Paperback 1124: The Removers / Donald Hamilton (Gold Medal s1082)

Paperback 1124: Gold Medal s1082 (PBO, 1961)

Title: The Removers

Author: Donald Hamilton

Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Condition: 6/10 (crease down the middle of the cover)

Value: $6-10

Best things about this cover: 

• Another day, another Barye Phillips Gold Medal cover that is disappointingly sketchy. Why is this there so much unused space? Why is the woman so small? Bah!
• Also: another day, another implausible color of "red" on the "red"head. That's like Ronald McDonald "red," come on.
• On the other hand, love what the cover is doing with the "V" motif here—extending it up to provide space for the tagline, but also using it as a visual representation of the (imagined) gunshot. The whole "V" is like a speech bubble for the gun. A blast bubble.
• I also dig this groovy sixties font.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Interesting continuation of the "V" motif onto the back cover, extending and transforming it here into the top part of an exclamation point, with Helm himself as the emphatic dot!
• Gold Medal mostly didn't bother with the blurbs from "legitimate" press—you sell these books with Great Girl Art (GGA) and author reputation, not critic blurbs—but I guess if the critics love you, you can try to appeal to the eggheads who would otherwise be embarrassed to be seen reading 35c books.
• "A Creature of Sweetness and Havoc" would, I must admit, be a great crime novel title.

Page 123~

I put the phone down. I was looking at Beth, but for some reason I was seeing a long, low, green car—the color is known as British Racing Green—hurtling across the Arizona desert with that fine, wicked sound that you get only from high-class machinery that's really carrying the mail. Barring the true racing cars, the Jaguar is possibly, along with its American counterpart the Corvette, the most ridiculous vehicle made, from the viewpoint of efficient and economical transportation. You've got power enough to move a ten-ton truck attached to a loadspace barely adequate for two men and a small toothbrush. But it's an ego-satisfying machine in every respect [...]

OK, I've never read a Donald Hamilton novel before (that I can recall), but this stretch of prose actually makes me want to. I love an author who'll just do a funny little plot-irrelevant aside like this. Chandler was at his best when he'd let Marlowe do this sort of thing. Gonna throw a Hamilton novel onto the "summer vacation reading" list (already in danger of getting too long)

~RP

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Paperback 1108: Double Sin / Agatha Christie (Dell 12144)

Paperback 1108: Dell 12144 (1st New Dell, 1980)

Title: Double Sin

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6

Value: $6

Best things about this cover: 

• Hey kid, you got a little ... just ... on your mouth there ... no ... I'm a mirror ... my right, your left ...
• For some reason, Random Heap of Objects is a common Christie cover motif
• Who would arrange this stuff like this? What are the jewels even doing? How is that gun standing on end? Who would sculpt such a creepy wide-eyed kid? As you can see, all the blood is the least of my concerns
• Why is Hercule Poirot not also "incomparable" (or something like it)? Where's his hyperbolic adjective? I think he's earned it. 

Best things about this back cover: 

• This cover copy makes it sound like Marple and Poirot team up, or at least interact in some way, but I'm pretty sure this is a collection of short stories, none of which feature both detectives at the same time. Calling them an "unstoppable combination" is at least a little misleading.
• What year do UPC codes start appearing on paperback books? A truly evil year, that.
• This back cover is boring, the design uninspired. The corners of the text frame are vaguely deco-ish, which I guess is supposed to evoke the era in which the stories are set, but ... meh. I do kinda like the mirrored "A"s at the front and back of "AGATHA," but that may be the only design element here that I like.

Page 123~

An idle young man, she thought, but good-looking.

Finally—horny Miss Marple! It's what we've all been waiting for.

~RP

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Paperback 1099: Savage Night / Jim Thompson (Black Lizard [unnumbered])

 Paperback 1099: Black Lizard [unnumbered] (1st ptg, 1985)

Title: Savage Night

Author: Jim Thompson

Cover artist: Kirwan

Condition: 8/10

Value: $15

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY (July 2024)]

Best things about this cover: 

• It's not a great cover, and I paid too much (by my cheap standards), but I can't help it, I gotta have these early (pre-Vintage takeover) Black Lizards. They feel like an origin story—my hardboiled origin story, the origin of the Hardboiled Revival. And Jim Thompson was definitely my gateway hardboiled author. I don't think I've read this one, though.
• This looks like the poster for a bad late-'80s straight-to-VHS erotic thriller
• That bullet looks like lipstick. Is it lipstick? Roll-on deodorant? It's giving bullet, but out of context and with no other object for scale, it just looks weird.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Bah, buncha quotes. Treating this book like it's legitimate literature, there's your first mistake. I don't need high-minded blurbs, I need lurid, turgid cover copy, and possibly more bad art.
• No idea what Cassill means here. Maybe he's talking about subject matter. I know he's not talking about quality. Or better not be.
• Too many ellipses in that Village Voice review. Suspicious, especially since it's merely descriptive and not particularly evaluative. Makes you wonder what they left out.

