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
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
6 comments:
I've always wondered why authors go to the trouble of a pen name when the publisher ends up using their real one anyway.
Well, fry me for an oyster! Are you calling Bertha Cool a lady?
The phrase, "Her slip is showing" was code meaning that she was pregnant -- more discreet than "knocked up". It refers to the fact that if a person gains weight, clothes stop fitting correctly.
I'm not sure what the title of the book means, though. She isn't far along in her pregnancy? She has a very short slip??
I know it's a drink in Goofy McSleazoid's hand, but I can't shake the notion that he's holding a mobile phone and contemplating his next upskirt video.
The title is just a play on words. The "slip" referred to is not a piece of lingerie, it's a slip as in slip-up or a fall or an error. There are no pregnancies in the story and no wardrobe malfunctions.
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