Paperback 642: Experiment Perilous / Margaret Carpenter (Pocket Books 278)

Paperback 642: Pocket Books 278 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: Experiment Perilous
Author: Margaret Carpenter
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "No. No, I don't approve of these young people at all. Decidedly not."
• Seriously, this is one of the greatest photobombs of all time.
• Experiment Perilous. Old Man Angry. Noun Adjective! Grrrr.

Best things about this back cover:

• 4 cents!? It used to be 3!? I blame Obama.
• Be sure to send the book to a boy, because of course girls can't read so what're they gonna do with it, origami?
• Publishers still working out the kinks in their blurb presentation strategy. "How 'bout one big undifferentiated mass of quotes?" "Sounds good. Run with it!"

Page 123~

She cried as if her heart would break this afternoon, and confessed to me the most extraordinary thing: she is being followed by a man she has never seen before. This has been going on for three months, she said. Nick pooh-poohs the whole thing, and says every pretty girl learns how to manage that sort of thing in her teens. 

"I've stalked pretty girls my whole life," Nick added, "so believe me, I know."

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 14

Title: Down These Mean Streets (Signet 3471, 1968)
Author: Piri Thomas
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: Whatever

• A stirring tale of laundry!
• I got this only for the title, which comes from Raymond Chandler's "Simple Art of Murder": "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean ..."

• "Attempted Killer!?" As Sideshow Bob once famously said about "attempted murder": "Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?"

Page 123:

I tried to dig myself.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]