Paperback 1149: Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective / Agatha Christie (Dell 550)

Paperback 1149: Dell 550 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Rafael de Soto

Condition: 7+/10

Value: $8

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY, summer '25]

Best things about this cover: 

• Hey, alright, balding middle-aged bespectacled guy gets to be semi-heroic. You don't see that every day.
• This lady is really bringing the hand action. Fear Hand™ reaching out toward us, while the other hand clutches her throat. Meanwhile, the guy's hands are also pretty busy, one of them holding and guiding the young woman, the other holding a handkerchief to his face (surely a more effective survival strategy than self-strangulation)
• I assumed they were fighting their way through poisoned gas, but maybe it's just a smoke from a fire. But if it was a fire, I assume we'd be getting more clearly FIRE iconography. Where are the flames? Since when do fires give off a kind of mauve miasma?
• Rafael de Soto was one of the artists who jumped from pulps to paperbacks, and you can really see the pulp expertise here. So good at conveying drama and action, so many nice little details—the wrinkles in his brow, for instance, or her bracelet, or his surprisingly stylish purple tie. If he's gonna die, he's gonna die in style! 

Best things about this back cover: 

• Mapback! God bless Dell for the Mapback period. Every back cover a cartological adventure!
• If ever there was an image of imperialism ... Great Britain is barely on this map, but the Houses of Parliament, seem to have invaded and absolutely crushed eastern Europe and Russia.
• The iconography is perfect. Paris has the Arc de Triomphe, Britain has Parliament, Turkey's got minarets, Egypt's got pyramids, and then there's Iraq, which is represented, of course, by its world famous bus.

Page 123~

    "Oh, yes! Edward's a perfect angel." She hesitated. "Not, perhaps, very much go to him. Just a little—well, I'd call it strait-laced. Lot of Puritan ancestry and all that. But he's a dear," she added hastily.

"Where oh where did my go go? Why is it so low? I'll never know"—Edward

~RP

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