Title: Mambo to Murder / I See Red
Author: Dale Clark / Sterling Noel
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited
Yours for: Not For Sale (donation to the collection from Laurie Gagne)
Best things about this cover:
- "Dammit, Lily, you said we were gonna Tango to Terror! I can't mambo—you know that! I haven't got the hips for it! Dammit, Lily!"
- I love old-timey tough guys with their high-waisted pants and short loose ties and rolled cuffs and adamant stances and aggressive cigarette-gripping. This guy looks sooo much like a noir actor I can't place ... I mean, I can see him, but can't remember name or even movie. Usually a detective, I think.
- Lily is reaching into her clutch because she is definitely going to shoot tough guy and then go drink at BAR across the street.
- This is a great painting, actually. Lots of great details, including her hair, expression, chest ... everything about her, really. Also the full ashtray on the sill. Nice.
- I believe the original, unstickered tagline read "She taught him the steps to a danse macabre!"
Best things about this other cover:
- Miranda wanted her boudoir photo shoot to be "terrorist-themed" for some reason.
- What's the opposite of "Fear Hand"? (*That's* the opposite of "Fear Hand").
- Most of the things I want to say involve profane word play linking the title "I See Red" and the word "snatched," but I'm too modest so I'll just make the banal observation that "I See Red" is an anagram of "Desiree."
- Also, I keep reading "snatched bigot." And, occasionally, "snatched bigfoot."
Page 123~ (of Mambo to Murder)
"Nobody asks me any questions," I grinned, "without buying the answers."
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]
7 comments:
What kind of ransom for the snatched bigshot/foot/ot starts with Spitf?
EDMOND O'BRIEN!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_O'Brien
Is the "I See Red" scene taking place on a ship? That looks like a porthole with a desert isle in the background.
Also, having trouble not expanding "Red" to "Red Skelton".
"What kind of ransom for the snatched bigshot/foot/ot starts with Spitf?"
I presumed that the word was "spitfire", as that's likely a good description of our lounging bottomless anti-fear-hand demimondaine who hangs out with well-armed men. I know that if I kidnapped a big shot, I'd happily take her as ransom (although I'm not sure how they'd fit her into a bus locker, trash can, or other standard ransom-delivery conveyances).
But can someone explain why she doesn't have red hair? Or does she dye her head brunette, thus giving further meaning to Rex's word play?
I think the red-tie Mambo dude looks like Ricky Ricardo
OK, I see your Edmond O'Brien, but I was thinking also a little Stacy Keach. Martin Sheen used to be able to look like that sometimes, too.
That tommy gun on I See Red is incredibly phallic. I'm not sure what to call the anti-fear hand. It looks so much like the way Brooke McEldowney draws hands as a way to show people having sex in a family newspaper comic strip that I can't get past something like "orgasm hand".
Edmond O'Brien is pretty close - but what about Cornel Wilde?
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