Title: Mystery Walks the Campus
Author: Annette Turngren
Cover artist: Harry Schaare
Yours for: $6
Best things about this cover:
- "Mystery" would be a pretty cool girl's name, come to think about it.
- This is a great cover painting. No, really. It's clearly geared toward a female audience (i.e. the woman is in serious student mode and decidedly non-tarted-up), so it doesn't have what we'd normally call "Great Girl Art (GGA)," but she's *really* well rendered. I love art that conveys tension through small movements, especially as those movements are captured in clothing. I'm mesmerized by her right foot, as well as the flow of her jacket and the wrinkles across the front of her skirt. Her environment is pure noir. All rain-slicked pavement and moonlight/streetlight. Good stuff.
- This reminds me of a specific part of the U Michigan campus—specifically, where campus proper meets South U. Ave. But I'm guessing this also looks like about a million campuses.
Best things about this back cover:
- Endicott! I live near there.
- You gotta love a mystery that turns on "the mutterings of a parakeet." I imagine the parakeet pacing in his cage, smoking and then occasionally saying something about what you can do with your desire to hear him "sing."
- I like how excited the Christian Science Monitor is about addiction and compulsion.
Page 123~
They took a cab home, and Wendy tried hard to be pleasant—and sympathetic about the headache. But she had a feeling it was as non-existent as Sky's hay fever had been the night of the barbecue supper. Sometimes I'd like to shake her, she thought.
As if Sky's name alone isn't reason enough to want to shake her.
~RP
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