Paperback 1124: The Removers / Donald Hamilton (Gold Medal s1082)

Paperback 1124: Gold Medal s1082 (PBO, 1961)

Title: The Removers

Author: Donald Hamilton

Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Condition: 6/10 (crease down the middle of the cover)

Value: $6-10

Best things about this cover: 

• Another day, another Barye Phillips Gold Medal cover that is disappointingly sketchy. Why is this there so much unused space? Why is the woman so small? Bah!
• Also: another day, another implausible color of "red" on the "red"head. That's like Ronald McDonald "red," come on.
• On the other hand, love what the cover is doing with the "V" motif here—extending it up to provide space for the tagline, but also using it as a visual representation of the (imagined) gunshot. The whole "V" is like a speech bubble for the gun. A blast bubble.
• I also dig this groovy sixties font.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Interesting continuation of the "V" motif onto the back cover, extending and transforming it here into the top part of an exclamation point, with Helm himself as the emphatic dot!
• Gold Medal mostly didn't bother with the blurbs from "legitimate" press—you sell these books with Great Girl Art (GGA) and author reputation, not critic blurbs—but I guess if the critics love you, you can try to appeal to the eggheads who would otherwise be embarrassed to be seen reading 35c books.
• "A Creature of Sweetness and Havoc" would, I must admit, be a great crime novel title.

Page 123~

I put the phone down. I was looking at Beth, but for some reason I was seeing a long, low, green car—the color is known as British Racing Green—hurtling across the Arizona desert with that fine, wicked sound that you get only from high-class machinery that's really carrying the mail. Barring the true racing cars, the Jaguar is possibly, along with its American counterpart the Corvette, the most ridiculous vehicle made, from the viewpoint of efficient and economical transportation. You've got power enough to move a ten-ton truck attached to a loadspace barely adequate for two men and a small toothbrush. But it's an ego-satisfying machine in every respect [...]

OK, I've never read a Donald Hamilton novel before (that I can recall), but this stretch of prose actually makes me want to. I love an author who'll just do a funny little plot-irrelevant aside like this. Chandler was at his best when he'd let Marlowe do this sort of thing. Gonna throw a Hamilton novel onto the "summer vacation reading" list (already in danger of getting too long)

~RP

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Paperback 1123: Miss America / Daniel Stern (Popular Library G464)

Paperback 1123: Popular Library G464 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: Miss America

Author: Daniel Stern

Cover artist: [Mitchell Hooks]

Condition: 8/10

Value: $20

Best things about this cover: 

• Now that's a redhead. That hair's so orange it's pink.
• Wow, this lady really likes stationery.   
• This is a movie tie-in. I've never heard of this movie. What's more, I cannot find any proof that this movie exists, or ever existed. Nothing by this name appears in Carroll Baker's filmography, and nothing she made in this general time period seems to have been based on this novel. I have no idea why they'd say there was a movie when there is no movie. I feel like I've uncovered a mystery. Possibly a very boring one, but still. Mystery!

Best things about this back cover: 

• OK, not to be that guy, but ... well, I am that guy, so ... it's The Beautiful and Damned, not The Beautiful and the Damned, dammit. This blurb is not up to the lofty editorial standards I expect from the ... [squints] ... Lansing State News.
• "Her most intimate statistics were common knowledge." What could her "most intimate statistics" be? What are anyone's "most intimate statistics?" Number of sex partners? Bra size? Cholesterol? 
• This back cover copy tells you precisely nothing except that there's some hot celebrity "goddess" and she ... has a life ... not covered by the press. You don't say!

Page 123~

Just before we rang the bell, Cathy turned to me and said, "I've got a confession to make. You know that first night, when you played those quartets? I came expecting to hear jazz quartets. I thought I'd fall down when you started taking out the string instruments."

String instruments!? Well, sure, that's enough to make anyone fall down. I'm writing this from the floor right now, and that's just from hearing about it.

