Paperback 817: Hero's Lust / Kermit Jaediker (Lion 156)

Paperback 817: Lion Books 156 (PBO, 1953)

Title: Hero's Lust
Author: Kermit Jaediker
Cover artist: Lou Marchetti

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• "The Quick Brown Fox wants you should shaddup!"
• That tie has a mind of its own.
• I like the puffy letters.
• Miss Axilla, 1953
• Seriously, though, she's pretty damned hot and I enjoy what she is wearing.  I can't recall seeing a top quite like that on paperback covers before. Spaghetti straps!

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, +1million points for the juxtaposition of "the City stank" with her armpit.
• Aw, I was sad to see the writer give up on the alliteration there in the first paragraph. I can think of at least one double-hard-C phrase that could substitute for "harlot's smile"...
• "Damnfool" is a first-rate adjective.

Page 123~

"No prostitute walks our streets."

The whole page is a delightfully delusional newspaper editorial.

~RP

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Paperback 247: Terror in the Streets / Howard Whitman (Bantam A964)

Paperback 247: Bantam A964 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Terror in the Streets
Author: Howard Whitman
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $10


Best thing about this cover:

• Ah, 1950s paranoia at its finest
• Can't a pretty girl get a haircut at 1 a.m. without being team-stalked by tough guys in olive drab suits anymore? What a world ...
• Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" was based on this book cover
• Maguire would eventually learn his lesson: Put Girl In Foreground!

Best things about this back cover:

• You can tell even from this crowded array of scenes that Maguire is a masterful illustrator. Great faces, action, use of light...
• Love the action in the alley by the garbage cans. Smacked his fedora off with a blackjack. That's about as 50s as 50s violence gets. Fedora still in mid-air. Rich.
• Every quote reads like it's coming out of the mouth of Maude Flanders: "Won't somebody please think of the children!?"

Page 123~

The police are hardly interested in, nor would the average police mentality be capable of understanding, such psycho-dynamics. Police are interested in end-results. When an old homosexual is found dead in his hotel room after picking up a man at a bar, the police just put it down as a "fag murder" and go on from there.

~RP