Paperback 1171: The Case of the Backward Mule / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 855)

Paperback 1171: Pocket Books 855 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: The Case of the Backward Mule

Author: Erle Stanley Gardner

Cover artist: Frank McCarthy

Condition: 6/10    

Value: $8

Best things about this cover: 

• It's too bad this is such a vile representation of violence against women ("she had it coming!"?), because it's a great action painting. Her posture, her face, her hands ... her hair! The hair is like its own entity, a force of nature separate from whatever human drama surrounds it. The hair is eternal. The hair will be here after the Backward Mule is dead and buried (I'm assuming the dude is the Backward Mule). 
• Real talk: I kinda like my man's accent color.
• Weirdly, despite having a Perry Mason-like "The Case of the ___" title, this book is not a Perry Mason book! Instead, it features someone named Terry Clane, "Student and friend of the Orient (!) who does some amateur sleuthing in San Francisco." The whole book is set firmly in the world of SF's Chinatown, which you could never, ever tell by the cover (or the back cover, for that matter)

Best things about this back cover: 

• "A cigarette dangled from her lower lip"—classic image. They could've put that on the cover.
• "She spat out" lol I like this dame. She should hit him. That would be more believable. And enjoyable. 
• The writing here is florid. Sub-pulp. Borderline corny. I don't hate it. "She was as touchy as a trainload of nitroglycerine." LOL. Someone's been watching Wages of Fear (which hadn't come out yet, though the novel on which it's based came out just one year before this paperback was published)
• "Pure, overdeveloped viciousness" is my favorite kind of viciousness. None of these cheap knock-offs. I need it unadulterated and swollen!

Page 123~

    "In our business, we don't do too much speculative thinking, Mr. Clane. We investigate. And when we investigate we make it a point to cover all of the possibilities."
    "I see," Clane said.

    "Even," Malloy went on, "including that poker-faced Chinese servant of yours, Yat T'oy."

    "I see," Clane said.

He can't really do anything, but man can he see!

~RP

P.S. Frank McCarthy seems to have specialized in punch-in-the-face covers. Here's another one from my collection (Paperback 397)

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