Paperback 1096: Red Harvest / Dashiell Hammett (Perma Books M-3043)

Paperback 1096: Perma Books M-3043 (1st ptg, 1956)

Title: Red Harvest

Author: Dashiell Hammett

Cover artist: Lou Marchetti

Condition: 8/10

Value: $25

Best things about this cover: 

• More like Red Housecoat! Just an amazing garment.
• "Say 'candy cane' again. I dare you. I double dare you, motherfucker. Say 'candy cane' one more goddamn time!"
• The geometry of this interaction is mesmerizing. The hand triangle! Her left hand and her right cross and his "fear hand"—so much intense hand drama. Plus that look of complete contempt on her face ... god bless you, Lou Marchetti, king among cover artists!

Best things about this back cover: 

• Not sure whose idea it was to put the "-DER" over the "WHO-" but it was not a good one.
• This is a fairly succinct and vivid account of a thing that actually happens in the book. It does make me want to read the book. Nothing fancy going on back here, but in terms of drumming up interest in the story, mission accomplished.
• I miss laudanum. And ice picks. Do people still do laudanum and kill with ice picks? Inebriation and murder were just *better* in the old days, man.

Page 123~

    "Reno and his mob were in the can. Reno was Yard's pup, but he didn't mind crossing up his head-man. He already had the idea that he was about ready to take the berg away from Lew." I turned to Reno and asked: "Isn't that it?"

    He looked at me woodenly and said: "You're telling it."

    I continued telling it. 

I love how much Hammett loves hardboiled slang. Always got the tough-guy patter down pat. This is what makes Hammett so enthralling—a great ear for dialogue, which makes the whole criminal scene feel dramatic and authentic. 

~RP

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Paperback 925: The Thin Man / Dashiell Hammett (Perma Books M4202)

Paperback 925: Perma Books M4202 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: The Thin Man
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Estimated value: $15-20 (perfect, square, bright)

Best things about this cover:

• Nick looks like I feel these days. "Fuck all this. Where's the bar?"
• The color shading on this is all kinds of weird. Conventional figurative art that looks like it's been cut out of a magazine by an 8-year-old and then glued into the white rectangle.
• Joey Backwards chair is explaining certain anatomical facts about himself to Millie Sweetgams, much to her amusement.
• ASTA!

 Best things about this back cover:

• Bah. Same.
• Cover is cropped weird. Very close to lopping off lettering on the left.
• "When you were wrestling with Mimi [!?] didn't you get excited." "Oh, a little." Man, between front and back covers, you'd think "The Thin Man" were subtitled "All About Boners."

Page 123~

"Good God, no! She hates men more than any woman I've ever known who wasn't a Lesbian."

Sorry, fans of movie-Nick. Didn't mean to startle you with book-Nick's dickishness. Mix a cocktail and drink until you forget you ever read the above quote.

~RP

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Paperback 864: A Man Called Spade / Dashiell Hammett (Dell 411)

Paperback 864: Dell 411 (2nd ptg, 1st thus, 1950)

Title: A Man Called Spade
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Estimated value: $30

Best things about this cover:

• Spade's tie is super-excited for battle.
• If you looked in a 1950 encyclopedia under "Private Dick": this picture. Chiseled. Determined. Behatted. Textbook.
• Fear Hand Photobomb!
• The scale / perspective is All wrong on this, but given that awesome green shirt, I'm gonna allow it.
• "She screamed as Spade dashed up the stairs"—get it? "Dashed"? Yeah, you get it.
• I have a friend whose kid is named Dashiell. Art Spiegelman's son is named Dashiell. This concludes the Dashiell-shout-out portion of my the program.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• Whoa. You know, sometimes we forget that 1940s apartments were all long couches and putting greens.
• Max Bliss is the best unintentional porn name I've come across in a Long time.
• I love a pitcher of Bloody Marys as much as anyone, but maybe ease up on the celery there.
• Wow, Max Bliss's daughter is taking that "50 Shades of Grey" thing a bit literally.

'
Page 123~ (from "Too Many Have Lived")

She was short, square, as if carved economically from a cube. 

Talk about economical. That is some haiku-esque objectification right there. Classic.

~RP

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Paperback 819: The Dain Curse / Dashiell Hammett (Vintage V-624)

Paperback 819: Vintage V-624 (1st thus, 1978)

Title: The Dain Curse
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Alan Reingold

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Oh, '70s. Never change.
• Aside from the horrible color scheme, the other things that scream "'70s" are the particular look of the cult leader (very hippy-Jesus-chesthair) and the Manson-murder-looking girl.
• I actually kind of love this cover. Highly unusual, lots going on. Long live Mustachioed and Fedoraed James Coburn!

Best things about this back cover:

• Just the dumb-looking statue and some words. With the ornate title font now in isolation, we are left to marvel at its bright blue shadow. The book really wants to convey period authenticity, really, it does, but …
• The aesthetic appears to be "Deco Goes to Woodstock."
• Ross Macdonald secretly hated Chandler (for good and bad reasons), and so every quote I read from him now about anyone else's greatness, including his own, always contains a tacit, "So Fuck You, Ray!" This includes the Macdonald blurb often used on Chandler covers.
• I tend to leave books just as I bought them. Hence the '90s price tag. No sticker puller, I.