~RP

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Paperback 1122: The Bloody Medallion / Richard Telfair (Gold Medal d1665)

Paperback 1122: Gold Medal d1665 (2nd ptg, 1966)

Title: The Bloody Medallion

Author: Richard Telfair (Richard Jessup)

Cover artist: Bill Johnson

Condition: 6/10    

Value: $6-8

[from Stomping Grounds bookstore, Geneva, NY (6/24/25)]

Best things about this cover: 

• Buddy! It's OK, buddy, I just walked into the wrong room, I'm leaving now. Good dog.
• More dogs on covers! More, I say!
• I know there is an attractive naked lady on this cover, but ... puppy!
• That dog is looking directly at me. I have no idea what the lady is looking at.
• Is she bathing ... in a six-inch-deep hole? What kind of bathtub is that? It looks like she's standing in a flooded bathroom. Maybe she's supposed to be outdoors? Seriously, where are we in this picture?
• Look at them try to trick you into thinking this is a Sax Rohmer novel. I've never seen a blurb writer's name get displayed more prominently than that of the author. And they made Sax's name red like the title, too. Crafty marketers...

Best things about this back cover: 

• Blood stains? That's it? Abstract red splatters? Where's buddy? I miss buddy.
• Gay revenge story! (I'm just gonna assume "best friend" is a euphemism). Love it! 
• Seriously, putting it on the "to read" pile. I love a good (or even bad) revenge tale. Telfair's name rings a bell, but I'm not sure why. Richard Jessup seems to have written a half dozen or so crime paperbacks under this name in the span of about four years (1959-62).

Page 123~

    "Strip," I said.

    Dutifully he began taking off his clothes. When he was nude, I ordered him to the water's edge.

I'm just gonna stop there. It's sexier that way.

~RP

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Paperback 1121: A Place To Meet / Mary Orr (Perma Books M-4257)

Paperback 1121: Perma Books M-4257 (1st ptg., 1962)

Title: A Place to Meet

Author: Mary Orr

Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Condition: 7/10

Value: $5-8

[from Stomping Grounds bookstore, Geneva, NY (6/24/25)]

Best things about this cover: 

• Excellent title design motif. Really evokes an affair by evoking a hotel room of a bygone era (i.e. before key cards). But if I were Mary Orr, I'd be mad that they did not have a similarly eye-popping design for My Damned Name. I keep looking at this cover like [squinting] "who the hell wrote this?" They really bury her name in an avalanche of white text.
• Barye Phillips has not generally been among my favorite cover artists (there's something slightly sloppy / sketchy / incomplete / messy about his work, esp. for Gold Medal), but I kinda like this one. Their embrace—her ecstasy in particular—is really ... radiating. "When they came together ... it was nuclear!" (it's 1962, after all, so I thought a little Cuban Missile Crisis energy was in order)
• I did not know All About Eve was based on a book. Once again, the popularizers and adapters get the title right. Last time (Paperback 1120), it was the paperback changing the hardcover original title from The Long Chance to Long Shot (so much better), and here we see the movie-makers made the wise decision to ditch The Wisdom of Eve in favor of the much snappier title. Would that movie be the classic it is if it were titled The Wisdom of Eve?Honestly, I doubt it.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Wow, the key is much more menacing back here. Bigger, more skull-like, and with prominent jagged teeth. Perhaps this is a sign that the affair between ... what's her name and ... Miguel? Really? ... anyway, perhaps the key is a sign that the affair spells Danger!
• I like how she talks like a casting agent: "I've got this role that you might be perfect for..."
• Miguel: Filler of Voids
• It's kind of funny to describe your prospective affair as "The One." Like, wasn't your husband supposed to be "The One?"

Page 123~

And then, like a crash in the dark, the volcano of discontent had suddenly erupted the way it always had in past Vanzadorian history.

Now is the volcano of our discontent made glorious crashing by this son of ... Vanzador? That's your fictional Latin American country, Vanzador? I guess if the only two words you can think of are "Venezuela" and "matador," then sure, Vanzador. Anyway, I now that there is an actual place called Vanadzor—not a country in Latin America, but a city in Armenia. Don't say this blog never taught you anything.

