Title: Dr. Prescott's Secret
Author: Peggy Gaddis
Cover artist: Uncredited
Yours for: $11
Best things about this cover:
- "A Novel That Had To Be Written ... seriously, Ms. Gaddis was contractually obligated to produce a third novel for us, and this is it."
- "Doctor Prescott's Secret" sounds like some kind of olde-timey elixir, or some product used in baking. A leavening agent, maybe. "Doctor Prescott's Secret: For All Your Vegan Baking Needs!
- One thing you need to know about the 50s and 60s is that keyholes were gigantic and ladies were often naked.
Best things about this back cover:
- "This isn't hard enough to read yet. Let's make the font tiny, faint, and ... ooh, I know, italicized. That'll be effective!"
- By "a racket which had become one of the most obnoxious social evils of our times," I assume they mean "Girl Scouts" (kidding!)
- Cancers grow. I don't think they "grow up." If your cancer gets surly, gets a drivers license, and eventually moves out of the house, consider yourself lucky.
Page 123~
But just the same, it had steel claws that tore at her until she was weak with the need for Nick's body possessing her own.
You'll be happy to know that "it" is lust — "sheer animal lust," to be exact — and not some sadistic robot.
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]
6 comments:
Those keyholes are nothing. My college roommate in the 1980s had a 5 foot poster of a keyhole with a woman in lingerie.
I'm not sure I like "slipping deeper and deeper" in the same sentence as "helpless tool."
Also, my husband's HS English teacher would have dinged the copywriter a whole letter grade for using "not only...but" instead of "not only...but also."
Why do nurses find it "ridiculously easy" conquering doctors? Is this something they teach in nursing school?
And what's with the phrase "excitingly delineated"?
I'm bothered by that "besides" in the first sentence. It feels tremendously clunky. They could have dropped it altogether. Still, I do like the way they worked in "pulses" and "passionately" in the last paragraph. OTOH, "loathsome horror" makes me think more of Lovecraft than whatever the unnamed evil they're talking about is (drugs, I presume).
I hate to nitpick, but as bad as the back copy is, it doesn't attribute her success only to her body. It's to "not only her wits, but [also] her super body...."
You're right. No idea how I misread that. Comment removed.
Post a Comment