Showing posts with label Freeman Willis Crofts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freeman Willis Crofts. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Paperback 356: The Cask / Freeman Willis Crofts (Penguin 575)

Paperback 356: Penguin 575 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: The Cask
Author: Freeman Willis Crofts
Cover artist: Uncredited (jonas?)

Yours for: $7

Peng575.Cask

Best things about this cover:
  • It's a mystery. A mystery about ... a cask, I'm guessing. Hey, they can't all be Strip-Tease Girl.
  • I like how there's a picture of a cask on the cover. In case I'd forgotten the title. I also like the wee mustachioed man.
  • I do like the color scheme. And the soft tones and surreal shapes of the buildings and street.

Peng575bc.Cask

Best things about this back cover:
  • Freeman Willis [zzzzzzzzzz....]. This is *literally* more than you'd ever want to know about Freeman Willis Crofts.
  • This is from when paperbacks were still trying to be highbrow and were taking themselves way too seriously. In just a few years things would get sexed up and pulped up and generally get interesting.

Page 123~

"It is with the utmost regret I have to tell you, M. Boirac, that your wife was undoubtedly murdered by strangulation. Further, you must know that she had been dead several days when that photograph was taken."

Wow. Blunt.

~RP

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