~RP

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Paperback 1120: Long Shot / David Mark (Dell D300)

Paperback 1120: Dell D300 (1st ptg., 1959)

Title: Long Shot

Author: David Mark

Cover artist: Bob McGinnis [apparently misattributed] Mitchell Hooks

Condition: 6.5 or 7/10

Value: $8-10

[from Stomping Grounds bookstore, Geneva, NY (6/24/25)]

Best things about this cover: 

• God bless my wife for discovering that the bookstore we were rummaging around last week in Geneva, NY had cabinets running the length of the floor (closed!) that contained $1 books. We both of us dropped to our knees and started combing over the inventory. We emerged with five good-to-great books, absolute steals at $1. This is one of them, maybe the best of them, where the cover is concerned. You can't go wrong with McGinnis [I'm told the attribution to McGinnis is a mistake, and that the artist is actually Mitchell Hooks ... whom you also can't go wrong with]. This is top-shelf GGA (Great Girl Art). Her smoky sideways glance and akimbo arm (not to mention her Fantastic green dress and orange coat) give this cover tremendous curb appeal.
• The contrast between her (foreground) and the shadowy dude at the betting window (background) creates great dynamic tension in the cover. Doubt it would work half so well if *he* were in the foreground.
• Who needs a silly thing like decency when you've got a rotten little tramp and the sick excitement of a gambling addiction!
• Long Shot is so much better than The Long Chance (the original title). Whoever was in charge of marketing at Dell really knew what they were doing here.
• Seriously, her ensemble is on fire.

Best things about this back cover: 

• I'm sorry, is his name really "Loeser?" Kind of on-the-nose for a noir-style sap, don't you think? 
• HUSBAND ... LOVER ... BELOVED? I think I get what's going on with Ruth and Katy, but Carol ... I have questions about Carol.
• I have this nagging feeling that things don't end well for Mr. Loeser. That description of what it feels like for him to be at the track is striking, and strikingly like the feelings associated with other addictions, notably alcoholism.

Page 123~

    "Fight back!" roared the straight-backed man with the gray mustache (why did everyone have to roar?), "you have to learn to fight back."

    "Yes, sir."

    "You want to be a man, don't you?"

    "I guess so."

    "You want to be a good soldier, don't you?"

    "I don't think so."

    "Well, speak up, lad, what do you want to be?"

    Rick tried again. "Alive," he said.

~RP

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Paperback 1119: The Baroness #4: Hard-core Murder / Paul Kenyon (Pocket Books 77918)

Paperback ___: Publisher number (PBO, 1974)

Title: The Baroness #4: Hard-core Murder

Author: Paul Kenyon

Cover artist: Uncredited [Hector Garrido]

Condition: 8/10

Value: $25

[from Stomping Grounds bookstore, Geneva, NY (6/24/25)]

Best things about this cover: 

• The kind of book where I take one look at it and I'm like "yup!" No hesitation. Redhead in a bodysuit karates ancient Romans and their tigers? I'm in. Even when I (eventually) noticed that the action seems to be taking place on a movie set—still in.
• Pink. This book is very pink. I mean, Pink. 
• I cannot tell you how badly I need Baronesses numbers 1 through 3. 
• The Sexy Superspy who entertained the crew by making shadow puppets with her giant spatula hands!

Best things about this back cover: 

• "Makes the scene!" Nobody "makes the scene" anymore. Real loss to the culture, imho. I mean, I get that it's a movie pun, but still ... people used to "make the scene" and now they don't and we are all the poorer for it.
• Yes, I paid $7.50 for this. As you can see, it's "worth" a bit more (based on prices at abebooks). Not that I really care that much. 
• Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini! That's ... quite a name. My wife is named "Penelope." I don't think I could get her to wear that outfit, but I'm gonna start calling her "Baroness" and see what happens.
• A porn film that will bring down the American government, eh? I don't think anyone's tried that one yet. Whatever it takes!
• "Sully Flick" was born Sensual Motion Picture IV but thought it sounded too aristocratic for the movie biz so here we are.

Page 123~

Frankie found his favorite place, the table near the display of leather-and-chain books, that had all the real hot stuff on it. It was very educational.

~RP

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Paperback 1118: HUD / Larry McMurtry (Popular Library SP218)

 Paperback 1118: Popular Library SP218 (1st ptg, 1963)

Title: HUD

Author: Larry McMurtry

Cover artist: N/A

Condition: 7/10

Value: $15-20

Best things about this cover: 

• HUD stands for "HUge Dude"
• I love how defiantly HUD Paul Newman is. Like, "Yep, I'm HUD. Here I am. Cool as shit. Lean, handsome, ten feet tall. Perhaps you best run along..."
• Patricia Neal's exercise routine was, let's say, unorthodox
• Patricia Neal wins an Academy Award for Best Actress and *this* is how the book cover treats her? Like she tripped and fell over in the background of a Paul Newman photo shoot? Not cool.

