Paperback 1041: Draw the Curtain Close / Thomas B. Dewey (Pocket Books 64003)

Paperback 1041: Pocket Books 64003 (1st ptg, 1968)

Title: Draw the Curtain Close
Author: Thomas B. Dewey
Cover artist: Uncredited (looks like Harry Bennett signature)

Condition: 4/10
Estimated value: $100000000 (jk prob like $5 but I can't find this copy online)

[Contribution from Cassie and Jordan Bell-Masterson]

Best things about this cover:

• Well, not his face
• Well, not the font
• This is such an odd moment to document on a book cover. Is she taking off her shirt? Not such a big reveal if she was clearly already sitting there pantsless. Is that even a shirt? It looks like she's trying to wear a pair of red shorts as a shirt. Maybe she's not well. Shapely, though, I'll give her that. And armed.
• She needs to repaint that room; it's making me nauseated.
• I love the "modesty sheet" that is conveniently obscuring her butt crack from view.
• It doesn't matter what she does or doesn't wear because nothing is going to outshine that chalked-up denim suit that Flatface McSkinnyTie has on.
• This is apparently a hard-boiled writer of some repute, the first book in his "Mac" series. Since this is a "reading copy," I should clearly, uh, read it.

Best things about this back cover:

• He Took His Hat Off, WHY!? I need to know. You can't just shove him into a tiny strip of red, remove his hat, and expect me NOT to have questions!
• I love that this is a book about expensive books. And showbiz dolls.
• None of my books are worth 30 Gs. Alas.
• Wait, is the fact that he's not "a literary type" supposed to endear him to me. Because if so, mission decidedly unaccomplished.

Page 123~

I had to wait a couple of minutes for the elevator. I shared it going down with a cockeyed lady in a red satin dress who hiccoughed regularly at intervals of three or four seconds. Halfway down she said without warning, "Hi, Mac."

Just now realizing that a. "hiccoughed" is a freaky-looking word and b. this dude must get a lot of false alarms where someone calling his name is concerned, what with all the "Hey, Mac"s floating around in the world. It's like his name is "Buddy" or "Pal" or "Chief" or "Bruh."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 1017: The Best Go First / Frank O'Malley (Bantam 959)

Paperback 1017: Bantam 959 (1st, 1952)

Title: The Best Go First
Author: Frank O'Malley
Cover artist: "Phillips" (signed, but no idea who this "Phillips" is)

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

Best things about this cover:

• She's really taking the gun to that "O" like "hint, hint! I am on the Make," but ... he seems preoccupied with driving other rods into other chambers.
• "Look, I see your little innuendo there, Martha, but this Extortion-Murder is not gonna Extortion-Murder itself, so settle down!"
• The best go first. Steve, with his dirty gun and lack of torso covering, went third, most days, at best.

Best things about this back cover:

• It's like they meant to send in the final tagline but accidentally just sent in their brainstorming notes and the printer didn't understand and just went with All Of The Descriptive Words
• Crisp! Realistic! Sounds .... Frank! (the author's name is Frank; this is an author's name joke; please clap)
• Man, the adjectives are really running amok. I like how they added "hammering" after "driving" in case maybe we thought it was a novel about cars. Or maybe it is about driving ... to the hardware store!
• How many times do I have to meet this m***erf***er?

Page 123~

She was a woman who talked when you wanted coversation and sat quietly when you wanted to think. That kind is rare.

No, that kind is inflatable.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 269: Night Squad / David Goodis (Gold Medal s1083)

Paperback 269: Gold Medal s1083 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Night Squad
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• One of the noirest, hardboiliest covers I've got. Iconic. Buncha badass fedora-wearing crime-fighters going to war. Strong light/dark contrast (just like the high contrast B&W of classic film noir). There's architectural detail in the dark parts, but you can barely see it. (actually, you can see it on the scan better than you can see it on the actual book ... weird)
  
• Love the up-shot angle. Gives the guy in the doorway and the whole building a looming, larger-than-life feel. Also like how his descent of the staircase reflects the cover copy: "... and sent him down into the brutal throbbing heart of the slums."
• Love the sickly green pall cast by the lamps. Also love the comically worried face of Fedora #2. Also love the wee policeman poised to billyclub the @#$# out of the next guy who looks at him funny.

Best things about this back cover:

• Blah.
• I thought it said "rocket boys" the first time I read it, and I wondered why the cops and NASA would be fighting over the same guy. "The terrifying story of two agencies bidding to give a man gainful employment!"
• Do you really aim a bullet at someone's head? You aim the gun. Unless your gun is broken and you are reduced to just hurling bullets at some guy's head. I guess that could happen.

Page 123~

"Where you going? McDermott asked.

Corey stopped. He stood with his back to the desk. He waited a few moments, then said, "Second and Addison. I got a date."

"With who?"

"A double gin," Corey said. "Is that all right with you?"

Great dialogue. That last line actually reads "Is that all right you you?" I hope you enjoy my non-silent emendation.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 152: Too Many Girls / Don Tracy (Berkley Books G-182)

Paperback 152: Berkley Books G-182 (1st ptg, 1958)
Title: Too Many Girls
Author: Don Tracy
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Her expression! Everything about her face and body language says "I Hate You."
• I believe an oncoming train is about to drive right into this studio
• "OK, you can take five, Ms. Marshall. I'll just lean against the wall here and stare at you creepily while holding my whiskey bottle at a suggestive angle, OK? OK."
• Wait, if he's a newspaper photographer, shouldn't he care "what kind of pictures he took?"

