Paperback 1171: The Case of the Backward Mule / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 855)

Paperback 1171: Pocket Books 855 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: The Case of the Backward Mule

Author: Erle Stanley Gardner

Cover artist: Frank McCarthy

Condition: 6/10    

Value: $8

Best things about this cover: 

• It's too bad this is such a vile representation of violence against women ("she had it coming!"?), because it's a great action painting. Her posture, her face, her hands ... her hair! The hair is like its own entity, a force of nature separate from whatever human drama surrounds it. The hair is eternal. The hair will be here after the Backward Mule is dead and buried (I'm assuming the dude is the Backward Mule). 
• Real talk: I kinda like my man's accent color.
• Weirdly, despite having a Perry Mason-like "The Case of the ___" title, this book is not a Perry Mason book! Instead, it features someone named Terry Clane, "Student and friend of the Orient (!) who does some amateur sleuthing in San Francisco." The whole book is set firmly in the world of SF's Chinatown, which you could never, ever tell by the cover (or the back cover, for that matter)

Best things about this back cover: 

• "A cigarette dangled from her lower lip"—classic image. They could've put that on the cover.
• "She spat out" lol I like this dame. She should hit him. That would be more believable. And enjoyable. 
• The writing here is florid. Sub-pulp. Borderline corny. I don't hate it. "She was as touchy as a trainload of nitroglycerine." LOL. Someone's been watching Wages of Fear (which hadn't come out yet, though the novel on which it's based came out just one year before this paperback was published)
• "Pure, overdeveloped viciousness" is my favorite kind of viciousness. None of these cheap knock-offs. I need it unadulterated and swollen!

Page 123~

    "In our business, we don't do too much speculative thinking, Mr. Clane. We investigate. And when we investigate we make it a point to cover all of the possibilities."
    "I see," Clane said.

    "Even," Malloy went on, "including that poker-faced Chinese servant of yours, Yat T'oy."

    "I see," Clane said.

He can't really do anything, but man can he see!

~RP

P.S. Frank McCarthy seems to have specialized in punch-in-the-face covers. Here's another one from my collection (Paperback 397)

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Paperback 1153: A Murder Is Announced / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 820)

Paperback 1153: Pocket Books 820 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: A Murder Is Announced

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Frank McCarthy

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10    

Best things about this cover: 

• When your CPR compressions are *way* too hard...
• Lady looks like she's competing in some kind of haunted house biathlon, and losing
• Dead guy's right hand is gonna haunt my dreams for days. I count five fingers, but somehow it looks like seven

Best things about this back cover: 

• Ah, the classified ads. I miss those. People advertising help wanted, selling furniture, announcing murders. The good old days.
• Pretty close to Halloween to being going to strange women's houses. Particularly strange women named Letitia Blacklock. Oh, did the lights go out? Were you "locked" in "blackness"? What did you expect to happen!? 
• God bless Pocket Books for the artist credit. Love an artist credit. Hate having to track artists down (or, worse, and more common, not being able to find out who did the art at all)

Page 123~

"If you'd been up against it, and then, rather like a shivering stray cat, you'd found a home and cream and a warm stroking hand and you were called Pretty Pussy and somebody thought the world of you ... You'd do a lot to keep that ..."

Boy, would I. You got that right.

~RP

P.S. My long winter hiatus is over. Gonna try to stick to a regular T/Th publishing sched. for the foreseeable future, with possible weekend posts if I have the time. Thank you to loyal readers. Tell a friend! xo

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Paperback 397: The Fighting Edge / William MacLeod Raine (Pocket Books 691)

Paperback 397: Pocket Books 391 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Fighting Edge
Author: William MacLeod Raine
Cover artist: Frank McCarthy

Yours for: Not for sale (gift to the collection from Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• If you stare at that giant furry meaty ginger club of a hand for any length of time, it will start to look obscene. You will have nightmares. There will be blood.
• Blood here looks fake and lipstickish, though—like the guy's fist was, just minutes earlier, engaged in a Señor Wences routine. "S'alright if I punch you in the face!? ... S'alright!"

Best things about this back cover:

• "You'll find a new rider in the bunkhouse!" — it unintentional gayness a requirement of all western cover copy? "I like 'em man-size" !? Come on!
• "I'm no dry nurse to fellows shy of sand" — nice syntax, Tex. I think this is what got that guy on the front cover punched in the face by Señor Gargantufist.

Page 123~

Dillon had taken off his high-heeled boots because they were hurting his feet. He observed that Walker, lying fully dressed on the blankets, was still wearing his.

A rare glimpse backstage at an Old West drag show. Catty banter to follow, I'm sure.

~RP

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