Thursday, August 19, 2010

Paperback 342: I Fear You Not / Ben Kerr (Popular Library 763)

Paperback 342: Popular Library 763 (PBO, 1956)

Title: I Fear You Not
Author: Ben Kerr (pseud. of William Ard)
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: Not For Sale

Pop763.IFearUNot

Best things about this cover:

  • "C'mon, this is prime lady flesh. At $4.95 / lb. ... you're not gonna get a better price than that!"
  • "Take My Wife... seriously, take her, she's drivin' me and my pal Barney here nuts!"
  • "Hi, Steve? I'm just calling you from my bubble bath to tell you that I fear you not, OK? OK, bye."
  • *He Bought Cops The Way He Bought Women ... With A Nice Dinner And A Little Sweet Talk*
  • "Down I Go," HA ha.
  • The exclamation point motif (continued, in spades, on the back cover) is Exquisite.

Pop763bc.IFearNot

Best things about this back cover:


  • Poor Rita: "Ok, I've got on a sweater, parka, overcoat, headscarf ... so how 'bout now?" "Nope, sorry, you still look naked." "Damn it!" "Maybe tweed will work. Try tweed."
  • Poor Paul: It's hard to come out to your mom, on the phone, in the '50s.
  • Poor Gloria: She just looks really, really stupid.

Page 123~

He watched dispassionately as her shadowy figure gathered up clothes and put them on. It was a lithe young figure, a pleasure to watch in motion, but its bloom was aborning."
Easy on the thesaurus work there, Yeats. "Aborning?!" As in "Your writing is 'aborning' me to tears?"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

5 comments:

Christa Faust said...

I actually own a crappy reading copy of DOWN I GO:

http://twitpic.com/2g751r

It's not nearly as cool.

- Christa

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure the sentence was supposed to end with 'its bloom had DIED aborning.'...but this paperback is so crummy that no one wanted to proof it.

pious agnostic said...

Flicker says that your covers are private. True?

Larry said...

"I Fear You Not" -- Yoda's gripping hardboiled novel.

al boraq said...

"He watched dispassionately as her shadowy figure gathered up clothes and put them on."

If it was Rita he'd been shagging, then he wouldn't've been able to tell she was putting her clothes on.