Paperback 1114: The Wycherly Woman / Ross Macdonald (Bantam 12120)

 Paperback 1114: Bantam 12120 (7th ptg, 1978)

Title: The Wycherly Woman

Author: Ross Macdonald

Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Condition: 9

Value: $10-15

Best things about this cover: 

• "Finally, I have invented a gun that doubles as an electric razor. What should I do? Hmm..."
• Now yearning for a blue dress shirt with a pink roadster and red-moon night scene on it.
• Who puts a purple rectangle there? It's such a weird bold amazing choice.
• They could've gone a more conventional "sexy dame" route, but instead they leaned into half-drunk, half-dressed, bored and barefoot. A completely riveting nonchalance. Love it.
• This is the third late-'70s Mitchell Hooks Lew Archer book in my collection (the fourth is coming up next). The whole run may be the greatest-looking series reprint I've ever seen. I want them all. I would hang any of them on my wall. Immaculate detective fiction vibes. I don't usually collect past 1970 very much because the pictorial cover art I love devolves like crazy starting around the mid-60s, but this late-70s revival goes full throwback mode, and since so much of classic detective fiction is suffused with nostalgia and world-weariness anyway ... it's perfect. I wish (to god) books looked like this today. Like, get all your promotional textual clutter out of my face and give me Art! (and this one is only middling compared to the rest of the set)

Best things about this back cover: 

• OK, there's minimal text (see front), and then there's this. 
• At first glance, I thought it was a painting of Lew Archer, but no, that's a photograph of Ross Macdonald himself. Doing a damn fine P.I. impression, if you ask me. 
• He looks like the guy on the cover's dad. Or his mentor. I'd hire this guy, is what I'm saying. Not sure I'd trust the front-cover. I'm not even sure he's sure. Look at him. He's like "what am I doing with my life? Am I up to this? Why isn't that woman wearing pants? Could my shave be closer?" I need someone a little more confident.

Page 123~

"Catherine Wycherly is running loose around the countryside with murder on her mind."

Hey, hey, whoa! spoiler alert!

~RP

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Paperback 1095: Man-Killer / Talmage Powell // Running Scared / Bob McKnight (Ace D-469)

 Paperback 1095: Ace D-469 (PBO / PBO, 1960)

Title: Man-Killer / Running Scared

Author: Talmage Powell / Bob McKnight

Cover artist: Rudy Nappi / Rudy Nappi (signature visible)

Condition: 8 or 9/10

Value: $30

Best things about this cover: 

• "You've had your breakfast of canned baked beans and coffee, now get out of my yellow house! Don't make me have to hold this gun properly!"
• She and that rifle sure seem, uh, friendly.
• This is one of the greatest fuck-off power poses I've ever seen on a paperback cover. I do believe she would, in fact, kill a man, possibly several.
• "The Lady's For Hanging" yeah good luck with that

Best things about this back cover: 

• Crawling Scared!
• "Murder On My Heels ... hey, where the hell are my heels, anyway? Must've lost 'em when I crawled through the swamp in my underwear oh well"
• The Ghost of Lee Marvin is very disappointed in your push-up technique

Page 123~ (from Man-Killer)

    The man paused at the mouth of the alley, a big, brawny shadow. I saw him stiffen. He was staring at the white blob of my face in the infiltrating light. 

    "Calhoun!"

    It was Giles Hustin.

OK, whatever suspense, whatever sense of impending terror you were trying to work up there was immediately and entirely dissipated by "It was Giles Hustin." Giles Hustin is not the name of a man who makes other men quake in fear. Giles Hustin is the name of a man who plays folk music every Thursday from 9 to 10 at The Rusty Skillet. 

Also, I'm worried about Calhoun's face.

