Paperback 1072: The Sex Cheat / Roger James (Bee-Line 284S)

Paperback 1072: Bee-Line 284S (PBO, 1967)

Title: The Sex Cheat

Author: Roger James

Cover artist: photo!

Condition: oof

Value: sentimental?

[Another book from the recently acquired Larry D Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• Somebody read the hell out of this book. Or at least handled it ... frequently. I love a beater copy—no worries about condition, just an open invitation to "Read Me!"
• Oh, the wig. Oh. Ow. By the time it leaves her heck and heads toward her torso, it appears to turn semi-sentient, evolving claws, contemplating hellish doings...
• Legit LOL'ing at the how the cover text has to kind of scooch over and make room for her considerable chest. Her boobs just shove those words right out of the way. That's power.
• It's an oddly cheery, wholesome-looking photo for a smut paperback. Fright Wig notwithstanding.
• Ah, the original "... in bed" joke!

Best things about this back cover:

• Sex Game! All caps! You've heard of the TV show "Squid Game"? Well ... this isn't that!
• Cover photo seems so much darker with the poor girls' eyes ripped off
• "Wanton"—there's a word that peaked on paperback covers circa 1967 for sure. Definitely a cover copy writer's second-best friend (after "Sin," of course)

Page 123~ (bracing myself for something awful/wonderful)

Bruce turned completely away from the uncovered, brandishing breast and walked dismally towards his wife.

Yeah, I know, you're thinking "Does this writer even know what 'brandishing' means?" and given what I've read, just on Page 123 ... probably not. Consider: "Her own breasts rose and fell in great, trembling lifts" or "Eva Simmonds quickly recouped the dislodged bra cup over her naked contour and hastily came around from behind the sofa." I mean, that's "brandishing" "lifts" "recouped" and "contour" that he's bungled, all in just one page. Imagine Reading This Whole Book. You guys, there is so much lurid, ornate, comically baroque, borderline monstrous breast writing here. "She pushed the shuddering, irregularly bobbing area of luridly exposed flesh back out of sight and held the sagging cup of the damaged pink bra while she glared at Bruce Grant" yes "shuddering" and "irregularly bobbing" is what my soul is experiencing right now for sure. 

~RP

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Paperback 1071: Perilous Passage / Arthur Mayse (Pocket Books 727)

Paperback 1071: Pocket Books 727 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Perilous Passage

Author: Arthur Mayse

Cover artist: James Bingham

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8-10

Best things about this cover:

• Reader Larry D. just sent me a whole box of choice paperbacks. Out of the goodness of his heart. In the interest of, let's say, science! I am over the moon. We will all be the beneficiaries of his generosity, as I showcase books from his donation in the coming weeks, starting with today's stunner—a chaotic close-up composition featuring nautical mayhem and what appears to be a pretty severe case of mal de mer. Or maybe that guy just swooned. Maybe he's afraid. Can we call that hand on his brow a "Fear Hand"? I think we can. I think I will.
• "How was I to know when I broke my boat mirror that my luck would turn so bad...?"
• The gunwoman here seems like a plucky, take-charge kind of gal, I love her. The gun looks a little warped or wonky somehow, but her face! It's all business. I would not f*** with someone making that face.
• I like how you have to kind of sit with this painting for a while to figure just what the hell is going on, which way is up, who's doing what, etc. It really ... unfolds, the more you look at it. 
• Just noticed that my man appears to be tickling her underboob, which is a funny thing to do when your life is in danger, but people cope with stress in all kinds of ways, who am I to judge?

Best things about this back cover:

• typewriter font...
• "Clint half-slid"—classic sap behavior: always half-sliding, never all-the-way sliding. Commit to something, for once in your life, Clint!
• This book should be titled Bring Me The Head of Clint Farrell!
• Devvy! Wow now I love her more. It's like the Devil and a Chevy had a gun-wielding baby!

Page 123~

"Nuts!" Clint told her. "Look, come down or I'm coming up. All you need is a banana in your fist."

Sure, Clint has a pretty limited, primarily food-based vocabulary, but what a charmer! Feel free to use the line, "Is that a banana in your fist, or are you just glad to see me?" next time the occasion seems to warrant it. [I should add that I almost abandoned Page 123 for Page 122, the first words of which are, "... sucked the boom stick down by its butt ..."]

~RP

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Paperback 1070: Laughsville, U.S.A. / [No one willing to take credit] (Scholastic T 648)

Paperback 1070: Scholastic T 648 (2nd ptg, 1966)

Title: Laughsville, U.S.A.

Author: Uncredited

Cover artist: George Wilde 

Illustrated by: George Wilde

Condition: 6/10

Value: $6

Best things about this cover:

• So much to recoil at here, but tooth asymmetry is haunting me more than I would've expected. That's an odd number of teeth, with one central Tooth. It's very disconcerting.
• "Can you make it look like he has sort of stubby penis growing out of his forehead?" "I ... can, but ..." "And sort of pube-y little tufts of hair, but only above his ears?" "I don't under-..." "Also his eyes should be beady soulless little things." "[Sigh]. And his ears?" "Filthy."
• "Gulps" and "Gags" really giving this book a vibe I'm not sure it's aiming for. Also, wtf is a "gulps" in this context?
• Also, wtf is "pomes" in this context? It's like I'm being asked to imagine a balding middle-aged guy happily choking on small fruit. Truly weird.

Best things about this back cover:

• OMG the faces are somehow more horrific, how, How?
• Dude's face has been forcefully cleaved in two by the Laughsville sign and he's still smiling. Truly demonic.
• I do love a cover that tells you precisely, mathematically, how funny it is. If you're on a low-yuk diet, this book is for you!

Page 123~

I was packing for camp and one pr.

Of my socks disappeared 'neath the chr.

So I then from my bro.

Had to borrow ano.

Or my toes and my feet would be br.

 Well, I'm making sounds alright, but I'm not sure I'd call them "guffaws."

~RP

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Paperback 1069: Various Temptations / Various (!) (Avon T-385)

Paperback 1069: Avon T-385 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Various Temptations

Author: Various

Cover artist: N/A (photo)

Condition: 7/10

Value: $5-8

Best things about this cover:

• "Hey, what should we call this thing? 'Deadly Dames'!? 'Sinful Sirens'!? 'Voluptuous Vixens'!?" "Nah, those all sound too hackneyed and corny. I'm gonna have to think about it some more. Tell you what, just put some placeholder title in there now and we'll come back to it." "Gotcha."
• What kind of vibe am I supposed to be getting from this crummy photo? 'Cause the only vibe I'm currently getting is "Can I lend you a comb? A brush? Something? I want to help."
• Sometimes your big names stay big names, and sometimes ... William Sansom.

Best things about this back cover:

• This is the part where they try to make Literature sound hot.
•  First one's too generic, second one's too ... yeesh, I wanna say 'racist' ... third one's got me curious, I will admit—sounds like his wife performs a sex act on stage, but it could just as easily be that she makes good coffee. And the fourth one, well, I'm all in, if only to see what it means to be "engulfed" (!) in "erotic impulses"—smothered in some horrible vibrator factory accident, I imagine / hope.
• There's only one way I like my heiresses, and that's wayward. No chaste, well-behaved heiresses for me, no thank you.

Page 123~ [from "The Dare," by Budd Schulberg]

Paul rose, and leaned on the railing of the pier to watch the sport. Only then did the yellow-brown halter above the deep-tan midriff inform him of the sex of the skier.

Talking halter tops! Again, I'm in! Also, "the quick yellow-brown halter jumped over the lazy deep-tan sex midriff" is one hell of a typing exercise, you should try it. No "g" but who needs "g" anyway?