Best things about this back cover: 

• The only thing sexier than dry HUD is ... Wet HUD!
• I hope he was not, in fact, "capable of rape." It's been a while since I've seen the movie, so I forget. (Looks like he attempts rape ... but the movie is mostly about foot-and-mouth disease in cattle—sexy!)
• "Exciting." The period somehow makes it sound less than exciting.

Page 123~

    "Hud, who is it, hon?" Lily said. She was in the back seat.

    "Oh, snakeshit," Hud said. "Run get that pickup an' point it this way, so we'll have light. I can't turn mine aroun' in this road. I may a run over him."

~RP

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Paperback 1117: Night and the City / Gerald Kersh (Dell 374)

 Paperback 1117: Dell 374 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Night and the City

Author: Gerald Kersh

Cover artist: [movie still: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney]

Condition: 6/10

Value: $10-15

Best things about this cover: 

• Two of the greatest, smoldering for your attention
• This is one of my favorite movies, and one of the greatest films noirs of all time. It's probably my favorite movie of 1950, which is Saying Something (1950, after all, has All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, Born Yesterday, etc.)
• Harry Fabian is the quintessential noir hero. Antihero. Loser-hero. Just wants to be somebody. Thinks he can work the system and outsmart the big boys. Finds out ... otherwise. If that's not noir, I don't know what is.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Mapback! All books should be mapbacks. I really don't understand why they're not.
• Frank! Feels like forever since the "Frank!" alarm has gone off. My favorite paperback cover adjective returns (albeit in adverbial form)
• Cabbie, please take me directly to HONKATONK BOTTLE-PARTY. Located at ... [squints at book] ... 5? No, just 5. I don't know. 5! Find it! Use "The Knowledge!"

Page 123~

    He walked slowly back to Rupert Street, entered quietly and undressed in silence. He was relieved to see that Zoë slept soundly.

    He undressed and crept into bed beside her.

    She sighed, and whispered: "Chihuahua—"

   

Look, I'm sure there is explanatory context here, I'm just saying, I don't wanna know it. I'm gonna just assume that "Chihuahua" is a term of endearment for Harry, or else that she is dreaming of tiny dogs ... or that "Chihuahua" was the name of her childhood sled.

~RP

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Paperbacks 1115 & 1116: The Ivory Grin & The Way Some People Die (Bantam 10979 & 10987)

Paperbacks 1115 & 1116: Bantam 10979 & 10987) (6th ptg, 1977 / 8th ptg, 1977)

Titles: The Ivory Grin & The Way Some People Die

Author: Ross Macdonald

Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Condition: 8/10 & 8/10

Value: $5-10 each

Best things about this cover: 

• I said last time that I had one more of these late'70s Archer covers by Mitchell Hooks, but it seems I lied: I had two, bringing my total to five. I guess I collect these now? Subcollection! Just what I need...
• Well yeah, sure, grins don't get much more ivory than that. 
• The dude loading the gun looks like a very disappointed middle manager. "We didn't make our quota this quarter, team. I told you there'd be consequences..."
• I'm super into that cat burglar guy but he's about a centimeter in height, and it's hard to truly love a design element that small. 
• The tealish hue coating every element of this painting is kinda sickly, but somehow when set against the equally sickly pale yellow background, it ends up ... perfect?

Best things about this 2nd cover: 

• Maybe my least favorite of these Archer covers so far. Still good, but the people look like they're carved out of wood. Looks a little sloppy, a little lifeless. But the neon signs and palm trees and dead guy are ... mwah!
• Her hair is insane. I can only hope that it's a wig. Her posture and expression are priceless, though: "Sigh, bikinis are so tiresome ... when do we drink?"
• Does the dead guy have a toupee that's come loose, or did he flatten a small bird with his head when he fell?

No point doing back covers, since they're just that same shadowy photo of Macdonald from the last book. So on to ...

Page 123~ (from The Way Some People Die)

    "The dirty bastard picked up and left me," she said in a deep harsh voice. Her eyes were round with anger, or surprise at her own language. "Good heavens," she said in her normal voice, "I never swear, honestly."

    "Swear some more. It will probably do you good."