~RP

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Paperback 1075: By Blood Alone / Frank Corey (Berkley Medallion G494)

Paperback 1075: Berkley Medallion G494 (PBO, 1961)

Title: By Blood Alone

Author: Frank Corey (pseud. of George Fox)

Cover artist: [illegible signature, no artist credit, infuriating]

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10-$12

[Another book from the recently acquired Larry D Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• Watch out boy, she'll chew you up.
• She appears to be sitting in the blood of her (their?) prey. I assume she is the one who lives ... by blood alone. I love how she's looking at you (yes you, the reader) like "Hello, you're next. Oh, don't mind Larry. [turns to Larry in disgust] He was just leaving." [Larry, shouting like Sterling Hayden in The Long Goodbye] "Yeah, well, I need more than just blood, baby! Whiskey! Asparagus! Tic Tacs! The blood's great and all, but a man's gotta live! Nah, you have fun with your little friend here. I'll see you when I see you."
• Larry appears to have some kind of medallion nestled in his chest hair. Swingin'! He looks like he's getting ready to hit the disco, or maybe just do some light swashbuckling.
• Wrought-iron bed frames make a nice ornamental touch. Some great covers have been built around bed frames. Like this one (in fact ... is that Larry again? He gets around):

And now the back cover:

Best things about this back cover:

• "SCARRED" is a singularly un-grabby tagline, but it does rhyme with "marred" in the first sentence there, so I guess that's ... something. 
• Is there such thing as a *gentle* attack with a hammer?
• Please, hammer, don't scar 'em
• "Make the paragraphs red then black ... then black then red" "Okey dokey, any reason in part-" "I have no good ideas, OK, are you happy, just do it!"
• "Second generation" should be hyphenated. And speaking of hyphens, the "rack- / eteer" line break is killing me.
• There should be a comma after "head," why am I doing all the copyediting work here, come on!

Page 123~

"What is he?" Rebellion and disillusionment rang in the simple question.

"A renegade without money or ties, virtually cut off from human society."

That last bit would look cool on a business card.

~RP

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Paperback 1042: Bartered Mates / Thomas K. Makagon (Unique Books 144)

Paperback 1042: Unique Books 144 (PBO, 1967)

Title: Bartered Mates
Author: Thomas K. Makagon
Cover artist: that guy ... I always forget his name ... one of you will tell me (Bill Alexander)

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: a lot

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• I keep reading "Battered Meats"
• Get it on! Bang a gong! Makagon!
• The pointing lady is the best. We don't even get to see her face. Just her amazing get-up and pointing arm. "J'accuse!" "Koochy koochy koo!" "Where Are This Man's Damned Nipples!?"
• I really dig The Couch Of Impossible Boobs
• If you look at his left foot too long you will be cursed. I have warned you.
• This book is bizarrely rare. I searched ["bartered mates" makagon] and got TWO HITS TOTAL

Best things about this back cover:

• I've seen worse cover copy, but not much worse. I do like the manic use of "—" there in the first paragraph. "Is it a happening, a trend, or a switch ... ? ... fuck it, let's just go with all of the above!"
• Why is there a comma after "delectable" in paragraph 2!?! Truly, I am bothered far more by punctuation minutiae than by the preposterous cheesiness of it all.
• OK the first sentence of paragraph 2 is utterly ungrammatical (although LOL at "brain child" quote unquote)
• Shouldn't it be "a between-pictures diversion" OK I'll stop now.
• "... the private threats of enjoyed and accepted female aggression" like, try to wrap your head around that. If it's "accepted" how is it a "threat," and to what? Dudes like being whipped by ladies. That's pretty much the end of the story.
• "MASTERLY POWERS OF FEMALE DOMINATION" was what was written on Jessica Fletcher's business card (or should've been)

Page 123~

Don finished his drink and set it on the dresser, then walked over to the edge of the bed he reached down to the back of her thighs, gently separated them and commenced to kiss the small of her back. His tongue went to her pink lined crease. Slowly he flicked it downward until he had gone as far as he  could go, then pushing her thighs upward, he held her almost on her head. He kept moving downward gradually, pushing her upward. When he found the desired spot, Roxana moaned through her fallen hair. He then shoved her backwards until she was on her back in an opposite direction. Now, he could feel her mouth covering him as they clasped each other's passionate bodies tightly.