"Steve, can you come in here for a sec."
"Sure boss, what's up?"
"Well, we wanted some shots for the story on the economic crisis..."
"Yeah?"
"Well, this is a photo of two squirrels kissing. And this appears to be a half-eaten sandwich."
"It is ... what's your point?"

Best things about this back cover:

• So he was the guy responsible for the MAGRUDER film ... fascinating.
• This guy is every "hard-boiled" cliché rolled into one, then boiled down to some kind of paste, and then smeared all over the soul of any decent person who comes into contact with him.
• Apparently, you cannot be a "top-notch reporter" and "all woman" simultaneously. You have to do some kind of Clark Kent / Superman switch.
• I like how we're supposed to believe that Elaine turned Ed out instead of vice versa. "You'll be a pimp and like it! [smack!] Take your money, you little bitch! [kick! smack!]"

Page 123~

The girl he'd been with was a tall, dark-haired girl, with a million-dollar build. She was canned-up proper and her eyes were kind of glassy.

She had undoubtedly been reading "The Day the Machines Stopped"

"Canned-up proper" is my new favorite expression

~RP

Paperback 83: Trouble Follows Me / Kenneth Millar (Lion Books 47)

Paperback 83: Lion Books 47 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Trouble Follows Me
Author: Kenneth Millar (aka Ross Macdonald)
Cover artist: unknown

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "Gimme a 'D'! Gimme an 'E'! Gimme an 'A'! Oh hell, just give me a kiss, big boy!"
• "I demand to know how why you aren't wearing an American flag on this lapel, you bastard!"
• "Honey, you know I love caressing your elbows, but people are starting to stare ..."
• I admire this man's ability to check out the smoking man behind him despite the fact that the laws of nature forbid it - how is he able to see through his own left shoulder? Maybe he's checking him out in a mirror just off-screen...
• If you changed the text on the cover, you could easily turn this picture into a cover for a Kinsey-era "My secret gay life" and / or "Do I like boys or girls?" novel (an actual subgenre of which I own a few examples). The smoking man could be stalking our hero, but he could just as easily be checking out his ass.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Death tracked him." So the smoking man is ... Death. That's deep. Allegorical.
• "Moslem attitude of prayer" ???
• Sam Drake - sounds nothing like Sam Spade. How dare you suggest it's a pathetic rip-off.
• Kenneth Millar became one of the best-selling and best-reviewed crime fiction writers of the 20th century under the name Ross Macdonald. He is, more than anyone, responsible for the general shape, tenor, feel, idiom, etc. of the modern detective novel. This is not, IMOO, a good thing. Watered down, moralistic P.I.-ness ... hero is flawed but ultimately unequivocally Good. Give me Chandler's Philip Marlowe Any Day of the Week.
• This particular book is sun-faded like crazy, and has clearly been read multiple times (once by me). It's encased in a plastic slip cover (the way I found it). Still, it's tight and complete and a great, great reading copy.
• It's #47! (Meaningless to you unless you graduated from the same college as I did)

RP

Paperback 50: Mysterious Press 40827-8

Paperback 50: Mysterious Press 40827-8 (1st ptg, 1989)

Title: Fireworks: The Lost Writings
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Stephen Peringer


Best things about this cover:

• Not a lot - I've included this in my collection only because it contains a bunch of otherwise unreprinted Jim Thompson stories. I also wanted to give you a sense of the deterioration of cover painting as an art form. This is done with computers, and it's pretty unimaginative and uncatchy. I do, however, love the work that Mysterious Press has done keeping old hardboiled writers alive and in print. One of the editors of this collection, Robert Polito, wrote the great Thompson biography, which I've mentioned before. You should read it.

I should add that I called this book a "first printing," even though it's unclear to me what to call it. It reads "First printing: August, 1989," but those numbers at the bottom of the publication page have the "1" missing, which makes me think this is a second printing of a first edition. Modern ways of determining first, second, etc., are overly complicated and bug the crap out of me.

RP

"LOVE and ROCKETS"

"Now That's What I Call Hard-Boiled"

First of all, apologies to those few of you who had come to expect weekly commentaries on "American Idol." Now that all the truly horrible people are gone, there's just not a lot to say. It's gotten a bit boring, actually, with Blake being the only person in the final four offering anything in the way of style variation - and he was probably the worst of them all last week. But in the end, so long, Lakisha. I could have Idolized you ... once.

Anyway, back to the point of today's entry. So I'm thumbing through the latest edition of "Love and Rockets" - the long-running, hilarious, disturbing, occasionally surreal comic created by Los. Bros. Hernandez - and I come upon ... well, just about the most bad-ass single-page comics illustration I've seen in ages:
I immediately scanned it and made it my computer wallpaper. Stacked black words next to stacked, black-clad woman = sensational. This one-page panel captures the spirit of hard-boiled fiction (of the Hammett / Chandler variety) better than almost any contemporary purveyors of so-called "neo-noir," who tend to force the issue and confuse overt profanity and sex and violence with hard-boiled style. Now "Love and Rockets" is quite different in spirit from classic hardboiled fiction, but I'm legitimately impressed with Xaime Hernandez's ability to evoke the essence of hard-boiled in so deceptively simple a picture. Great example, also, of how the division between words and pictures in analyses of comics is so often a false one. The way those words look is at least as important as what they say. Words and woman form parallel texts, telling parallel stories ... can you tell how much I love this picture? It's not often that something I read makes me stop dead in my tracks, and then compels me to try to write about it. Oh, and the pin-up on the back cover of this issue is not bad either:


fun, gorgeous, simple but elegant, retro but original. I really gotta read back issues of this comic...