Paperback 875: Live and Let Die / Ian Fleming (Perma Books M-3048)

Paperback 875: Perma Books M-3048 (1st ptg, 1956)

Title: Live and Let Die
Author: Ian Fleming
Cover artist: James Meese

Estimated value: $75-100

Best things about this cover:

• The world's most ruthless diving coach doesn't want to hear your bullshit about the Chinese judge having it in for you.
• "Scrooge McDuck had to go on vacation. You deal with me now."
• You'd think with all those gold coins, he could afford a nicer office. Something less in-a-cave.
• Just in case you didn't notice: this cover is all kinds of fabulous.

Best things about this back cover:

• Tee-Hee. No, I'm not laughing, that's his name. His name is Tee-Hee. Tee-Hee. OK, now I'm laughing. Keep up!
• No reaction shot from Bond. I assume he just stiff-upper-lipped it, then bagged a leggy stewardess/assassin, then had a martini.
• "Take Mr. Bond to Central Perk … introduce him to Ross and Phoebe. You're job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA, Mr. Bond."

Page 123~

Soon they were over Miami and the monster chump-traps of the eastern seaboard, their arteries ablaze with neon.

Monster chump-traps! Nice phrase, Mr. Fleming.

~RP

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Paperback 836: The Jungle Seas / Arthur A. Ageton (Signet S1200)

Paperback 836: Signet Giant S1200 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Jungle Seas
Author: Arthur A. Ageton
Cover artist: James Meese

Estimated value: $5-10


Best things about this cover:

• "I think that's … yeah, that's just a freckle, Kathy. You're gonna be fine."
• Navy Vampires of Tonga!
• He likes it when you scratch him here. *Really* likes it.
• James Meese wants you to know that he can sure as hell paint hands. All hands, all day, mother*ckers!

Best things about this back cover:

• Dude's like, "Squirrel!?"
• "… a book to join THE CAINE MUTINY … on that shelf of books I haven't read."
• "full-bodied" [wink!]

Page 123~

"Yes, sir. Was I groaning?"
"Were you groaning? Boy, you let out a scream that scared me right out of a sound sleep. Who's Rogers?"

"Uh … Rogers? … uh … he's this guy … you know … definitely not a former lover, if that's what you're thinking … oh, no wait. I mean 'Ginger'! 'Ginger Rogers!' Forget that other stuff I said. Ginger Rogers. Guys scream for her, right? Right. Ginger."

~RP

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Paperback 555: The Saracen Blade / Frank Yerby (Cardinal C-124)

Paperback 555: Cardinal C-124 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The Saracen Blade
Author: Frank Yerby
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• Steve was quick to anger when people insulted his empty-swimming-pool harem. "It's a spatial commentary on the ways the traffic in women occludes ... oh you did *not* just roll your eyes at me! En garde!" 
• Steve erupted in anger when the judge of the No T-shirt Contest gave him only a 5.
• MC Hammer closes in on the man who stole his pants. "Please, Hammer ... don't hurt me."
• There is a paperback cover phenomenon I call "black hand"—it's a subset of "mystery hand." The mysterious / exotic Other reaches in from the margins ... oh you did *not* just roll your eyes at me!
• This cover follows the old paperback cover art maxim: bondage must enhance boobage.

Best things about this back cover:

• It's slightly unusual to have to have the back cover relate the scene depicted on the cover. It's highly unusual to have the back cover *tell* you that's what it's doing (possibly because it seems insultingly redundant)
• "And even when he did think—which, admittedly, wasn't often—..."
• Compound adjectives can be things of beauty. Then there's "adventure-crammed."

Page 123~

"You're not a stranger," Gautiette said mildly, "and I shall need your aid. The truth of the matter, good Pietro, is that Toinette has disappeared..."

"It's a hairspray, it's a perfume, it's a home perm, it's ... Toinette!"

~RP

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Paperback 421: Kiss Me, Deadly / Mickey Spillane (Signet 1000)

Paperback 421: Signet 1000 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Kiss Me, Deadly
Author: Mickey Spillane
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• "OK, you can see my left boob, but it's gonna cost you. *Really* cost you..."
• What room are they supposed to be in? The kitchen? An office? Somebody's workshop? I'm kind of mesmerized by the miniature barn-like structure directly over the guy's head. And by the crimson carpet, of course.
• I have a huge crush on Spillane's writing. Lush and emotive and tornadic and fearless. I haven't read this one, though—just seen the (insane, campy) movie. It is one of the great Bad movies of all time.

