Paperback 987: New York: Confidential / Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer (Dell 1534)

Paperback 987: Dell 1534 (2nd ptg, 1951)

Title: New York: Confidential
Author: Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Estimated value: $12-15
Condition: 8/10

Best things about this cover:

• Guys! Dolls! Together!
• Robert Stanley's people are always ridiculously rich and creamy.
• Seriously, the art is gorgeous. That dark aquamarine NYC night sky somehow works perfectly.

Best things about this back cover:

• Map! Back! Mapback!
• It's a pretty dang dull map, from a design point of view, but the "Key" on p. 240 is amazing. All those little numbers on the map represent "Hotels," "Night Clubs & Restaurants," "Theaters," and "Shopping":

Also, there are appendices of cool info like "Headwaiters' Names" (!?) and a "Glossary of Harlemisms":



Page 123~

Do not use cheap perfume when night-clubbing (or at any time).

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 985: Runyon First and Last / Damon Runyon (Graphic 30)

Paperback 985: Graphic 30 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Runyon First and Last
Author: Damon Runyon
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 7/10

Best things about this cover:

• I oppose fur but that is a magnificent fur. That is an ostentatious, almost comically elongated sleeve. And shoulder pad.
• I love how she seems to be admiring Runyon's name while poor Slats pleads spectrally in the background.
• Runyon is a really important early 20c. American newspaperman and short story writer. He records and cultivates a certain hardboiled, slangy, colloquial style that ends up being very influential. You may know him from such things as "Guy & Dolls."

Best things about this back cover:

• Runyonese. I like my ham on rye with extra Runyonese.
• The titles of these stories alone are worth the price of admission. Soupbone Pew!
• "Informal Execution" is such a menacing phrase. I'm guessing that one wasn't made into a musical.

Page 123~ (from "Old New Year's")

On this day everybody swears off doing something or other, generally drinking, which is very easy for most people to swear off on New Year's Day, because generally they feel so tough from welcoming in the New Year that they never wish to see another drink again as long as they live, or anyway until they feel better.

I like that usage of "tough." So much more delicately ambiguous than the straight jab of "hungover."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 830: Trinity in Violence / Henry Kane (Avon 618)

Paperback 830: Avon 618 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Trinity in Violence
Author: Henry Kane
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-$15


Best things about this cover:

• A great cover mucked up by someone's bright idea of a teaser. "Let's put the first words of the book on the cover! It'll be revolutionary!" "Where are we gonna put them?" "Why … here, right across the bottom half of the dame. Nobody likes dames on covers anyway. It's words, Words they cry for!"
• I feel like she's so pinned in by darkness that we really Need the color from the bottom half of her dress. It honestly takes me several takes, every time I look at this thing, to realize it's a fur over her right shoulder and not some weird dark thing in the foreground blocking my view.
• Also, is the apartment building on fire? If not, why is there thick black smoke around the title?
• She looks an awful lot like my second college girlfriend. My girlfriend tended to wear more clothes and carry fewer guns than this lady, but still … if this lady we're looking at is named "Rosie" (as that damned block of text suggests), then that's another weird connection, as "Rose" was an element of my girlfriend's name.
• There's something quintessential about this cover. Not great on its own, but great at capturing a certain cover type: generic, be-hatted, trenchcoated sap stands in as proxy for reader/viewer. Doesn't matter what he looks like. It matters what She looks like. And it matters that she's trouble.

Best things about this back cover:

• I love the primitive video game-like swarm of armed "A" logos. I just need a Peter Chambers icon and a joystick.
• Henry Kane looks like he wants desperately to escape the photo shoot.
• "The Scandinavian?"

Page 123~

He nudged a pinky-point at his thin mustache.

From his picture, it looks like Henry Kane knows from thin mustaches. Authenticity, thy name is Kane.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Tumblr and Twitter]

Paperback 679: Murder and the Married Virgin / Brett Halliday (Dell 323)

Paperback 679: Dell 323 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: Murder and the Married Virgin (a Michael Shayne Story)
Author: Brett Halliday
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• So ... I'm guessing he's "The Married Virgin"
• I like how she is wearing an snow leopard-fringed cape and how it magically adheres to her back in defiance of all the laws of physics.
• This is an oddly romantic / sweet / slicks-type illustration. Where is my Sleaze!?
• I would not willingly live in the '40s but people did dress awesomer.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• Barbie Dream House!
• That library is impressive.
• This illustration raises the question—does anything at all happen on the left side of the house?

Page 123~

"You're after something" Shane reasoned bitterly.

Wow, that is some unfortunate verb+adverb action.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

The P. Morrison Donations #4: The Case of the Lonely Heiress / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 6027)

The P. Morrison Donations #4

Pocket Books 6027 (4th ptg, 1960)

Title: The Case of the Lonely Heiress 
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Uncredited

Best things about this cover:

• The people from PETA have learned to spraypaint *very* legibly.
• No idea who the cover artist is here, but he/she clearly doesn't have enough confidence in his/her GGA (Great Girl Art) abilities. She looks phenomenal, and really deserves to be taking up more front cover real estate.
• Maybe ease up on the orange jewelry a little, though.
• Cigarette holder! Chic!

Best things about this back cover:

• The answer is no, but only because I'm 42 and scrupulously honest.
• In case you didn't see Raymond Burr down there ... GIANT RED ARROW TO THE FACE!
• I wish the plot of this book was that Perry Mason led a double life, trolling for lonely women on the pre-internet, killing them, and then ending up having to solve the very crimes he committed. 

Page 123~

With the glaring overhead light out, Marilyn Marlow could see Lieutenant Tragg clearly now, a tall, somewhat slender, well-knit individual whose clean-cut features were a welcome relief from the heavy faces of the officers who had been leering at her.

Marilyn Marlow then said, with a predatory coyness, "You must be Humphrey Bolgard. They said you were well-knit, but—" She ran her eyes down the length of his frame and back up again "—well, there's knit and there's knit, and boy are you knit."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]