Paperback 960: Bedrooms Have Windows / A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) (Dell 0511)

Paperback 960: Dell 0511 (1st New Dell ed., 1963)

Title: Bedrooms Have Windows
Author: A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Darryl Greene

Estimated value: $15-20
Condition: 10/10 (a time-travel kind of copy, like it's 1963 again; unread, square, shiny, bright blue page edges, ridiculous)

Best things about this cover:

• She looks worried. Maybe she needs Yet Another Cigarette.
• How big is her bed? The headboard appears to start in the far corner of the room. Is her room just one big bed? That's pretty cool.
• This cover is exquisitely balanced and demonstrates a nice attention to detail. I'm somehow transfixed by the latches, like miniature sentries at the bottom of the sill.
• Gauzy curtain, also lovely. And that tension between the tightly enclosed, highly segmented left half of the window and the dramatic, animated, border-bursting right half—love it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ooh, close-up. Normally I don't like recycled back covers, but this one makes nice use of that window gridding, covering the horizontally-lined left pane with horizontal lines of text, while leaving the right half airy and open.
• God bless Dell for *clearly crediting* cover artists more than most other publishers.
• I've written about this book before, in an earlier (1952) edition. Here's the cover:

And the write-up (Paperback 211!)

Page 123~

The taffy-haired blonde who was standing in front of the mirror, surveying her partially clothed figure with quite evident approval, was the girl who had picked me up the night before as her escort, and had taken me to the motor court. 

Aw, how quaint. "Motor court." You can do all kinds of illicit things in a "motor court" and still feel pretty good about yourself. It's positively Arthurian. "Casual sex, m'lady?"

~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 474: The Third Bedroom / Brenda Baker (Fabian Z-136)

Paperback 474: Fabian Z-136 (PBO, 1960)

Title: The Third Bedroom
Author: Brenda Baker
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $19

Best things about this cover:

• There were three things Brad loved more than anything else: bright yellow dress shirts, mirrored walls, and women covered in fondant.
• These curtains make me laugh every time I look at this book. It's like the artist just pawned off the design concept on Mrs. Jenkins' 1st grade art class.
• That woman is either a yoga master or has dislocated her shoulder. You try putting your elbow behind your head. Go ahead, I'll wait.
• The mirror symbolizes Brad's dual identity: the gentleman, and the slightly more boring gentleman.

Best things about this back cover:

• Feel the sadness.
• Fabian (and Saber and Vega) had lots of legal troubles due to the highly sexual and controversial content of many of their books. Publisher Sanford Aday and partner Wallace de Ortega-Maxey would eventually be convicted in U.S. District Court (in Western Michigan) of trafficking in obscenity. Almost all Fabian, Saber, and Vega books in the late 50s / early 60s have legal news as part of their end material. For instance, this book contains a report on the publisher's own recent court victories, and a long discussion of recent legal victories for booksellers all over the country. This is yet another reason I love the Aday paperbacks, cheesy and low-rent as they are: they defied the moral hypocrisy of their day and challenged the legal system in ways that (ultimately) mattered. You're not going to have much problem getting some high-minded literary professional into court to defend "Ulysses." Good luck getting the same guy to defend "Sex Life of a Cop."

Page 123~

I fully believed then that God spoke to me, but it was like when your conscience tells you something, you're not too sure of what it means. But I calmed down rather quickly, and after I had taken my seat upon the divan I took a cigarette and lit it.

And ye, verily, God said unto her, "Betty ... you must go to Flavor Country."

~RP

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