Title: When Strangers Meet
Author: Robert Bloomfield
Cover artist: Robert Abbott (is this the same guy as "Robert Abbett"—experts, please advise)
Yours for: $12
Best things about this cover:
- The palette on this thing is insane. It's like the painting is badly rusted. I love it.
- I love how the cover is dynamic and violent but his eyes are still and icy and looking right at you.
- Not usually a fan of cursive fonts, but this one has a combination of sass and formality that I really like.
- Everyone dressed better in 1957.
Best things about this back cover:
- I love how they tell you the amount down to the penny.
- One lasting impact that "Rocky IV" had on the world is that I can't take the name "Dolph" seriously.
- It's a crossword solver's delight through the middle of this cast: ANSEL! NELDA! ODON! Those are all names built for heavy grid action.
- How can you not love the word "hoofer"?
- Apparently there was a time when one could be a "mysterious young uranium prospector" and no one would bat an eye.
- If Odon Kovach "crossed the border illegally, the first question that presents itself is: which border, exactly?
Page 123~
But his gross, florid features revealed nothing of his thoughts. He was still taciturn, still dour and surly.
Robert Bloomfield scored in the 87th percentile on his SAT Verbal. Or so I'd infer from this passage.
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]
9 comments:
Mysterious young uranium prospector is my new job title.
Add my name to the list. I'd plug any one of ya for $100,000 dollars and no cents.
Definitely looks like Robert Abbett to me. "Abbott" is clearly a misspelling.
Features revealing nothing of his thoughts? Taciturn, dour and surly? That's got to be Ansel the prospector. That guy watches everything... but says nothing.
I distinctly recall an I Love Lucy episode (a two-parter?) where they all went out to the desert southwest to prospect for uranium -- so apparently it was at one time quite the thing to do! sort of a latter-day gold rush, with Geiger counters.
And, yeah, those Maidenform bras -- lifting and separating! You could hang your coat on those things.
I agree with 'anonymous'; Warren attributes the cover to Abbott, but that is definitely Robert Abbett's signature.
Great cover; just had to give my thumbs-up.
Could also add that here in Germany, it'll take more than a slew of Rockies to remove the stigma of "Dolph."
I've done quite a bit of reading items from the 1950's as well as listening to radio programs from the era, and it was a hobby of sorts to go uranium prospecting in the southwest. NomadUK is absolutely right. It was considered a new "Gold Rush" of sorts. I have to say, I'm glad that hobby has gone to the wayside. Novices or shady characters with uranium does not seem like the best idea.
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