Ok so this is terrible in so many ways but I'm stuck back on "pink lined crease" (sic). Is her lined crease pink, or is her crease pink-lined? And which crease are we talking about? Further, where did his tongue go? Where did her thighs go? Downward? Upward? "An opposite direction"? It looks like they end up in 69 at the end, but I feel like maybe that was just a lucky accident?

~RP

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Paperback 1019: The Primitive / Chester Himes (Signet 1264)

Paperback 1019: Signet 1264 (PBO, 1956)

Title: The Primitive
Author: Chester Himes
Cover artist: [Tony Kokinos] (signature top left)

Condition: 6.5/10
Estimated value: $30

Best things about this cover:

• White lady trying hard not to think about centuries of brutal racism and her own complicity therein ... I assume.
• There's drunk, there's very drunk, and then there's "I only made it half way through taking my shoes off" drunk
• The red of the red shoes is very red against the non-color of everything else. Echoes the title font color. I like.
• This novel was heavily cut for the US audience, which, like, couldn't deal, I guess. It was published right before Himes made the turn into hardboiled crime fiction with his Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones series (so great)

Best things about this back cover:

• The End of a Primitive was the original title of the book (the title used when the book was finally published in unexpurgated versions, 40+ years later)
• So the white woman is just white but the "Negro man" is "embittered"? Normally I don't beg for more adjectives, but come on.
• Van Vechten tryna get cute with that "white heat" shit, I bet. He's a white dude who wrote a book called Ni**er Heaven. A key figure in white people's "discovering" Harlem. I highly recommend Mat Johnson's current comic, Incognegro: Renaissance, which is set in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance and features a Van Vechten-like figure in the first issue. Good stuff.

Page 123~

"Oh, sure," he said, thinking, "I like de big gut, do you like de big gut?"

~RP

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Paperback 999: All Shot Up / Chester Himes (Ace T-434)

Paperback 999: Avon T-434 (PBO, 1960)

Title: All Shot Up
Author: Chester Himes
Cover artist: Uncredited (!!) (update: appears to be work of George Ziel)

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $65-80

Best things about this cover:

• Gah, so great. So so great. Multiple scenes of hot hardboiled greatness. Tough-guy mug, sexy naked lady, trenchcoat gunfight ... bar! All the good things.
• Chester Himes is fantastic. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger are unique and important figures in the history of detective fiction. Badass *and* hilarious. Their dialogue is amazing, as are their razor-sharp observations on race relations in the city. Highly recommended.
• Either that dude is holding the wrong end of the cigarette or he's holding a very tiny test tube.

Best things about this back cover:

• Big on alliteration, this copywriter. First babes bourbon and bullets, now hailing in Harlem...
• "Eight—Count 'em, eight—corpses." Eight, OK, I believe you, eight. Jeez. Don't get so defensive.
• "Skidding on ice and breathing fire"—which Game of Thrones book was that?

Page 123~

"I'd rather be bit in the rear by a boa constrictor than sitting here waiting for something to happen, and I can't even guess what," he complained bitterly.

It's a boa constrictor ... I mean it can bite, sure, but ... it's kind of known for ... the other ... oh nevermind.

~RP

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Paperback 993: The Farm / Louis Bromfield (Signet D1260)

Paperback 993: Signet D1260 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Farm
Author: Louis Bromfield
Cover artist: James Avati

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Hay rides have always sounded like hell to me, but this doesn't look so bad.
• This is probably the single hottest Avati cover of all time. Note that 99% of all Avati covers involve people standing motionless and looking sad.
• It really is exquisite as a piece of figurative art—those heads, arms, calves, feet!—and all the peripheral details are rendered with keen-eyed precision as well.

Best things about this back cover:

• Jeez, Omaha World-Herald. Dial it back a notch.
• I'm here for the hot rural action, not "Indian massacres." Come on, Bromfield!
• He looks like Mickey Spillane's yokel cousin.

Page 123~

And for days Johnny was haunted by a vision of Greataunt (sic) Jane clad in a pink union suit with a corset cover of passementerie.