Best things about this back cover:

• In case you didn't know, in the middle of the last century, Spillane was the best-selling author since Moses. Infuriated critics, who still don't know what to do with him, frankly. Easy to love Hammett and Chandler. Hard to love the (gun-toting, dame-ogling) bull in the china shop.
• If you've never read Spillane, I recommend "One Lonely Night" most of all. It develops the idea that Hammer is "evil for the good." It also features a very memorable spanking scene.

Page 123~

[The ropes] were wet and slippery with my own blood. My fingernails broke tugging at them, but it was the blood that did it. I felt one come free, the next one and my hand was loose. It only took a few minutes longer to get the other one off and my feet off the end of the bed and I was standing up with my heart trying to pound the shock away and the pain back in place.

~RP

P.S. blog traffic here is up but comments seem down. I would be happier if things were the other way around, actually. Of course I'd be happiest if traffic *and* comments were up. So feel free to chime in, and spread the word.

P.P.S. I am toying around with focusing my Crime Fiction course (this fall) on the Vietnam War era (roughly '60-'75). Books and movies don't have to have anything specifically to do with the war. Recommendations are welcome. Also, this summer I will be watching my way through Every Crime Movie (VERY broadly defined) in that period (though I may not make it out of 1961, who knows). I'll be letting you know what's on tap every week or so. So far I've watched "Portrait in Black" (1960) (Anthony Quinn, Lana Turner; horrible) and "Never Let Go" (1960) (Peter Sellers; amazing). "Never Let Go" was a revelation, with Peter Sellers as a sadistic garage owner at the center of a stolen car ring. Definitely makes the "Recommended" list. I'm halfway through "Le Trou" (1960), a prison escape movie that (so far) is wonderful. Also halfway through "The Girl in Lovers' Lane" (1960), which I'm watching as an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000," so that should give you some idea how good it is...

In the crime fiction queue for this week: "Beatniks" (1960) and "Seven Thieves" (1960). Looks like "Beatniks" also got the "MST3K" treatment, so ... that should be fun.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 41

Title: Catch a Killer (PB 940, 1st ptg, '53)
Author: Ursula Curtiss
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $5

• "Don't go in there! My Beanie Baby collection is in there! NO ONE GOES IN THERE!"
• When Jim asks for "lemon," you better give him lemon and not fucking canary if you want to live to see another day.
• "Murder? Again? But we had murder yesterday, and the day before that. I'm sick of murder. I want fishsticks."
• I'm worried about her fingers.
• Fear hand!

• OK, this is the worst reprise of a front cover Ever. Now he just looks like a staggering drunk who's got a door glued to his palm.
• "Jap!" How racist earthy!
  
• It is a little known fact that kangaroo babies are hatched from gigantic red spheres.

Page 123~

Sentry turned his head fractionally so that he met Cy's eyes, steady, probing, in a waiting face that now held no easy good humor at all.

I wish there were a "Horrible Adverb" contest I could enter "fractionally" in. Yeesh.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 39

Title: The Deadly Climate — Pocket Books 1077 (1st ptg, 1955)
Author: Ursula Curtiss
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $5

• "Dear god, no! That pillow's not hypoallergmmphrrrmmmph!"
• This is some damn great cover art and design. Great action, great use of white space, and possibly the biggest eyeballs I've ever seen on a cover girl. Amazing.

• "Two steps less?" Not "fewer?"
• "Unbelieving eyes stared back at her. No one wanted to believe..." Yeah, that's generally what UNBELIEVING means, Shakespeare.
• What the hell is "Shock — exposure" supposed to mean? Is that like "Stop! ... Hammertime!"?

Page 123~

Trunz took a sharp curve and inquired elaborately, "Want the siren?"

Does "elaborate" have a definition I'm not aware of? One that means The Exact Opposite of "elaborate," maybe?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 276: The Hunger and the Hate / H. Vernor Dixon (Gold Medal 454)

Paperback 276: Gold Medal 454 (PBO, 1955)

Title: The Hunger and the Hate
Author: H. Vernor Dixon
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "I'm hungry." "Well, I hate you." The End.
• His hat is fabulous but his tie looks like something he ripped off an early-80s New Wave keyboard player.
• "The world was his and conquered" has to be one of the most inelegant and awkward opening gambits in mainstream paperback cover copy history. "The world was his ... and then a woman took it all a way" would work. So would "He conquered the world ... but then a woman took it all away." So would "He was a traveling salesman with a hankering for Mexican restaurant waitresses..."

