Paperback 866: African Poison Murders / Elspeth Huxley (Popular Library 100)

Paperback 866: Popular Library 100 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: African Poison Murders
Author: Elspeth Huxley
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $12-17

Best things about this cover:

• "Here, African. Put this on. That's better." Hashtag racist.
• Actually, maybe the green guy is a sick European. He looks like a 17th-century actor who has eaten some bad mutton.
• If you stare too long at that foreshortened thumb, you will begin to get queasy. It's… not right. Kind of like the relationship between green head and blue body. Not right at all.

Best things about this back cover:

• Read that second sentence as "Feces were smashed." Was briefly intrigued.
• A "native boy" wrapped in "baling wire." Hmm. That's a bit on the nose, as Slave-Trade metaphors go.
• This book should've been called "Leopard Trap!" That, or "All's Veld That Ends Veld."

Page 123~

"It is the way of Europeans," the house-boy said philosophically.

"You gotta read a lot of Kant to deal with these motherfuckers," he added.

~RP

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