Paperback 746: The Avon Book of Detective and Crime Stories / ed. John Rhode (Avon 21)

Paperback 746: Avon 21 (1st ptg, 1942)

Title: The Avon Book of Detective and Crime Stories
Editor: John Rhode
Cover artist: NA

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• The font? Maybe? Also pink. Pink is nice.
• This old Avon has held up *really* well. I love a good old paperback that's beat-as-f*ck but still perfectly solid and tight. You could read this a hundred times and it would just get more broken in.
• This is a classic detection bonanza right here. Not really my cup, but a pretty sweet collection nonetheless.

Best things about this back cover:

• Shakespeare-Head!
• Shakespeare likes mysteries and also the US Armed Forces. Heed Shakespeare's plea, y'all.
• You can store paperbacks in such things as "clothing" or those new-fangled contraptions, "bags."

Page 123~ (from "A Shot in the Night" by The Baroness Orczy)

My experience is that in all emotions and all weaknesses, in all virtues and in all vices, women invariably outdo the men.

But this is beside the point.

~RP

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Paperback 674: The Red House Mystery / A. A. Milne (Dell D321)

Paperback 674: Dell D321 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: The Red House Mystery (The Dell Great Mystery Library Number 25)
Author: A. A. Milne
Cover artist: William Teason

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• Bored? High? Dead? High? Mannequin?
• Yes, that A. A. Milne.
• You might remember this as one of the mystery novels that Chandler absolutely decimates in "The Simple Art of Murder"

Best things about this back cover:

• Mmm. Key porn.
• The nightmarish carpet pattern continues.
• "The Dell Great Mystery Library" was decidedly conservative, their covers respectable and dull.

Page 123~

In the time at his disposal, he could have done no more than put it away in a drawer, where it would be much more open to discovery by Antony than if he had kept it in his pocket.

The "it," of course, is a tube of KY—the slipperiest McGuffin.

~RP

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