~RP

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Paperback 1114: The Wycherly Woman / Ross Macdonald (Bantam 12120)

 Paperback 1114: Bantam 12120 (7th ptg, 1978)

Title: The Wycherly Woman

Author: Ross Macdonald

Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Condition: 9

Value: $10-15

Best things about this cover: 

• "Finally, I have invented a gun that doubles as an electric razor. What should I do? Hmm..."
• Now yearning for a blue dress shirt with a pink roadster and red-moon night scene on it.
• Who puts a purple rectangle there? It's such a weird bold amazing choice.
• They could've gone a more conventional "sexy dame" route, but instead they leaned into half-drunk, half-dressed, bored and barefoot. A completely riveting nonchalance. Love it.
• This is the third late-'70s Mitchell Hooks Lew Archer book in my collection (the fourth is coming up next). The whole run may be the greatest-looking series reprint I've ever seen. I want them all. I would hang any of them on my wall. Immaculate detective fiction vibes. I don't usually collect past 1970 very much because the pictorial cover art I love devolves like crazy starting around the mid-60s, but this late-70s revival goes full throwback mode, and since so much of classic detective fiction is suffused with nostalgia and world-weariness anyway ... it's perfect. I wish (to god) books looked like this today. Like, get all your promotional textual clutter out of my face and give me Art! (and this one is only middling compared to the rest of the set)

Best things about this back cover: 

• OK, there's minimal text (see front), and then there's this. 
• At first glance, I thought it was a painting of Lew Archer, but no, that's a photograph of Ross Macdonald himself. Doing a damn fine P.I. impression, if you ask me. 
• He looks like the guy on the cover's dad. Or his mentor. I'd hire this guy, is what I'm saying. Not sure I'd trust the front-cover. I'm not even sure he's sure. Look at him. He's like "what am I doing with my life? Am I up to this? Why isn't that woman wearing pants? Could my shave be closer?" I need someone a little more confident.

Page 123~

"Catherine Wycherly is running loose around the countryside with murder on her mind."

Hey, hey, whoa! spoiler alert!

~RP

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Paperback 1113: World So Wide / Sinclair Lewis (Pyramid G596)

 Paperback 1113: Pyramid G596 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: World So Wide

Author: Sinclair Lewis

Cover artist: Tom Miller

Condition: 7/10

Value: $5-8

Best things about this cover: 

• They shoulda called this "Gondola So Wide." Gondola so wide it fills the frame and reduces the lovely languishing lady to the size of a postage stamp. More bored expatriates in party dresses, fewer expanses of dull blue-gray, please!
• The composition is actually very nice, it's just that I don't buy these books for their lovely motel-room-quality pictures of exotic locales. I buy them for the sexy people acting strangely. For the hair, for the shoes. For the fashion. For the depravity. For the world-weary ennui of the mid-century sophisticate. This tepid gondola scene gives me (almost) none of this.
• To his credit, the artist (Tom Miller! Credited!) does a good job of making the couple pop. That damn pink dress against the somehow even pinker cushion? Magnificent. Also magnificent: her half-interest in Jake Trustfund there. Jake: "I love you, darling!" Her: "Mmm, yes. I know. Let's practice being quiet."

Best things about this back cover: 

• This ... this just tints the least interesting part of the front cover pink!? Boo! Boo to this back cover designer, I say.
• Adjectives must come in pairs! "Blazing sunny!" "warm and human!" "hot, passionate!" "scathing, cynical!" Can't believe they left "amazing" in there unattended.
• Lewis had been accused of being "Red" after the publication of It Can't Happen Here, a novel from the mid-'30s that imagined what American fascism would look like. The book was ... prescient. It concerned "a demagogue [Windrip] who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and "traditional" values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government via self-coup and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force" (wikipedia). Sound familiar? No? OK.

Page 123~

The five of them, plus the inescapable Marchesa Valdarno, sat prim about the refectory table of Irish oak, eating their molds of rice with duck livers served on English plates with views of Kent, while Belfont, with what he felt to be gentlemanly but learned humor, pumped Lundsgard, who answered with good-hearted simplicity.

This is very precise, poetic writing. And yet I can't help but wish there were more about "the inescapable Marchesa Valdarno." Flipping through the book, I find that the Marchesa "suavely jeered not only at America but at Parisian drunkards, English watering-places, old Roman society, and the Sadie Lurcher Riviera set [!!!?], of which Valdarno herself was a member." I'd sit next to her at the refectory table of Irish oak any day.