When you don't have internet porn, you make do.

~RP

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Paperback 965: Ruby MacLaine / John Roeburt (Hillman 151)

Paperback 965: Hillman Books 151 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Ruby MacLaine
Author: John Roeburt
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $6-9
Condition: 3/10

Best things about this cover:

• So ... that is a plausibly human head, torso, and backside. After that, the wheels come off. She would have to have 10-ft-long legs for that foot size to be right. Also, no one can stand like that and not put at least *some* pressure on the bedclothes. But mostly, the problem is perspective. The bed looks like it's for a child, and the lamp and bedstand are comically small. Trump-hand tiny. Dollhouse tiny.
• Still, credit where credit is due: the backside makes it highly unlikely anyone's fretting too much about the mini-furniture.
• "FEEL MY MORBID POWER!" exclaimed a drunk and exultant John Roeburt as he stumbled along Broadway, a rumpled New York Times in his hand.

Best things about this back cover:

• See. Back cover designer knew what to do with that front cover: CROP.
• "Backstreet"? Take that, N*SYNC!
• "There'll be compensations" is an utterly implausible bit of dialogue. Also, I was proposing ... asking ..." makes no sense. You were proposing or you were asking, but you were not proposing asking. Although maybe a guy who ruffles a girl's hair as a come-on has bigger problems than grammar.

Page 123~

"I want to be admired for my mind," Ruby said winkingly.
Coulter looked critically at her. "That was on the square," he said slowly.
She looked levelly at him. "I want resources other than just my sex."

Later, Coulter says, "I get the dig." That makes one of us, Coulter.

~RP

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P.S. the first line on the first (teaser) page of this novel is: "They made their agreement in a motel." I probably would've bought this book on the strength of that premise alone.

Paperback 961: The Chocolate Cobweb + Who's Been Sitting in My Chair? / Charlotte Armstrong (Ace Double G-511)

Paperback 961: Ace Double G-511 (1st / 1st, 1962)

Title: The Chocolate Cobweb / Who's Been Sitting in My Chair?
Author: Charlotte Armstrong / Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Estimated value: $15
Condition: 7/10 (because of warp—else 9/10; square, shiny, unread)

Best things about this cover:

• "Come away from the cobweb, dearie. I'm saving that one for company."
• "It's chocolate!" "It's pica, dearie."
• This isn't the first time Charlotte (Armstrong) has been associated with Webs...
• Mystery writers are frequently praised for their "skill" (here, twice) as if they were performing a parlor trick as opposed to, you know, writing well. I just read a conventional mystery (by Helen Nielsen—Sing Me a Murder) and it was painfully contrived, as most puzzle-mysteries are (though Nielsen is a fine writer, in general). Chandler's "Simple Art of Murder" has made it virtually impossible for me to take the whodunnit seriously, or even enjoy it. Too much improbable nonsense and implausible, unprofessional, downright stupid gimmickry, all to make a complicated plot work out just so. Pass.

Best things about this other cover:

• I love her so much.
• She knows how to get comfortable. Kicked off the heels and curled up on the chair, just relaxing. Arm across the body says "Please &*%# off, I'm trying to enjoy my cigarette in peace, thanks."
• The Girl Who Dreamed of Some Square Guy Holding What is Clearly a Desk Mic
• "Authentic witches"?!—I don't know what you're on about, Anthony Boucher, but I'm intrigued.

Page 123~ (from The Chocolate Cobweb)

The little paw touched his tired head in a brief caress.

In a not-too-distant future, when dogs and humans have switched positions ... The Chocolate Cobweb!

~RP

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Paperback 957: The Case of the Golddigger's Purse / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 4505)

Paperback 957: Pocket Books 4505 (8th ptg, 1962)

Title: The Case of the Golddigger's Purse
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Estimated value: $6-10
Condition: 8/10 (shiny and unread but mildly, uh, storage-smushed in a couple places)

Best things about this cover:

• Honestly, this is ridiculous. It looks like she's somehow killed a fancy, jewel-encrusted parrot and is preparing to devour its carcass. The bones!
• There are precisely two great things about this cover: a. orange! and b. that left shoe and whatever story lies behind its location.
• I have never seen McGinnis's talents put to poorer use. A huge Perry Mason logo, but only a teeny tiny half-shod McGinnis girl?! Priorities, man.