Page 123~

"Now how can you say that?" he remonstrated. "Ain't she a dope fiend? And cracked in the bargain…?"

I would read "Ain't She a Dope Fiend?"

~RP

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Paperback 757: Hammett Homicides / Dashiell Hammett (Dell 223)

Paperback 757: Dell 223 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Hammett Homicides
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Taste the (lead) rainbow!
• Uh, guys? I think it's probably dead now.
• I see a pretty butterfly.
• Gerald Gregg is my favorite early, semi-abstract, non-sleazy cover artist.

Best things about this back cover:

• [ahem] … MAPBACK!
• So iconic—Hammett's S.F.!
• Sausaleto? What the?! … aw, I can't stay mad at you, mapback! Come here!

Page 123~ (opening paragraph of "The Main Death")

The captain told me Hacken and Begg were handling the job. I caught them leaving the detectives' assembly room. Begg was a freckled heavyweight, as friendly as a Saint Bernard puppy, but less intelligent. Lanky Detective-Sergeant Hacken, not so playful, carried the team's brains behind his worried hatchet face.

~RP

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Paperback 633: The Big Knockover / Dashiell Hammett (Vintage V-829)

Paperback 633: Vintage V-829 (1st ptg, 1972)

Title: The Big Knockover
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• There's a '70s font if there ever was one. All puffy and whimsical and weird. Especially like the dots on the "I"s — little balls rolling back and forth in a half-pipe. 
• I believe that is what they call a tidy sum. 
• The Hellman intro is remarkable. Almost entirely biographical. Vivid and thoughtful and touching.

Best things about this back cover:

• I guess this is where I write my notes.
• Tulip. Hmm, I did not know that. I do not like unfinished novels. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.
• Mostly Op stories. Starts with "The Gutting of Couffignal," "Fly Paper," and "The Scorched Face." Not a bad opening gambit.

Page 123~

(from "This King Business")

We went to a much-gilded restaurant two blocks from the hotel, where a gypsy orchestra played on a little balcony stuck insecurely high on one wall. All the waiters and half the diners seemed to know the boy. He bowed and smiled to this side and that as he walked down to a table near the far end, where two men were waiting for him. 

~RP

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Paperback 518: Red Harvest / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 241)

Paperback 518: Pocket Books 241 (1st ptg, 1943)

Title: Red Harvest
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: H. Lawrence Hoffman

Yours for: $17

Best things about this cover:

• A classic hard-boiled novel. This one's been well read, but is still solid. Pleasantly aged. Late-night, nearly-empty bus station quality.
• That's a pretty awful hand. And the smoke looks like a poop parsnip. And the blood is orange. I still like it.
• Haven't read this in a Long while. Might be time.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A BLOODY HUMORESQUE" = gold! Like you'd Ever see a word like "humoresque" on a piece of popular fiction now. 
• Ellipsis ... much?
• "Choice underworld vernacular" pretty much says it all about what makes the best hard-boiled writing so delectable.
• "A harvest of ill-grown crimson weeds!"
• Wait, those are quotes??? Had they not yet figured out the standard for blurb presentation yet in 1943? "What if we just throw all these sentences down in a jumble, separate them with ellipses, then just list the names of the quotation authors in a heap at the end. Readers will love that."

Page 123~

"Now hop to it," I said. "And don't kid yourself that there's any law in Poisonville except what you make for yourself."

Hardboiled philosophy has rarely been so clearly, succinctly, perfectly expressed.

~RP

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Paperback 291: The Maltese Falcon / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 268)

Paperback 291: Pocket Books 268 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: The Maltese Falcon
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Leo Manso / Stanley Meltzoff

Yours for: Hell no

The following is so self-evidently awesome that I refuse to sully it with my usual commentary:

Here's the original 1944 cover:



And now here's the cover of the DUST JACKET (you heard me) they issued several years later (this image went on to grace the cover of a later Permabooks edition)



Page 123:

"Morning, Sam. Set down and bite an egg." The hotel-detective stared at Spade's temple. "By God, somebody maced you plenty!"

~RP

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Paperback 116: The Dain Curse / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 295)

Paperback 116: Pocket Books 295 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Dain Curse
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: sadly, uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "Demons, I cast thee out!"
• Where did her pupils go?
• This is the rare "beheading" cover (I'm kidding - though her head does look like it was photo-shopped, badly, onto her torso)
• I think her head has snapped back in revulsion from her assailant's fetid odor. That may explain the disappearing pupils as well.
• I do like how he knocks her head so hard it goes out of frame.

Best things about this back cover:

• "... and you're cursed with your mother's blood on your hands in babyhood" - aside from being enigmatic and disturbing ... "Babyhood?" Is that a word? Sounds like a good title for a talking babies movie starring at least one of the Wayans Brothers and, oh, let's say Ice Cube. It'll be like "Baby Geniuses," only ... blacker.
• This may be the first book I've posted to feature the wartime exhortation to the reader to mail the book to a serviceman overseas. Very cool historical marking.

Page 123~

It was postmarked San Francisco, nine o'clock Saturday morning. Inside was a soiled and crookedly torn piece of brown wrapping paper, with one sentence - as poorly printed with pencil as the address - on it: "Any body that wants Mrs. Carter can have same by paying $10000-----" There was no date, no salutation, no signature.

~RP