Title: The High Window
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: E. McKnight Kuffer
Yours for: $8
Best things about this cover:
- Well, they can't all be sexy.
- As abstract/representational hybrid covers go, this one's pretty cool (is there a word for that style? pretty common on '40s paperbacks). There's a nice dramatic interplay between that angry red building, with its crazily barred windows, and the lonely falling silhouette.
- This guy's got a weird signature. Had to look it up. I think the letters read "E MCK K" (for E. McKnight Kuffer)
- For a more, let's say, realistic version of this cover, see Paperback 91.
Best things about this back cover:
- This description is just a mess of "things that might appear in a mystery novel." Not even much of an attempt to take it out of list form.
- Not sure what number incarnation of the pocket kangaroo we're up to here, but I like this one, with the joey holding the book for bespectacled mom.
- Other war-time books tell you exactly what postage you'll need to send the book to a soldier. Here, the plea is much vaguer. Can I "share" it with my diner waitress? She's in "uniform."
Page 123~
I felt myself getting pinched around the nose. My mouth felt dry. I needed air. I took another deep breath and another dive into the tub of blubber that was sitting across the room from me on the reed chaise-longue, looking as unperturbed as a bank president refusing a loan.
My new life's goal is to own a reed chaise-longue. Wait. Nope. On further research, it looks like a rickshaw for Victorian invalids, so I'm good.
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2 comments:
So it does. I'm pretty sure Rosemary Sutcliff spent much of her life in a very similar contraption.
Again with "Another Philip Marlowe Mystery". I don't know why that bothers me so much.
Was Pocket having trademark problems or imitators? There are at least 3 versions of the logo on this book (and maybe another on the spine?), plus the assertion that "This is a GENUINE Pocket book" across the top.
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