Best things about this back cover:

• Crop. Zoom. Reverse image. Change to B&W. There. Now you can really feel the Hunger. And the Hate.
• Jeez, it's a whole frickin' short story back here. Concision!
• What's his name again? I forgot ... you only said it four times.
• "Hey, ya know what a good place for a paragraph break would be? The middle of a sentence." (see last two "paragraphs")

Page 123~

He thought of Truly and dissected her in his mind and liked little of what he found and wondered why he had been such a damned fool as to accept her invitation.

Strangely, the part of this sentence I hate most is "as to."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Why Book Sales are Like Crack Dens To Me, Part 2

Welcome back to further tales of my addiction.

Dondie is back with me once again to help me comment on the paperback carnage. And we're off:

Title: The Man with the Heart in the Highlands and Other Stories
Author: William Saroyan
Cover artist: Cassler

• And thus "Riverdance" was born ...
• "Dance, Timmy, dance, or I'll cut off your other arm!"
• This book was later retitled "The Child Predator with the Heart in the Highlands." (Subtitle: "Queerscarf!")
• Dondie says: "Ballet for the geriatric pedophile in all of us!"
• Dondie and I cannot agree on whether that is a cornet or a flugelhorn.

Title: The Age of Analysis
Editor: Morton White
Cover artist: Uncredited

• "Shh, I'm contemplating."
• "My bicep is HUGE! And astonishingly truncated!"
• Spirograph! - "Mom, look what I made in Arts & Crafts today!"
• Dondie says: "P.S., my hand looks like a buttox!"
• If you cover up "YSIS," this title is funny.

[Interloper book - not from Book Sale, but from Salvation Army]

Title: Satan's Rock
Author: Marilyn Ross
Cover artist: [George Ziel]

• Lucy Ashton says: "Pax vobiscum"
• "We finally saved up enuff to get that castle addition on the old barn - uh oh, Bessie, it done caught fire already!"
• Rex says: "This castle is pooping out the moon ... onto a boat."
  
• Satan's architectural abomination - how does that monstrosity not crush the outcropping it's built on top of?
• Dondie says: "I want that shade of lipstick. I think it's called 'Coral.' I haven't seen that shade in some time."

Title: Echo Round His Bones
Author: Thomas M. Disch
Cover artist: Uncredited

• Jewfro Sanderson and His Posse of Floating Vitamins!
• "I've come back from the future to get a refund for this awful haircut. You are getting sleepy ..."
• Is he coming through the rainbow pastel portal on his knees?
• Most highly decorated general ever: "I came back to get my forty-third star, biatch!"

"The year is 1990" is the funniest sentence ever.

"The year is 1990. The universe has witnessed the ultimate invention: The Chunnel!" (also "The Simpsons" and Windows 3.0)

Title: The Dark Frontier
Author: Eric Ambler
Cover artist: Oliver [...]

• Apparently, her bra is only 50% operational.
• Pencil Mustache liked to grip his gun with just two fingers - Euro-style.
• Her pendant weirdly matches the emblem on Pencil Mustache's gigantic cap.
• Dondie says: "I'm quite sure he is doing something to her ass."
• Are they in a ghost lab? What is that syringe / baster / bunsen burner on her left?

Title: Daybreak
Author: Frank G. Slaughter
Cover artist: James Meese

• First thing you must do - click on "Daybreak" (above) for background music while you read this entry and clap your hands like a doofus with your fingers drastically outstretched.
• Next thing you must do - read the back cover. Since you can't, we'll tell you what it says. It begins:

"The operation is simple. It is called a frontal lobotomy and its purpose is to pacify the violently insane."

OK, that's pretty much all you need to know. And now, the one-act play that is ... Daybreak:

Lynn: "Hello, my name is Lynn. Will you be removing my frontal lobes this morning? I put on this yellow dress for you. Let's go play tennis. I want to kill you with my teeth and bare hands."
Jim: "Your eyebrows are far too black for us to proceed. Do you like my neck whistle? I just came back from coaching a soccer game."
Lynn: "Your hands feel manly."
Jim: "Your shoulders are small. Say 'aaah.'"
Lynn: "Jim, I don't want to be rude, but ... you have a giant dollop of toothpaste on your head."
Jim: "No, Lynn. That's my yarmulke. You are just being violently insane. