Paperback 592: The Obstinate Murderer / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace Double G-519)

Paperback 592: Ace Double G-519 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, 1965)

Title: The Obstinate Murderer / The Old Battle Axe 
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best thing about this cover:

• "You wanna know how I got to be a murderer? Persistence, that's how. Never say die. Or, you know, say 'DIE' really loud and then, bam, bring down the axe!"
• The harrowing tale of a generic detective who pursued a generic whey-faced woman through the studio of famed artist Alberto Giacometti for some reason, and ...
• It's like she's pleading with the reader to help her get out of this painting.
• Holding gets raves from obscure regional media: The Burlington News says ... Waterbury American raves ... New Bedford Standard-Times opines ... 

Best things about this other cover:

• "Oh, newel post. I guess it's just you and me now, old friend."
• Her dust inspections were nothing if not thorough.
• The full title is "The Old Battle Axe Is Wedged In My Forehead Help Me Get It Out"

Page 123~ (from The Old Battle Axe)

"The wooden railing's been broken up there at the head of those steps. It's a good sixty-foot drop, and he landed on the rocks. Death must have been almost instantaneous."

"I'm glad of that," she said, sipping the whisky. It did not burn her now; she did not bother with the water. 

"I'm glad of that," HA ha. The old battle axe likes her double-entendre neat!

~RP

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Paperback 574: The Innocent Mrs. Duff and The Virgin Huntress / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace Double G-509)

Paperback 574: Ace Double G-509 (1st thus / 1st thus, 1963)

Title: The Innocent Mrs. Duff / The Virgin Huntress
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $11

Best things about this cover:

• Singularly ugly. The only thing I can really get behind here is her hair, cutting its epic, destructive path across the lower Great Lakes.
• Cat: "Meow, why am I in this picture. Meow."
• Why has the lady incompletely painted her face like the Italian flag?
• That insane Puritan-looking doll is one of the creepiest things I've ever seen on a cover. At least I  hope that's a doll. . .
• Somewhere, a magician mourns his exclusion from this painting.

Best things about this other cover:

• More phenomenal, outsized hair. Also, she appears to be mowing the lawn with her chin.
• She reminds me of Kim Novak in "Vertigo," only with a disembodied head and scary psychokinetic powers.
• Seriously, the cover painting C-team must've got this book assignment. Blocky, ugly, head-y. Junk.

Page 123~

He was choking; he could not draw any air into his lungs. His neck swelled; there was a frightful pressure in the back of his head. O God ... This is it ...

Holding bravely tackles the issue of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Way ahead of her time.

~RP

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Paperback 573: Net of Cobwebs / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Bantam 26) (w / dust jacket)

Paperback 573: Bantam 26 (1st ptg, 1946) (dust jacket, undated)

Title: Net of Cobwebs
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited (original) / [signature appears to read "Gillen" ?!] (dust jacket)

Yours for: $75

Best things about this cover:

• I vote "Sucker!"
• This is what happens when you park your car in the living room.
• Peeping Toms get off on the strangest things...
• This is the cover of the dust jacket. As I have said before, dust-jacketed paperbacks are quite rare in any condition. This one is remarkably tight. Dust jacket and all its permagloss are completely intact and uncreased.

Best things about this back cover:

• I do like a "floating lady heads" cover.
• Wow, that red ink really bleeds. 
• One of those rare instances where it looks like the cover to the original hardback edition was better.

Here are the front and back covers of the original, un-dustjacketed edition:



Page 123~

He got out of bed, naked as a worm, and went to the window; there was a gray mist outside, but it was day. He could see the garage. And that made him remember all of it. Murder, blackmail, grief. Who wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea?

This was taken from her earlier short story, "The Worm Who Sold His Farm and Went to Sea."

~RP

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Paperback 572: The Innocent Mrs. Duff / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Dell 194)

Paperback 572: Dell 194 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: The Innocent Mrs. Duff
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $20
Best things about this cover:

• Love this cover, mainly because I had No idea what I was looking at at first (and still get vaguely confused every time I look at it now). At first I thought the shape inside the bottle was some kind of high-heeled shoe. Then I thought the shot glass was the barrel of some gun that the man had laid on the table. Now I understand that it's really just a depressed drunk guy slouching forward on some kid of bar, but the strange arrangements of shapes is still really intriguing. The twinkle of light on the rim of the glass is my favorite part..
• Also love the extended flourish on the capital "T" in "The"—makes the word seem as if it has emanated from the bottle.
• Ooh, "crime map on the back cover"—let's check it out.

Best things about this back cover:

• Love the excessively detailed Floor Plan. No toilet in the place, but ... minor detail.
• That is a very, very odd place for a carousel. 
• The text boxes marking locations are comically unnecessary. Surprised there aren't "Tree" and "Grass" boxes. Of *all* the things in this painting, the *one* thing I'd expect to get a text box explanation (the carousel) is the one that doesn't have one.

Page 123~

Locked in his room, he lay down on the bed and fell asleep at once. He waked with a start, in a flame of anger against Reggie. She wants to leave me here, does she? All right. Let her go. Let her go to hell.

When I read this, all I hear is the voice of Charlton Heston in "Planet of the Apes."

~RP

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Paperback 571: Speak of the Devil and Kill Joy / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace Double G-534)

Paperback 571: Ace Double G-534 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, 1963ish)

Title: Speak of the Devil / Kill Joy
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Rudolph Nappi / Uncredited

Yours for: $11

Best things about this cover:

• The Devil Wore Burberry!
• You'd look that way too if you'd just watched Fozzie Bear explode.
• Woodsfolk have the strangest mating rituals. Here we see the stiff-legged mirroring dance...
• Fear-hands aplenty!
• That pitchforky, two-pronged "I" is fantastic.

Best things about this other cover:

• Sure, Joy's a total bitch, but there's no need to get violent.
• This highly fragmented cover is indeed killing my joy.
• This cover tells me nothing about the book and there's no boobs so fail.

Page 123~

"For the love of God—" Miss Peterson began in Swedish.

~RP

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Paperback 569: The Blank Wall / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Pocket Books 662)

Paperback 569: Pocket Books 662 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Blank Wall
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Harvey Kidder

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Lucia was horrified to find her husband was cheating on her with ... a boat.
• "Hey, Lucia, this glass-bottomed boat is awesome. I can see, like, fishes and stuff." "Screw the fishes, Harold! My necklace! Do you see my necklace!?"
• The "jail bait" is off-screen. This here is the MILFy heroine, Lucia. I love this book. You can probably tell by now that I went through a bit of a Holding phase at one point. She's deeply underrated, and this book in particular is a fascinating, domestic twist on the hard-boiled novel. One of my ten favorite crime novels, easy.

Best things about this back cover:

• "BUT THE TYPEWRITER IS STUCK ON ALL CAPS"

Page 123~

She stood silent, her lashes lowered. She knew that he was looking at her; she knew that she was dark, slender and lovely; she knew that he was waiting for her to look up, and presently she raised her eyes.

Seriously, this is one of the hottest scenes in the book, when you can see (though the novel never has anyone say it outright) that she (respectable wartime housewife) and this hoodlum-turned-savior are kind of in love, in this super-romantic and criminal and impossible way. Things can't, and don't, end well, but their relationship is amazing—unique, compelling, believable. Also, this is a great WWII-era book. Lots of details about ordinary, domestic life during war. Oh, and it deals with race in ways that most crime novels of the period totally avoid. The black housekeeper, Sibyl, is a crucial, well-developed character. Did I mention I love this book? I wish Holding's stuff were more widely available.

~RP

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Paperback 568: Net of Cobwebs and The Unfinished Crime / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace Double G-530)

Paperback 568: Ace Double G-530 (1st ptg, 1963)

Titles: Net of Cobwebs / The Unfinished Crime
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: [Bob Schuller ??? see signature, running vertically on right, 1/2 in. from chair] / Uncredited

Yours for: $9

Best things about this cover:

• Evil genius tests early prototype of the chairs seen on "The Voice."
• Evil genius savors his successful attempt to make fire burn green.
• Evil genius remembers when he used to play Eddie Munster.

Best things about this other cover:

• A frank tale about one girl's life-threatening addiction to cat-huffing.
• "The Girl Who Mistook Her Cat For Her Mouth"
• Mary found that they key to really realistic finger puppets was fresh animal corpses.

Page 123~

He went into the library and closed the door behind him, stood looking at Blanche, while she looked back at him, with her great, hollow dark eyes.
"I'm so dam' sick of her...." he thought. 

You can tell he's a tough guy by the way he drops the "n" when he says "damn" ...

~RP

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Paperback 409: The Party Was the Pay-Off / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Mercury Mystery 175)

Paperback 409: Mercury Mystery 175 (n.d. — early '50s, 1st ptg)

Title: The Party Was the Pay-Off
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Stefan Salter

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Aside from the fact that someone once used this book as a coaster (ugh), the book is lovely, square, bright. I think of Salter as more of a high-end illustrator than a dynamic cover artist, but I like his work nonetheless. Subtle, graceful, impressive.
• Can't decide if I like "Too Many Bottles" or "The Party Was the Pay-Off" better as a title. Thankfully, I own both versions, so I'm good. Not sure why they changed the title to get away from bottles and then made the cover concept all about bottles ... but they did, so there.
• Holding does suspenseful domestic drama better than anyone I know.

Best things about this back cover:

• This book is interesting if only for the fact that the protagonist, James Brophy, is a writer, and Holding has unique insight on the profession, as someone who had to deal with the implications of the pulps (working-class, male-oriented, low-paying) /slicks (middle-class, female-oriented, much better-paying) divide:

"But I'm no celebrity," he had explained. "So far , I've worked mostly for the pulps. I'm just beginning to break into the slicks."

She had wanted to know what the pulps were, and what the slicks; she had wanted to know what he was working on then; she had listened with an interest he had never before encountered.

"I think artists ought to be taken care of," she had said.

Brophy believed that he was a pretty good writer, and that someday he would be a very much better one, but he was not inclined to think of himself as an artist.

• Lulu's very name tells you everything you need to know about her. Pretty, bouncy, status-conscious, not the brightest — all in all, a poor match for Brophy. And quickly dead.

Page 123~

She spoke in a tone that was almost preposterously lofty. But that's the way she feels, poor devil, thought Brophy. Anything she does is right. Has to be, because she can always bring out such a noble motive.

"So don't worry, Jimmy," she said, with a pleasant social smile, and turned away to mount the stairs, followed by the matron.

~RP

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Paperback 406: Dark Power / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Black Cat No. 14)

Paperback 406: Black Cat No. 14 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Dark Power
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: "F.W." (any idea? anyone?)

Yours for: $22


Best things about this cover:

• "I am the eye in the sky / Looking at you-u-u / I can read your mind..."
• LOVE how the tree is reaching out to pick up the lady.
• This reminds me of the opening of Henry James's "Turn of the Screw": "Oh boy, a new job, I can't wait! I hope the kids are interesting ... uh ... wait. This can't be right. Hello?"
• It also reminds me a Very late-career Bette Davis movie called ... hang on ... aha, "Burnt Offerings!" Look, the movie poster even features the creepy old house with the single attic window lit up! Bette Davis! It's good/bad, for sure.

• To be honest, I think the front cover of Dark Power is kind of beautiful. And that logo—so great they dedicated the whole back page to it.

["This is not the book you seek. Back away, slowly ..."]

Page 123~ (book only 120 pages long, so ... p. 23!)

Pale, unusually serious, she went down the stairs. And there in the lounge she saw a stranger, a tall, fair-haired young man, sitting stretched out in an armchair, and smoking a cigarette. When he caught sight of her, he rose.

Wow, that last sentence ... there's a lot in just those two final words. Sets the stage for one of his next lines: "I thought you were going to be repulsive [...] horn-rimmed spectacles — you know — one of these nice girls."

~RP

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Paperback 395: Hostess to Murder / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Mystery Novel Classic 58)

Paperback 395: Mystery Novel Classic No. 58 (1st ptg, 1943)

Title: Hostess to Murder
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $18


Best things about this cover:

• These early digests are kind of horrible, coverartwise.
• The hand is sort of unintentionally frightening, in a jointless, put-your-eye-out kind of way.

Back cover fail, once again (just a repeated pattern of the publisher's logo), so ... straight to ...

Page 123~

"Whither away?" called Cartaret, gaily.

No typos were made in the typing of that last sentence. I like how it all hovers between the nonsensical and ... well, the really nonsensical. It's like a lost line from "Jabberwocky."

~RP

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Paperback 388: Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, August, 1955

Paperback 388

Title: Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy (August, 1955)
Authors: Poul Anderson, Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Anthony Boucher, and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Ed Emshwiller

Yours for: SOLD!


Best things about this cover:

• Farmer Ted Goes to Planet Blortron
• If Norman Rockwell did paintings about interstellar, interspecies sexual confusion, they might look something like this: "Wheeeere are youuuuuu goinnnng!? Youuuuu sed youuuuu luvved meeeeee... Take this hellllmet off riiight nowwww..."
• I love the highly underrated Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and I'm pretty sure I bought this magazine ONLY because she had a story in it (she's more an eerie thriller writer than a scifi writer, normally)

Best things about this back cover:

• Well if Eva Gabor and Guy Lombardo say so, who am I to disagree?
• Love the font on "IMAGINATION."
• "Better newsstands" ... ??? "Man, this is one classy newsstand! ... it's got an awning and everything!"

Page 123~

from "The Tiddlywink Warriors" by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson

Too late, Alex remembered that he had left Toka without a supply of the potent liquor which was so much a part of everyday Hoka life. Whether known as wine, red-eye, rum, grog, uisgebeatha or Old Spaceman, it was always present in wholesale quantities. Now, for the first time, Alex found himself with a bunch who had it not.

When I am a very elderly man, living on some lunar outpost because of nuclear war / End Times, I will drink "Old Spaceman." Proudly.

~RP

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Paperback 288: Bianca in Black / Elizabeth Sax Rohmer (Airmont M3)

Paperback 288: Airmont Books M3 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Bianca in Black
Author: Elizabeth Sax Rohmer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: not for sale (gift of Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• First of all, if the cover is to be believed, then the bride wore navy. Second, it appears the bride also wore a wig the color of pink lemonade.
• If Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Sax Rohmer and Cornell Woolrich wrote a book together, it would be this book. In fact, I'm not convinced "Elizabeth Sax Rohmer" is a real person. Who gives his first name to his daughter as a middle name? Elisabeth Sanxay Holding was very big at the time this pb was published, and many of her book covers have this rain-streaked, pseudo-gothic look to them. Cornell Woolrich wrote "The Bride Wore Black," a great revenge story (though his greatest was probably Rendezvous in Black, one of my favoritest works of crime fiction of all time).
• "Bianca" means "white" in Italian. Cute.
• God, her neck is a hot mess. Looks like a colorful, irregular UPC (i.e. barcode).
• Doug Peterson gave me a bunch of campy old paperbacks when I saw him at a recent crossword tournament I attended. I'll be showcasing them all week. This is the first of four.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Now they're just patently, blatantly, shamelessly ripping off Cornell Woolrich (who wrote "The Bride Wore Black")
• "Internationally famous mannequin"!? More famous than that chick from the movie "Mannequin?"
• I wish the front cover had more "daring black swimsuit" and less "startling red-gold hair."

Page 123~

"Normally, Natalie has a very good brain."

~RP

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Paperback 204: The Girl Who Had to Die + The Blank Wall / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace G-512)

Paperback 204: Ace G-512 (1st ptg / 1st ptg)

Title: The Girl Who Had to Die / The Blank Wall
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• There was this floating head that liked to eat sailboats, which made the tall, dark, mysterious man on the beach very sad. The end.
• What is it with the rainy day covers on all these Holding novels? Dreary and decidedly unhot. More skin, please.
• Actually, on third or fourth look, the streaks look less like rain than like the trim on some elaborate fur hat. Or a really, really bad haircut.

Best things about this other cover:

• This is one of my favorite pieces of crime fiction ever written. Ever. Seriously, it's that good. And unusual. Super suspenseful, with really complex and interesting characters. Women that aren't just femmes fatales. Just great. Provides a fascinating glimpse into domestic life during WWII (i.e. while the husband is away at war). Wish it would stay in @#$@ing print!
• More lazy art. Etch-a-sketch posing as op-art. And I think the guy from the other cover just walked through the book and ended up here. That lady is not a very good hider.

Page 123~ (from The Blank Wall)

"Here's something you might be glad of," he said, and held out three little capsules, bright yellow.

~RP

Paperback 203: Who's Afraid + Widow's Mite / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace G-524)

Paperback 203: Ace G-524 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, ca. 1963)

Titles: Who's Afraid / Widow's Mite
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Brulé / uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Man hands. Seriously, look at those things. My god. I fear for her upper head.
• "I remember embracing some generic man ... and the corpse of Bela Lugosi was there ... oh, it's all so fuzzy..."
• This book should be called "Who's Depressed?"

Best things about this other cover:

• "... and he threw the decapitated head of the young boy through the open window. The End."
• I guess there was a sale on "Dour Blue" at the art store when these covers were being painted.
• That blurb is pretty tepid: "Eh, you could do worse, I guess."
  
• Is a "mite" what I think it is? Dang, a "widow's mite" is "A small contribution made by one who has little" This is disappointing, as I was imagining this would be a story about a. a widow who kept a tiny bug as a pet, or b. a widow who enjoyed wearing a MITRE (of mysterious origin)

Page 123 (of "Widow's Mite")~

"Now!" she said. "Now you're going to get what's coming to you, you damn smug little bitch! You're going to be arrested, any minute. You'll be in jail tonight. And you'll end up in the electric chair!"

~RP