Page 123~

    I winked and jerked my head over my shoulder. "Just borrowed a drink of your whiskey, Mrs. Winroy. Had a sudden attack of stomach sickness."

    "It's perfectly all right, Carl." She gave me back the wink. "Sick at your stomach, huh? Well, that's what you get for eating with cops."

~RP

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Paperback 1082: Murder is My Racket / Robert H. Leitfred (Tech Mysteries No. 2)

Paperback 1082: Tech Mysteries No. 2 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: Murder is My Racket

Author: Robert H. Leitfred

Cover artist: [Uncredited]

Condition: 8/10

Value: $20

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY (May 2024)—my first "Tech Mystery" (never even heard of this publisher)]

Best things about this cover: 

• These cheap digests often have dull covers, but this one's got a floating eye, a mystery hand that appears to have been in a bad accident, a very ribbony ribbon of smoke coming from a freshly fired gun, a jauntily multi-fonted title, and a color scheme that's bright as springtime. Plus the book is square and clean and the publisher is brand new to my collection. Win after win after win.
• Don't look at that hand too long, though. It's like a practice hand from an art school class, one where the artist couldn't decide whether to make it dirty or hairy and so kinda split the difference. Dirty/Hairy!
• Artist got a lot of expression into that half eyeball. Very furrowed eyelid. Wait, is that even an eye? Again, don't look at it too long. It's starting to look like a sunrise or a sunset or a cave or a slug-like behemoth inching its way across the horizon of a Surrealist landscape, look away! Oh god, it's on the spine!

Let's move on to less scary ... oh god!

Best things about this back cover: 

• Aw, he's a cute little guy.
• Instantly one of the best logos in paperback history. Too bad they couldn't think of anything to do with it but drown it in a sea of pink.
• I don't really get the "Tech" angle, especially not in 1949, especially with no discernible "tech" in sight. 

Page 123~

"This building here," pointed McQuarg.

I thought I'd seen all the "said" substitutes, but "pointed," wow, did not see that coming. Nice work, McQuarg.

~RP

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Paperback 1064: The Big Four / Agatha Christie (Dell 0562)

Paperback 1064: Dell 0562 (1st New Dell Edition, 1972)

Title: The Big Four

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 9/10

Value: ~$10

Best things about this cover:

• These objects-only covers are fairly common for Christie paperbacks of the '60s and '70s. I think (William) Teason is the name of the artist I know who has done several like this. Maybe this cover is Teason's work too, dunno. Anyway, it's very evocative ... of a certain ... criminal ... milieu ... but it's not terribly exciting.
• The pearl-handled gun is gorgeous, as is the ornamental key. The noose is awfully, uh, circular. It's all so artfully arranged, like evidence that you just know is planted.
• I'm curious about this font. And about the weird colors ... beige / yellow / beige ... that's one way to make sure the yellow doesn't pop. Then again, publishers have clearly learned to value marketing over art at this point, as Christie's name is big feature, and everything else merely decorative.
• I want all the people in the photographs to be Doing Something! Making out, killing each other, something! To this cover's credit, I am curious to know how all this detritus fits into narrative form.

Best things about this back cover:

• Back Cover Copy in C[heap pun] Minor
• Wait, four men? I thought the photos on the cover were the Big Four, but one of those was a woman, so ... now I'm *really* intrigued (I've only ever read a few Christie titles in my life, if I'm being honest)
• Bizarre to make such a superhero out of Poirot and yet depict him Nowhere on your cover. 

Page 123~

"Ernest Luttrell. Son of a North Country parson. Always had a kink of some kind in his moral make-up"

I am quite sure that what Christie means by "kink" and what I mean by "kink" are somewhat if not quite different from one another, and yet ... one can hope.

~RP

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Paperback 927: Ashenden / W. Somerset Maugham (Avon PN240)

Paperback 927: Avon PN240 (13th ptg, 1969)

Title: Ashenden
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Cover artist: Uncredited (who does these awesome psychedelic late '60s Avon covers!?)

Estimated value: $15 (bit scuffed, but very tight, square, barely if ever read)

Best things about this cover:

• This is like "Being There" meets "Laugh-In" meets "Planes Trains and Automobiles" meets "Monty Python" meets "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor MURDER Coat"!
• This cover is Milton Glaser-esque.
• Purple? The spy wore ... purple? Really?

