Paperback 704: Harlem Underground / Ed Lacy (Pyramid R-1220)

Paperback 704: Pyramid R-1220 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Harlem Underground
Author: Ed Lacy
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Sleeper hold!
• Interesting variation on the noir street scene. You got your bar and your rain-slicked streets (or so I imagine), but apparently in Harlem there are brown/purple overtones, sliced through with neon red. Interesting effect.
• Not one but *two* floating heads. Highly unusual.
• I like how the big floating head appears to be looking down on some earlier version of himself, going "Damn, did I do that? That's cold."
• You can see Schaare's signature right under the big head's right eye. Unless that says "Espresso." It's pretty smudgy.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wait, *I*'m a rookie cop? But I already have ... OK, fuck it, sure, I'm in.
• As street names go, "Purple Eye" seems kind of limp.
• There's something quaint about how much terror the word "H-Bomb" apparently packed in 1965. Also, do H-Bombs have fuses? Serious question.

Page 123~

Breathing deeply I not only wanted to get out of Harlem, I wanted to take a rocket away from our mixed-up planet. 

Again with the cold war / space race fantasies. This book is adorable.

~RP

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