Paperback 1097: Bantam 20968-X (28th ptg, 1980)
Title: A Holiday for Murder
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: Tom Adams
Condition: 8/10
Value: $8
[Little Free Library outside the cafe I go to on Sundays]
- Look at this freak show. God I love weird covers. "What if the screaming head of Ebenezer Scrooge were flying through the air just bleeding holly berries, his voice shattering a wine glass that happens to be nearby for some reason?" "... That's it?" "Uh, no, no ... there's ... there's also a chair!" "Hmmm..." "And a statue!" "OK, sold!"
- The great thing about Christie (well, one of them) is that she was such a guaranteed seller, such a book-moving juggernaut, that you could collect *only* Christie paperbacks and have no hope of ever "completing" your collection. And her career traverses all of paperback cover styles. She's a design universe unto herself.
- Murder for Christmas is better, not sure what they think they're doing on the retitle here.
- I pulled four Christies from the LFL (Little Free Library) outside Batch Coffee in Binghamton—that's the other great thing about Christie: like Gardner, her books are Everywhere. I read an early one, The Secret of Chimneys (1925), which featured not Poirot or Marple but someone named Superintendent Battle. He was a recurring character, appearing in five (!) of her novels between '25 and '44. The book was genuinely hilarious, closer to slapstick than most conventional detective fiction. I honestly don't remember Christie being that funny. In fact, I recently read the much later At Bertram's Hotel, and it wasn't that funny. Funnyish, but nothing like the whizbang near-goofiness of The Secret of Chimneys.
Best things about this back cover:
- "Violent Night, Holey Night" ('cause you're full of holes ... from all the bullets or stab wounds ... OK, OK, I'll work on it)
- Cannot believe they're just wasting all this valuable space. Why not make the font big and stupid, or add some of the old man's dumb kids? Something, anything. You can't get visually upstaged by barcodes, man! Come on.
Page 123~
"Perhaps it is better to speak frankly.”
It is the formal position of this blog that it is always better to do Everything "frankly."
~RP
3 comments:
What a wild cover. I think it's the fact that everything is floating that makes it so head-scratching. Like the artist--or maybe the art director-- knew what elements he wanted to include, but then couldn't figure out how to put it all together.
The wasted space on the back is, well, a waste. The only excuse I can think of is that the big bookstores at time liked to slap pretty big price stickers on books. This gives them a space for it without covering up any blurb text or artwork.
I just love Little Free Libraries.....
It's like Christmas sometimes.
Also a great place to take my stuff too, and very gratifying to see them taken.
Also, totally agree with you, that head is definitely Ebenezer.
The book was originally titled "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" in England, and the cover artist was Tom Adams. He did most of the cover art for Christie's books published by Fontana in the 1970s, and most of them take the weirdness up to eleven!
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