Best things about this back cover:

• This way to dish!
• I'm guess a guy named Harrington Faulkner doesn't work at the docks.
• Now I ain't sayin' she a goldfish-digger...
• So ... Goldfish ... that explains the color. I think.

Page 123~

With every simulation of candid surprise, Dixon raised his eyebrows.

~RP

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Paperback 865: Appointment for Sin / Paul V. Russo (Midwood F217)

Paperback 865: Midwood F217 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Appointment for Sin
Author: Paul V. Russo
Cover artist: Uncredited

Est. value: $22-25

Best things about this cover:

• Suzie Masseuse's gaze is burning a hole in that washcloth.
• "Now that you're naked, just cross your feet like … like so, and now … I strum your ankles. Isn't that nice?"
• I love how Blondewig Amplebosom's like "Well is this a sin appointment or isn't it? Jeez, what's a girl gotta do to get some sin? I made an appointment and everything, and still no sin. Put my ankles down!"
• I love orange, but no. This room color is a no.

Best things about this back cover:

• Terrible tagline—stupid within
• "Editor's note" LOL. It's in typewriter font, so you know it's real.
• Winnie and April will be plenty, thanks.

Page 123~

"Some of the clients are particularly fond of the vibrating mechanism in it."
"Vib—"
Her hand closed his mouth.

~RP

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Paperback 824: Bullet Proof / Amber Dean (Popular Library SP294)

Paperback 824: Popular Library SP294 (1st ptg, 1964)

Title: Bullet Proof
Author: Amber Dean
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, turns out you can do A Lot with a fairly monochromatic palette. This is fantastic.
• For a simple cover, it's amazingly suspenseful. Great use of light, especially on her face. Her face is the key—the craning around and the look of wide-eyed horror really sell the idea that something terrible is just on its way, just out of view.
• The creepiness of the bondage is amplified ten-fold by the simple, naked mattress. How can a cover be so elegant and so sleazy at the same time?

Best things about this back cover:

• I still hate this logo. It does not look like "CRIME." It looks a poorly executed fertility statue.
• "Virginia Kirkus calls it 'non-stop'"—that made me LOL: "Seriously, it wouldn't stop. I as like 'Stop! Why won't this story stop!?' But it just kept going!"
• "Readable!"—these just get better and better. "… in that it was made out of recognizable words, which were arranged in vaguely grammatical patterns…"

Page 123~

"It was their job, Hallie. Police have to learn how to destroy human dignity, or they'd never break through the really calloused, the hardened."

I'm just gonna leave that there.

~RP

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Paperback 807: Night Has 1,000 Eyes / William Irish (George Hopley) (Cornell Woolrich) (Dell 679)

Paperback 807: Dell 679 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Night Has 1000 Eyes
Author: Cornell Woolrich, writing as William Irish, writing as George Hopley
Cover artist: Tommy Shoemaker

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Pretty classic stuff here—from the highly regarded suspense / crime writer so prolific his pseudonyms had pseudonyms, to the sensational paranoid title, to the panicked sideglance of our barefoot bridge walker. This book is the broken, bruised, beating heart of the vintage paperback era.
• Book is warped and well read, but tight and complete. The collector in me likes a fine copy, but the pulp enthusiast in me loves a book in distress.
• I really want to capitalize "has" and put a comma in that "1000."
• I see your "Thriller" and raise you to "SUPER-THRILLER"!

Best things about this back cover:

• Mostly dull, but I like the way the left margin follows the contours of the moon.
• Whoa. "1000" has become "a THOUSAND"! This *is* super-thrilling!
• Everything in red is balderdash. Fantastic, turgid, red balderdash.