~RP

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Paperback 1112: The Off-Islanders / Nathaniel Benchley (Popular Library SP178)

 Paperback 1112: Popular Library SP178 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: The Off-Islanders

Author: Nathaniel Benchley

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 7/10

Value: $20 (the only copies I can find online are priced at $90, which is ridiculous)

Best things about this cover: 

• This looks zany in a very specifically '60s kind of way. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad submarine on a sandbar
• Alternate title: Big Day for Binos
• The shapely redhead with a run in her stockings really makes the cover. Bored with the boys and their boy games.

Best things about this back cover: 

• OK, that's the same picture from the front cover
• OK, that's the same blurb from the front. Someone's ... not trying
• "Capitalistic sandbar" is a bar I would drink at
• "Extra-marital shenanigans" OK fine you got me, I'll read you, you silly book

Page 123~

The first look at Polsky was always a shock, because he not only had no neck but also appeared to have no head; his features seemed to grow out of a slight lump midway between his shoulders. He seldom wore a cap, since the visor came so close to his collar as to all but cover his face, and on the occasions that required full-dress uniform he became dizzy from lack of fresh air.

~RP

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Paperback 1111: Every Girl is Entitled to a Husband / Nina Farewell (MacFadden Books 75-116)

 Paperback 1111: MacFadden 75-116 (1st, 1964)

Title: Every Girl is Entitled to a Husband

Author: Nina Farewell

Cover artist: Roy Doty 

Illustrated by: Roy Doty

Condition: 7    

Value: $15

[from a big box of books sent to me by reader "Gail"]

Best things about this cover: 

• "If you've got what it takes, but no one takes it" is, I have to admit, a good opening line.
• I also love that Buy is italicized. "Stop thumbing through the book and just buy it already! This is a drug store, lady, not a lending library!"
• You can read this cover as a complex metaphor about marriage being simultaneously exalting and stifling. Or you can read it as "Gladys's avant-garde entry in the Ladies Auxiliary cake-decorating contest."
• The cartooning here is perfect, in its perfectly iconic bland suburban white adult couple-ness. The lady actually looks great, and man that nose is perfectly vertical. Something to behold.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Love a good survey. Were women supposed to cut along that dotted line and send the survey ... somewhere? Seems like it would be easier to just tear the whole back cover off and send that in.
• Gonna need to see those other 14 other "Pleasures" first, please, thanks.
• "(the book)"—not sure why this bit from the Hartford Courant is making me laugh, but it is. "Sorry, perhaps the referent of 'it' is not totally clear; I am referring, of course, to the book as a whole, thank you for listening to this parenthetical comment."
• I love that whoever "designed" this back cover has the confidence and courage to just go by one name. Copy editor: "OK, so ... Karol what?" Karol: "Just ... Karol! You know, like 'Gowns by Irene' ... 'Design by ... Karol!'" Copy editor: "Uh ... sure, whatever, sounds good."

The illustrations in this book are funny and fascinating, though an awful lot of them seem to involve women threatening some kind of self-harm—in case you thought snagging a man was going to be all fun and games:

Page 123~

Her prestige seems to diminish if she tries in any way to please him, whereas it is enhanced when she behaves as though she has conferred an extraordinary favor by granting him the honor of her company.

Ooh, there's a picture that goes with this one, in case you're wondering what such a couple might look like:

~RP

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Paperback 1110: Handbook for the Woman Driver / Charlotte Montgomery (Vanguard nn)

 Paperback 1110: Vanguard (unnumbered) (no ed. stated, 1960)

Title: Handbook for the Woman Driver

Author: Charlotte Montgomery

Cover artist: Elizabeth Pollock + [photo cover]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8

[from a big box of books sent to me by reader "Gail"]

Best things about this cover: 

• I love the idea that women will naturally be wearing fancy driving gloves while driving. Also, that the steering wheel will be a freestanding plate or disc or fencing mask or robot helmet of some kind. Looks more like someone discovering an ancient artifact than someone driving a car.
• She's giving Eleanor Roosevelt. She also looks kinda like my paternal grandmother.
• Phillips 66 had a cool logo. Sincerely.
• I wonder what kind of assumptions this book makes about women drivers. Let's open to a random page and test the waters, shall we? — "Many women have confessed to me (as if it were a secret vice) [... go on ...] that they sing loud and lustily when they're alone in their cars." Thankfully, Mrs. Montgomery approves. She does not approve, however, of picking up hitchhikers or stopping on a deserted road or dressing or acting in any way that might attract "undue attention." I think she wants to say "don't dress like a whore," but that was probably deemed untactful by the editors.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Trop-Artic! For when the weather is ... too ... ar(c)tic?
• Trop-Artic! Not at all awkward and nonsensical! Really surprised it didn't catch on.
• The corporate synergy of Good Housekeeping and Phillips 66 is really something to behold.
• I love (Love!) how they're selling motor oil to women the way they'd sell beauty cream. Because "every woman" wants a "lubricating formula" (!) to help her car look "younger."
• "*A trademark" is a hilarious footnote. Oh, is that what "Trop-Artic" is? I just though it was an ad exec's bad idea.

