Paperback 1169: Wild Is the Fawn / Roberta Everhart (Paragon P156)

Paperback 1169: Paragon P156 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Wild Is the Fawn

Author: Roberta Everhart

Cover artist: Uncredited (familiar, but ... ?)

Condition: 7/10

Value: $20

Best things about this cover: 

• Oh, yeah, that's the stuff—the fully-clothed aftermath of illicit sex! That's why I'm a collector!
• Milly is so worked up she's breaking branches.
• Despite being very ... verdant, this cover seems pretty innocuous, except for the dark-haired lady's right hand. I'm not even sure that is her right hand. It's monstrously out of proportion to her body. Looks like a prop hand that dropped from the sky and landed on his shoulder. .
• "Uh ... Shawn?" "Uh, yeah?" "Have I told you about ... my hand?" "Uh ..."
• This is the only Paragon Book that I own. It's shockingly similar to all the Sanford Aday-published sleaze imprints (Saber / Vega / Fabian) coming out of Fresno, CA in the late '50s/early '60s. Same cheap, flimsy, almost magazine-stock cover, same frequently-used cover artist, same extremely and hilariously dumb sex scenario. I barely believe this is a real imprint, but there are five other Paragon Books listed at the back of this book (including Male for Sale and Her Third Man), and I can find some of them on the internet, so ... guess it's real. But as imprints go, I have to believe this is one of the more obscure ones.

Best things about this back cover: 

• OK, first question: why did Milly go to the swamp that day? Just an avid swamp-goer? Hiding a body? Milly is instantly fascinating. 
• "I mean, what was Milly gonna do, not spy on them? Come on."
• "I'll have what she's having" Milly muttered into the leaves of the bush that was the only thing separating her from the freaky swamp sex she'd stumbled upon during one of her frequent and totally normal swamp escapades...

Page 123~

Merely reflecting on the heights of delight I had reached with George made my thighs quiver and jerk, and I felt pains of passion arise in the pit of my stomach. My mind became a turmoil. Damn it! Damn it! I want to be a wife and a mother, but the woman has gotten out of hand. I must be a woman, too. And if not with my husband, then with someone else. I didn't make this body like it is with its insatiable desires. I only live in it, and it seems I have no control over what it does. Please, God, you must forgive me.

God: "Wait, go back to your thighs. Jerk? Really? They're not designed for that, you know."

~RP

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Paperback 1168: The Red Right Hand / Joel Townsley Rogers (Pocket Books 385)

Paperback 1168: Pocket Books 385 (2nd ptg, 1946)

Title: The Red Right Hand

Author: Joel Townsley

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6/10

Value: $4-5

Best things about this cover: 

• The "thumb" ... it ... it just ... look, that's not a thumb, is what I'm saying. Look at it in total isolation. It is astonishingly, in every way, not a thumb. The more you look, the more obscene it gets.
• That hand does not look particularly red. Perhaps it is Communist.
• This looks like someone got buried alive in a granary, like in Frank Norris's The Octopus. How did he get buried? Like the cover says, it's "A Mystery."

Best things about this back cover: 

• "There was a little man—who got away"—well that's the worst nursery rhyme of all time. Did the little man go to market at least? Come on, give me something.
• St. Erme!? Really? St. [hesitation noise]!? Do you pronounce it "ERMIE?" Forget what the little man did with St. Erme's right hand, what did he do with the rest of the letters in Erme's name?!
• The writing here is terrible. Choppy, awkward. Who are these people? Why do I care? Why is the book talking to me!!? "You'll keep going on excitedly..." Well now I definitely won't. Just to show you that you're not the boss of me.

Page 123~

"You live around here, Dr. Ridder?" he asked me, making coffee.

"Riddle," I said. "No, I live in New York. I'm on my way down from Vermont. I wonder when that car passed me." 

"You saw it passing you?"

"No," I said. "I didn't see it."

"And you say you're the Riddler, is that right?" "Just Riddle." "Justin Griddle?" It goes on like this.

~RP

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Paperback 1167: The Devil Threw Dice / Amber Dean (Pocket Books 1090)

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

Best things about this cover: 

• 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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