Paperback 1099: Black Lizard [unnumbered] (1st ptg, 1985)
Title: Savage Night
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Kirwan
Condition: 8/10
Value: $15
[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY (July 2024)]
- It's not a great cover, and I paid too much (by my cheap standards), but I can't help it, I gotta have these early (pre-Vintage takeover) Black Lizards. They feel like an origin story—my hardboiled origin story, the origin of the Hardboiled Revival. And Jim Thompson was definitely my gateway hardboiled author. I don't think I've read this one, though.
- This looks like the poster for a bad late-'80s straight-to-VHS erotic thriller
- That bullet looks like lipstick. Is it lipstick? Roll-on deodorant? It's giving bullet, but out of context and with no other object for scale, it just looks weird.
Best things about this back cover:
- Bah, buncha quotes. Treating this book like it's legitimate literature, there's your first mistake. I don't need high-minded blurbs, I need lurid, turgid cover copy, and possibly more bad art.
- No idea what Cassill means here. Maybe he's talking about subject matter. I know he's not talking about quality. Or better not be.
- Too many ellipses in that Village Voice review. Suspicious, especially since it's merely descriptive and not particularly evaluative. Makes you wonder what they left out.
Page 123~
I winked and jerked my head over my shoulder. "Just borrowed a drink of your whiskey, Mrs. Winroy. Had a sudden attack of stomach sickness.""It's perfectly all right, Carl." She gave me back the wink. "Sick at your stomach, huh? Well, that's what you get for eating with cops."
~RP
3 comments:
I also thought the bullet looks like a lipstick. With the crosshairs and the empty shell casings, I'm pretty sure it's a bullet, though a lipstick mixed in with the shells would be an interesting image. All that's probably contributing to the erotic thriller vibes.
Cassill's statement could be true, just not in a way that flatters Thompson. That or the ellipsis contains something like "are much better writers" followed by the names of three schlocky authors.
Kind of looks like the cross hairs were drawn with a lip stick
Clearly Cassill means that Thompson was writing in Des Moines.
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