Page 123~

Paper Play: Ticktacktoe; drawing a figure in sections, turning back the paper each time to hide what's already been drawn; folding a sheet and cutting strips of dolls. A drawing game for older children is played by making a sketch to illustrate a title, song, event, etc. The first to guess correctly wins.

"Paper Play" sounds like a very ... interesting ... driving kink, but this is just part of a long section on "ways to distract your annoying kids on a long automobile excursion." I like how the author basically invents Pictionary here. But that spelling of "Ticktacktoe" is cursed. 

~RP

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Paperback 1109: To Tell Your Love / Mary Stolz (Scholastic Books T124)

 Paperback 1109: Scholastic Book Services T-124 (3rd ptg, 1961)

Title: To Tell Your Love

Author: Mary Stolz

Cover artist: Uncredited (but the book is "Illustrated by Artur Marokvia" so maybe the cover is him too—hard to tell since there's only one shitty illustration in the whole dang book for comparison)

Condition: 8/10

Value: $6-8

Best things about this cover: 

• To tell your love what? That you've developed Giraffe Neck? That an anvil fell on your head and now your head is flat like an anvil? That you see the world entire in greenscale? That you still use a landline? From the 1930s? What are you going to tell him, Anne!?
• Man, her hands are fucked up. I know it's hard to draw hands, but ... is it that hard? Poor Anne. She can barely clutch her pearls properly.
• "... and so I stared directly at the eclipse and now I only see green. Annnnyway. What about you, my love? What's weird about you? ... Hello? Hello?!"

Best things about this back cover: 

• Kitty! I love this book now.
• I hope this book is about the kitty. Is the kitty her love? Tell the kitty he's good, Anne! Scritch Him!
• Wow, that blurb is ... not exciting. Or even coherent. What do I care about Anne's sister? Or Nora, for that matter? This book should've been titled "To Tell Doug He's Boring." That, or "Kitty's Grand Sleeping Adventures!"

Page 123~

    "What sort of pet is Cooper taking?"

    "That rooster of his," Johnny replied, shaking his head.

    "Does Mr. Maloney approve of that?"

    "Sure," Johnny laughed. "Mr. Maloney says it'll do the rooster good to get away from home and the hens for a while."

Mr. Maloney's crude rooster jokes would constitute the entirety of Johnny's sex education, and for that, Johnny's mother was grateful.

~RP

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Paperback 1108: Double Sin / Agatha Christie (Dell 12144)

Paperback 1108: Dell 12144 (1st New Dell, 1980)

Title: Double Sin

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6

Value: $6

Best things about this cover: 

• Hey kid, you got a little ... just ... on your mouth there ... no ... I'm a mirror ... my right, your left ...
• For some reason, Random Heap of Objects is a common Christie cover motif
• Who would arrange this stuff like this? What are the jewels even doing? How is that gun standing on end? Who would sculpt such a creepy wide-eyed kid? As you can see, all the blood is the least of my concerns
• Why is Hercule Poirot not also "incomparable" (or something like it)? Where's his hyperbolic adjective? I think he's earned it. 

Best things about this back cover: 

• This cover copy makes it sound like Marple and Poirot team up, or at least interact in some way, but I'm pretty sure this is a collection of short stories, none of which feature both detectives at the same time. Calling them an "unstoppable combination" is at least a little misleading.
• What year do UPC codes start appearing on paperback books? A truly evil year, that.
• This back cover is boring, the design uninspired. The corners of the text frame are vaguely deco-ish, which I guess is supposed to evoke the era in which the stories are set, but ... meh. I do kinda like the mirrored "A"s at the front and back of "AGATHA," but that may be the only design element here that I like.

Page 123~

An idle young man, she thought, but good-looking.