~RP

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Paperback 1068: Under Heaven's Bridge / Michael Bishop & Ian Watson (Ace SF 84481-2)

Paperback 1068: Ace SF 84481-2 (1st Ace printing, April 1982)

Title: Under Heaven's Bridge

Author: Michael Bishop & Ian Watson

Cover artist: Don Punchatz (per isfdb)

Condition: 6/10

Value: $5-8

Best things about this cover:

• Man, I cannot wait to see Lion King 3000, it looks fucking awesome!
• Alien baby-lifting really is the best exercise for building strong lats. Look at the definition on this dude!
• I have this sick feeling he's about to bring that little guy right down on top of his helmet and all I can say is I hope this is all consensual.
• Again, I seem to have drifted into the '80s with some of my recent acquisitions. But then the '80s are to now what the '50s were to the time when I started collecting, so maybe this time shift was to be expected.

Best things about this back cover:

• Aw, jeez, nothing. One of them text-only back covers. As always, boo.
• I normally take price stickers off, but this one's not coming off without taken a huge chunk of the cover with it, so ... just gonna leave it.
• I do love that the back cover just expects you to know what a Giacometti sculpture looks like: "Look it up, you Philistines!" I guess those creatures of the cover kinda do look like the Walking Man:

Page 123~

This time he made no move to hinder her, and, bemused and fretful, she escaped to the frigid safety of the Platform.

"Bemused and Fretful," of course, the B-side to Talking Heads' "Crosseyed and Painless"

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Paperback 1067: The Skull Beneath the Skin / P.D. James (Warner 30606)

Paperback 1067: Warner Books 30-606 (1st ptg, 1983)

Title: The Skull Beneath the Skin

Author: P.D. James

Cover artist: Victor Gadino

Condition: 7/10

Value: $5-10

Best things about this cover:

• Love how unapologetically literal the cover is. "Look at her skin ... such lovely skin ... but ... uh, oh, what's beneath that skin? Could it be ... a skull!! Bwah ha ha ha open the book, If You Dare!"
• And the inside cover? So. Much. Happening!

• This was published much later than most of the books in my collection (which stays mostly in a tight 1939-69 range), but I've begun expanding my range of interest into the '70s and '80s as books that once seemed "too modern" to me now turn out to be fascinating examples of vanishing if not completely bygone book design. This is pure supermarket checkout line stuff, but the stepback keyhole cover—something I would've thought cheesy thirty years ago—now strikes me as bold, theatrical, ornate ... I mean, imagine popular thrillers today looking like *this* instead of, well, like this:

If you are publishing a crime novel that DOESN'T have a dark house with yellow windows and yellow text, you are off to the gulag. I don't make the rules. pic.twitter.com/PLwaQjdr4I

— Caustic Cover Critic, not necessarily a bad person (@Unwise_Trousers) March 7, 2023

• I'm also fascinated by the fact that this stepback keyhole treatment isn't for a book by, say, V.C. Andrews (the author most associated with this exact kind of cover)—rather, it's for P.D. James, an extremely literary (and extremely British) mystery writer that I wouldn't have thought ripe for this kind of aggressively popular (populist) marketing. Lawrence Sanders, Stephen King, sure, but P.D. James!? I feel like there's a clash of cover aesthetic and actual content ... and I love it!
• She really is a great writer. I read the first few pages just now; only meant to pop in and have a glance, but she just grabs you and takes you.

Best things about this back cover:

• Just blurbs, along the lines of "No, seriously, if you're the kind of person who reads blurbs and want assurances of quality from reputable periodicals, here, look, here's a bunch of them. It's not 'trash,' we swear!"
• That little hint of illustration there at the bottom right? That's from the delicious (and deliciously wraparound) spinal art! Bring back spinal art! I want my spines to stare sexily at me! Is that too much to ask!?

Page 123~

Cordelia, happily engrossed in old copies of The Illustrated London News and The Strand magazine, in which she could read the Sherlock Holmes stories as they originally appeared, wished that she could have been left in peace. 

Yes, I like this Cordelia. We would get along marvelously, I think. I too like to read old stories as they originally appeared, and don't get me started on being left in peace. Heaven. Call me, Cordelia. We can sit and read and say nothing to each other.

~RP

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