Paperback 1167: Pocket Books 1090 (1st ptg, 1955)
Title: The Devil Threw Dice
Author: Amber Dean
Cover artist: Lou Marchetti
Condition: 6/10
Value: $5-7
- Norman Bates lookin' like "aw, geez, not again."
- "She was the kind of gal that many men might kill." Oh, one of those.
- "OK, sure, I threw dice at her, but since when has that ever killed anyone? I've thrown dice at lots of girls and none of them ever died!"
- I assume that's the girl's ghost looming over him. "Thought you'd be rid of me, did you? Ha. I'm gonna haunt this stairwell til doomsday, brother!"
- Even in death, the woman must be portrayed in a way that emphasizes her shapeliness, even if that means that her left breast levitates comically skyward.
- Amber Dean ... is a woman. Not a lot of women writing this kind of hardboiled fare midcentury. She published over a dozen crime novels with Doubleday between the mid-'40s and mid-'60s. I just discovered that a. I own other books by her, and b. she was from western NY (specifically Rochester, only a few hours drive from me). The University of Rochester has her papers. The academic / detective in me wants to Start A New Project...
Best things about this back cover:
- "Someone had killed her. And it had to be a guy!" I mean, statistically, yeah, pretty much.
- I'm calling it right now. It was Putt Perry. That guy is two little arcs away from Butt Berry. Who knows what depravities someone with that name could get up to!?
- "She had an excitingly evil face" ... not one of them depressingly evil faces you see sometimes. No siree, this was an evil that could really rev a guy's engine, if you know what I mean [yeah, we get it, Putt, we get it]
- Artist credit! Lou Marchetti! A titan. Can't say that this is my favorite cover of his, but the man generally does great work.
Page 123~
Somewhere a bird twittered sleepily, and an answering twitter said "Darling, I'm here. I'll be here when you wake."
What the hell kind of twisted avian fantasy is this?!
~RP
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