Page 123~

I don't know what my lips said, but my heart said to him, it's human not to be able to bear knowing when you are to die.

I often don't know what my lips said.

~RP

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Paperback 775: Slaughter Street / Louis Falstein (Lion Books 172)

Paperback 775: Lion Books 172 (2nd ptg, 1957)

Title: Slaughter Street
Author: Louis Falstein
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• I resent how small they've made the painting here. It's ***ing Robert Maguire! You don't reduce Maguire to a 3x2 in. box, you bastards!
• Is that "Fear Hand," "Sexy Pose Hand," or "I lost 3 quarters in the couch cushions Hand"?
• His hand is super-veiny and emotional.
• "I'm hit! Your fierce, shameless love … it does nothing!"

Best things about this back cover:

• Nice repurposing of front cover art. Hand and gun really stand out in this version.
• Oof, if that simile is any indication of the kind of writing I'm signing up for, no thanks.
• Plot actually sounds half-interesting. "And it was no question of being a squealer" = "He was gonna rationalize, then squeal, then rationalize some more."

Page 123~

He nudged his father as Mike Fortugno took the rostrum to greet the assembled in the name of The Block.

I imagine that The Block is some kind of wrestling deity, and I don't want to be told otherwise.

~RP

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Paperback 756: The Wild Palms and The Old Man / William Faulkner (Signet S1148)

Paperback 756: Signet S1148 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: The Wild Palms and The Old Man
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: James Avati

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Contemptuous Annette Bening resents your intrusion into her back-porch reveries.
• James Avati is by far the best boring cover artist of all time.
• There are many nice features to this painting—the expression on her face, the color of her shirt, the … let's call it an 'awning,' her bare feet, the grain in the wood … but still, this is pretty dull as covers go. Maybe they dialed it back out of respect for the Nobel Prize?

Best things about this back cover:

• Yawn.
• You can do better than this, Signet Giant!
• The only part of this back cover that I like is the word "drenched."

Page 123~ (from "The Wild Palms")

The yellow eyes were full on him, she released the bitten lip and as he sprang back toward the bed he heard over the chuckling murmur of the wind the two voices at the front door, the porch—the plump-calved doctor's high, almost shrill, almost breaking, that of the gray gorgon wife cold and level, at a baritone pitch a good deal more masculine than the man's voice, the two of them unorientable because of the wind like the voices of two ghosts quarreling about nothing, he (Wilbourne) hearing them and losing them too in the same instant as he bent over the wide yellow stare in the head which had ceased to roll, above the relaxed bleeding lip.

In case you were wondering what "Faulknerian" meant.

~RP

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Paperback 707: Portrait of a Sadist / Paull Hill (Avon T-514)

Paperback 707: Avon T-514 (1st US ed., 1960)

Title: Portrait of a Sadist
Author: Paull Hill
Cover artist: Uncredited

Gift to the collection from reader "Stacy" (Thanks!)


Best things about this cover:

• This cover won the "Least Sexy Bondage Painting" contest of 1959.
• Seriously, stare at that foot for a few moments. It just gets creepier.
• You have to admire a sadist whose bondage technique involves colorful ascots.
• Curlicues on the "R"s make the "T" look like it has a fancy mustache.

Best things about this back cover:

• I like the jagged black-and-white electricity that engirds this cover copy. High voltage!
• I like books that express the dark confusion between horror and titillation. "This man sex was sex a hot dirty sex monster sex whose sex story should serve as a sex cautionary sex tale and definitely not masturbation material sex."
• You say "perverted psychopathic lusts," I say "sexual irregularities," let's call the whole thing off.

Page 123~

His whip was at that moment reposing in his suitcase at Bournemouth West railway station, but once again he had his supply of handkerchiefs.

OMG I love that sentence so much. Not sure which is my favorite part: "whip," "reposing" (so genteel), "handkerchiefs" (!!!), or "once again" (!!!!?).