Best things about this back cover:

• It's like a dream catcher ... for breaths.
• There's a lot of "Cold" here. Nothing about the color scheme says "Cold." Earth tones never say "Cold."
• I prefer my dens ruddy.

Page 123~

R. was a soldier and regarded introspection as unhealthy, unEnglish and unpatriotic.

Great sentence, but one that cries out especially hard for an Oxford comma.

~RP

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Paperback 850: Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws / William MacLeod Raine (Perma Books P18)

Paperback 850: Perma Books P18 (1st ptg, circa 1948)

Title: Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws
Author: William MacLeod Raine
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $15-20


Best things about this cover:

• What are "Things you'd find in the most cliché depiction of a saloon"?
• Hardbound paperback. Because "Perma"nence. Permabooks is retrospectively adorable.
• So the guy shoots his gun then lays it gently down on the table and walks away. Seems … implausible.
• I like the aural juxtaposition (!) of "cloud" and "rain" in this dude's name.

Best things about this back cover:

• "BOOKS*TO*KEEP." It kills me that your core concept is that paperbacks should come in a hardbound version for preservation purposes … and then several years later, you still have the same name, but the hardbound versions: gone.
• This company is dedicated to stretching the meaning of "permanent" as far as possible before it snaps.
• The problem with the PERMAgloss, as any paperback collector knows, is that "perma" part is a damn lie. Shit peels off like crazy. Here, it's just pulling from the surface slightly, creating weird puddle-like patterns that I'm not sure you can even see on the scans.

Page 123~

But they did not leave wholly unavenged.

~RP

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Paperback 846: Bachelors Get Lonely / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 4604)

Paperback 846: Pocket Books 4604 (1st ptg, 1963)

Title: Bachelors Get Lonely
Author: A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: photo cover

Estimated value: $10-15


Best things about this cover:

• I can confirm the basic premise of this title.
• I find this cover oddly sexy, if wildly implausible.
• Pink. I dig it. At least it's different.

Best things about this back cover:

• You had me at "Stripper Daffidill (sic!?) Lawson"
• What an odd photo choice. Random stock photo, faded and blued.
• Lam's pretty light-hearted for someone trying to catch a murderous voyeur.
• "Swell."

Page 123~

"The walls are terribly thin," she whispered. "People will know that … that I'm having a visitor."

~RP

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Paperback 824: Bullet Proof / Amber Dean (Popular Library SP294)

Paperback 824: Popular Library SP294 (1st ptg, 1964)

Title: Bullet Proof
Author: Amber Dean
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, turns out you can do A Lot with a fairly monochromatic palette. This is fantastic.
• For a simple cover, it's amazingly suspenseful. Great use of light, especially on her face. Her face is the key—the craning around and the look of wide-eyed horror really sell the idea that something terrible is just on its way, just out of view.
• The creepiness of the bondage is amplified ten-fold by the simple, naked mattress. How can a cover be so elegant and so sleazy at the same time?

Best things about this back cover:

• I still hate this logo. It does not look like "CRIME." It looks a poorly executed fertility statue.
• "Virginia Kirkus calls it 'non-stop'"—that made me LOL: "Seriously, it wouldn't stop. I as like 'Stop! Why won't this story stop!?' But it just kept going!"
• "Readable!"—these just get better and better. "… in that it was made out of recognizable words, which were arranged in vaguely grammatical patterns…"

Page 123~

"It was their job, Hallie. Police have to learn how to destroy human dignity, or they'd never break through the really calloused, the hardened."

I'm just gonna leave that there.

~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 392: The Leather Burners / Bliss Lomax (Century Western 54)

Paperback 392: Century Western 54 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: The Leather Burners
Author: Bliss Lomax
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• It's like two guys at a Flamboyant Ascot convention are having a chummy discussion about fabric texture: "Go on, feel it with your knuckles ... hey, easy, not so hard, I paid 6Gs for this. Persian silk. Etc."
• If this is a fight, it appears to have begun with a drink dispute—specifically, with the question of which is the manlier drink: Miller Lite or a whiskey sour? Unsurprisingly, whiskey sour man is kicking ass.

Best things about this back cover:

• In case you were wondering about the plausibility of my ascot scenario, I give you: Rainbow.

Page 123~

Rainbow saw Lint Granger stumble and go headlong. Grumpy was at the sheriff's side in a flash. Lint was heavy, raw boned, but Grumpy picked him up in a single movement, hurled him forward toward safety.

I wish this book were called "A Man Named Lint." Who *wouldn't* read that?

Not sure what kind of character-naming prowess I expect from a guy named "Bliss."

