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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