~RP

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Paperback 652: Mystery on Graveyard Head / Edith Dorian (Berkley Books G-176)

Paperback 652: Berkley Books G-176 (1st ptg, 1958)

Title: Mystery on Graveyard Head
Author: Edith Dorian
Cover artist: Sternberg (?) (sig. not totally legible)

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• I don't know what these kids were doing, but I'm guessing it has something to do with "graveyard head."
• Fear hand! Or "I'm choking" hand, not sure. (see "graveyard head" joke, above)
• You are *terrible* at hiding, Red.
• Look, if you're gonna make out in a freshly-dug gave, maybe wear shoes?
• The tree behind stalker-man is comically evil.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, whatever 5th-grader wrote this cover copy is very talented. 
• I used to perform magic under the name "The Mysterious Wiggins."
• "A feeling of tense excitement mounts"! (see "graveyard head" joke, above)

Page 123~

The three on the steps grinned at them cheerfully. "Sit right down," Bart said heartily. "Kick off your shoes and take down your hair. Grab yourself a fistful of brownies. This is 'refugee hall'; a fat lady tramped on Sal's instep."

I was with you there til that bit at the end about the fat lady. Maybe ease up on the fistfuls of brownies, Bart.

~RP

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Paperback 625: Meet Me at the Morgue / John Ross Macdonald (Pocket Books 1020)

Paperback 625: Pocket Books 1020 (3rd ptg, 1959)

Title: Meet Me at the Morgue
Author: John Ross Macdonald
Cover artist: Victor Kalen (sic! — it's Victor Kalin)

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Too much hiding.
• I'll give the font one thing—it's unusual. Not sexy. Not scary. Not pretty. But unusual.
• One of the redder books I own.
• I feel like Victor Kalin is cheating here: "I got this sketch ... it's kinda finished ... just throw some red over it."
• If the red weren't translucent, the gender of the person behind the curtain would be Way more ambiguous. 
• This is one of the many names Ross Macdonald had before he settled on Ross Macdonald. His real name was Kenneth Millar.
• This edition came out the year Chandler died (the 54th anniversary of Chandler's death was yesterday—his 125th birthday is later this year).

Best things about this back cover:

• Hey, more cursive—bit more grown-up this time.
• Red Carbuncle, the lovable drunken angry clown!

Page 123~

"Damn my eyes!" He struck himself sharply on the scalp with his clenched fist, but in such a way as not to disturb the part.

'Cause that's how he rebooted his eyes when they froze up.

~RP

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Paperback 515: The Sexually Promiscuous Female / Benjamin Morse, M.D. (Monarch MB 535)

Paperback 515: Monarch Books MB 535 (PBO, 1963)

Title: The Sexually Promiscuous Female
Author: Dr. Benjamin Morse, M.D.
Cover artist: Photo cover

Yours for: Not for Sale (gift to the collection from Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• I don't know who this woman is, but ... we would like to announce that we are in love.
• Sorry, Dr. Morse, your "alarming" report is not quelling my desire to go on a cross-country crime jag with Tina here.
• Love the uneven lettering! This is what happens when you shout "PROMISCUOUS" as you leap from a moving train, which you have robbed because you are on a cross-country crime jag with Tina.
• Sexy sunglasses. Gorgeous gams. Casual footwear. All the trademarks of the modern-day whore.
• She'd be in her late-70s today. So if I'm gonna find her, I better act quick.
• Dr. Morse is (according to the title page) also author of "The Lesbian," which I believe had the famous subtitle: "Or So I Imagine"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Frigidity"?! Oh, come ON!
• "Penetrating"!? Really? Phrasing!
• I love how this book's all "beware this trend" when no one, and I mean no one, buying this book is going to see "The Promiscuous Female" as a problem. More like "... and I can find her ... where? You know, to, er, talk her out of her, uh ... lifestyle. Yeah. That's what I'll do. So what's her number?"

Page 123~

A period of unpaid promiscuity, with all its attendant minor heartbreaks, soon conditions the girl to the point where she wants to strike back at the men who have taken advantage of her.

So ... like a promiscuity internship? Nice. Where does one get ... those?

~RP

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