Finally—horny Miss Marple! It's what we've all been waiting for.

~RP

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Paperback 1107: The Razor's Edge / W. Somerset Maugham (Pocket Books 418)

 Paperback 1107: Pocket Books 418 (2nd ptg, 1946)

Title: The Razor's Edge

Author: W. Somerset Maugham

Cover artist: [Uncredited]

Condition: 6/10

Value: $7

Best things about this cover: 

• He touched her face. It was just as he suspected—whiskers! Steve knew right then that before he could make Janie his bride, her face would need to experience ... The Razor's Edge!
• Tonight, Janie decided, she would end things. Steve had coochie-coochie-coo'd her chin for the last time!
• This cover is back from when Pocket Books was still trying to make their books look serious and literary, i.e. boring. I would've sent this back to the art director with a simple three-word note: "Too Much Sky!"
• I love the insane specificity of Pocket Books's numbering scheme from this era. Individually numbered books—what was the appeal supposed to be!? They coulda just gone with the "Millions and Millions Sold" thing like McDonald's and that would've probably done the trick. What was I supposed to feel upon purchasing the one hundred and fifty-eight million two hundred and twelve thousand three hundred and tenth Pocket Book? Elation? Ennui? I can't exactly collect all the ones I'm missing! Ridiculous.

Best things about this back cover: 

• The permagloss is gone, the book is grimy, and abrasions have left part of the back cover copy illegible. Yet the spine is tight and nearly square and the book opens and reads easily. This is a perfect reading copy, which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it's not.
• I think I read Maugham's Of Human Bondage once, around the time I was in college, because my friend claimed it was his favorite novel. I mean, I assume it actually was his favorite novel, why would he lie? Anyway, I don't remember the book. And I've never read any other Maugham. All I know about this book (The Razor's Edge) is that there was a movie version starring Bill Murray that came out some time in the '80s, and that (famously?) flopped. Apparently there's also a Tyrone Power / Gene Tierney version. That sounds hot.
• What also sounds hot? Frustrated widows, lusty beauties, and complete degradation. I might have to put this on my reading list (which is infinity books long already, but who knows!? I might get to it someday).

Page 123~

I couldn't help smiling. I could imagine what Larry had looked like then, in his patched shirt and shorts, his face and neck burnt brown by the hot sun of the Rhine valley, with his lithe slim body and his black eyes in their deep sockets. I could well believe that the sight of him set the matronly Frau Becker, so blond, so full-breasted, all of a flutter with desire.

That's some pretty specific, pretty carnal imagining you're doing there, buddy. Are you sure it's Frau Becker who's "all of a flutter with desire"? 

~RP

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Paperback 1106: The Scarf / Robert Bloch (Gold Medal d1727)

 Paperback 1106: Gold Medal d1727 (1st ptg, 1966)

Title: The Scarf

Author: Robert Bloch

Cover artist: Uncredited (Harry Bennett?)

Condition: 6/10

Value: $15

Best things about this cover: 

• The terrifying story of a girl whose deep fear of scarves drove her to retreat into a dome of mosquito netting!
• I mean, maybe it's not the most flattering scarf, but it seems like she's overreacting. Just try it on!
• Robert Bloch, after 1960, is always (on book covers) "the author of PSYCHO" (which is what happens when you write PSYCHO)
• The killer-POV cover has a long history in paperbacks. Here's a Rudolph Belarski cover from the mid-'40s that's basically got the same idea as this cover ("fear hands" and all!):

And now the back cover of The Scarf:

Best things about this back cover: 

• That opening graf is a dud. "Of a sort"? What the hell does that mean? "Early"? Compared to what? Dan Morley? That is not a name that inspires terror. Or admiration. Or much of anything.
• "Neatly plotted" sounds like an insult. A backhanded compliment. "Hey, you can plot ... neat!"
• Kids: you really should wear gloves when handling abnormal psychology. Don't let the Saturday Review tempt you into behavior you're going to regret.

Page 123~

His thumb—a weenie encircled by a diamond ring—prodded my knee.

One of the greatest "Page 123" sentences of all time. You think it's peaked at "weenie encircled by a diamond ring," but then the blunt "prodded my knee" comes along and really delivers the knockout. "Prodded." Wow. Word choice matters. 10/10. Perfect. This is why I do "Page 123"—always entertaining, and then every once in a while: gold.

~RP

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