. Also love little miss Bad Seed in her best buggy-riding attire.
• "God, I hate my two moms..."
• That is some supernatural shit that Bad Seed's hair is doing at the tips.

Page 123~ (from Catch-as-Catch-Can)

But she could see. That his hand and arms moved nervously and secretly to thrust the gun into the thick shrub beside which he was standing. He turned his body and wavered like a shadow.

Who let her break that first sentence in two like that?! Jebus! Also, I'm trying to imagine what that last sentence is supposed to look like. And failing.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 54

Title: The Unsuspected (Pocket 444, 4th ptg, 1947)
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $10

• Claude Rains will kick your ass in a Dramatic Staring competition ... although the zombie in the prudish nightgown has some serious skills as well.
• Love the fact that the background picture has those horizontal lines that makes it look like it's a photo of an 80s TV screen a la "Max Headroom." Gives the whole cover an awesome '80s music video vibe. It's like when Aretha and George Michael sang in front of giant screen images of themselves. Am I remembering that correctly? ... uh, sort of.

• "Terror and Suspense" = copywriter says "Fuck this shit, I'm going out drinking. Who's with me?"

Page 123~

"My object is ... that you don't die. I believe that if I show this little paper in certain places, it will tend to lengthen your life." He looked at her insolently. No, not insolently, but with a reckless look, a gambling look.

First, what? Second, I love a writer who leaves in her failed attempts at accurate description. "No, not insolently ... what was I thinking? Stupid Charlotte. Stupid stupid ..."

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 53

Title: The Girl With a Secret (Crest d961, 1st ptg, 1960)
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $6

• Love the eerie, vertiginous, slightly puke-green staircase. Worthy of dungeons or Dali-esque nightmares.
• Her "secret" appears to be that despite being a grown woman, she likes to slide down banisters. Or else she has a severed head in that bag. One or the other.

• Oooh, the Oakland Tribune. Well la-di-dah.
• "WEB OF TERROR" — get it? Author's name is CHARLOTTE Armstrong. And she has created a WEB OF TERROR. CHARLOTTE'S WEB ... OF TERROR! "Wilbur, no!!!!!"
• "Then on their honeymoon she stumbled on a deadly secret" — such a promising line. So disappointing to know that the secret is just a stupid scrap of paper.

Page 123~

Alice breathed in the reality of Tony-alive and Tony-here. She didn't much care about anything else at the moment.

"Tony-alive" was, of course, the very unsuccessful follow-up to Hasbro's "Baby Alive."

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 52

Title: The Swimming Pool
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Carl Bobertz

Yours for: $6

• Uh ... I don't think she's "swimming."
• Ross Macdonald had a novel called "The Drowning Pool" ... You should take titling lessons from him, Mary.
• "... as the rare yellow octopus sucked the last ounce of life from Judith's brain."

• Just one question: if she is safe "in the solitude of a padlocked bedroom," then how could "her private terror" spread "to all around her?" No One Is Around Her.

Page 123~

Only three of us went to the inquest the next day, Phil, Bill, and myself. For Judith was sick. She had worked herself into a fever, I suppose because she always hated the idea of death.

"I suppose." Well, thanks for the not-at-all medieval diagnosis, doc.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 51

Title: The Yellow Room (Dell D179, 1st thus, 1956)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: "Cover design by Push-Pin Studios"

Yours for: $6

• Who runs like that? She looks like she is either shouting "O lawdy lawdy" or preparing to throw a boomerang
• The world's only nonuplets furiously clean the walls of the "Hollywood Squares" set
• This book should have been called "Nine Yellow Rooms Which Are Actually Mostly Orange"

• I haven't laughed this hard at the tag line on a book's back cover in some time.
• After reading this back cover, it appears the tag line *should* have read "A Smell of Rancid Flesh"
• OK, at "... and something else," we know it's a dead body. I was holding out hope that the last word on the cover would be something like "squirrel," "gnome," or "Smurf," but no...

Page 123~

She protested almost wildly, but he did not listen.

What the hell does "almost wildly" look like? What am I supposed to be picturing, Mary? Ugh. Thank god there's just one more MRR book to go. Her writing is unbearable, even in tiny pieces.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 50

Title: The Album (Pocket Books 121, 1st ptg, 1941)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: [somebody] Silten

Yours for: $10

• "Yo, you got the new Mary Roberts Rinehart album yet?! That shit is dope!"
• So it's ... about a big book. Exciting! Way to hook me with the cover art. How did you know about my leather-bound tome fetish!?

• Bespectacled kanga is kute.

Bonus: Opening pages of this book are ... in the style of an actual photo album:






And there are two maps inside:

Exterior:



Interior:



Page 123~

Jim seemed calm enough as a witness and he made — at least at first — a good impression.

Then he started sweating bullets and rocking back and forth and shouting for more mustard on his hot dog. That's when the bailiff got involved.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]