~RP

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Paperback 178: The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution / Donald Westlake (Ballantine 3307)

Paperback 178: Ballantine 3307 (1st ptg, 1973)

Title: The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution
Author: Donald Westlake
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $22


Best things about this cover:

• "The Curious Crap I Found In My Closet"
• This is in contention for the single ugliest cover in my collection. Exhibit A: Mustard. Exhibit B: a mass of objects pulled in one lump from the bottom of some (crazy) lady's storage chest. Case closed.
• Somehow the wig makes the whole object lump much, much worse. Who thought this was artful!?
  
• And yet, while ugly, this is also a very memorable cover. Indelibility: The Up-Side of Ugly.
• That is a stubbed out cigar in the middle of the rubber mask's forehead. There's also a wig, a diamond necklace, three guns, and a blue thing (gum wrapper?)

Best things about this back cover:

• "a-burgling"

Page 123~

From "Never Shake a Family Tree"

"Ah," he said. "Forgive my telephoning, please, Mrs. Buckley. We have never met, but I noticed your entry in the current issue of Genealogical Exchange -"

~RP

Paperback 175: Murder After Hours / Agatha Christie (Dell 5922)

Paperback 175: Dell 5922 (1st ptg, 1965)

Title: Murder After Hours
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: William Teason

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Worst Weapon-Hiding Place Ever
• "Hey, watch me make the horse shoot bullets out his butt!"
• This cover was painted using primarily leftover "Exorcist" vomit
• Teason specializes in these odd little still lifes featuring unlikely groupings of objects. There appears to be, in addition to the horse sculpture/gun, a riding crop, a rag, a tabloid story about someone who was "MURDERED," and a bent playing card (King of Hearts)

Best things about this back cover:

• They always suck me in with their geometry teasers: "It looked like an ordinary triangle ... but it was scalene!"
• Apparently the "triangle" is a sculpture of human flesh
• "Sculptress"! Remember when the idea of a woman's doing anything of note outside the home, especially anything creative, was so unusual that it required flagging with a suffix? Why they don't call Christie an "authoress," I don't know.

Page 123~

Oh no, thought Midge, it can't be true. It's a dream I've been having. John Christow, murdered, shot - lying there by the pool. Blood and blue water - like the jacket of a detective story. Fantastic, unreal ...

~RP

Paperback 115: 'K' / Leslie Waller (Gold Medal k1319)

Paperback 115: Gold Medal k1319 (PBO, 1963)
Title: 'K'
Author: Leslie Waller
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• The "K", obviously - my favorite letter of the alphabet, by far.
  
• Easily the shortest title in my collection
• They've made Khrushchev look gregarious, drunk, lecherous, all at once. It's a nasty combo.
  
• I do not believe anyone would get up from a chair and leave it in exactly that condition
• The rifle appears to be floating. At that angle it couldn't possibly be propped up by the chair arm.
• Is that "K" supposed to look ... Sovietish? It's certainly Red.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Yes, hello! It's me, Nikita! I am watching you, you naughty minx..."
• In case you forgot that Khrushchev is communist, they have made him red to remind you.
• There's a fine art to near-murder now?
• Are those circles supposed to be bullet holes? Views through a rifle scope? Pips on a defective domino?

Page 123~

Lying at his feet, Ryder saw one meaty finger whiten at the knuckle as Ponamarenko started to squeeze the trigger.

I think that sentence opens with a misplaced modifier. Sounds like Ryder is lying at some other guy's feet, when I think the meaty finger is actually lying at Ryder's feet. These are the kinds of things I spend my life obsessing over. It's sad, really.

~RP

Paperback 105: The Ipcress File / Len Deighton (Panther 026193)

Paperback 105: Panther 026193 (14th or so ptg, circa 1971)

Title: The Ipcress File
Author: Len Deighton
Cover artist: Photo cover

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Simplicity - B&W still photo that is the epitome of mid-century hard-boiled cool. Espresso vs. Smith & Wesson - Paper Clips vs. Bullets. Such great, simple balancing of iconic images. Gives you a sense of the Where and What and even the Who of the story before you've even opened the book. Details are incredibly precise. You can even read the "Gauloise" on the cigarette and the "Wesson" on the barrel of the gun. This book is from outside my collecting window (i.e. post-1969), but when I saw it at my local University book sale, I had to have it. If I ever publish a book, I want it to look like this, no matter what it's about.
• LEN Deighton is a frequent crossword puzzle answer
• The paper clips are somehow charming the hell out of me

Best things about this back cover:

• Stamp!
• A near complete lack of punctuation, including standard blurb quotation marks. No exclamation points, commas ... figure it out for yourself, reader!
• Quaint passive voice construction in the last sentence. So British (Panther is a British imprint, in case you didn't know)

PAGE 123~

Wriggling away from the legs of the tower, black smooth cables and corrugated pipelines rested along each other like a Chinese apothecary's box of snakes.

~RP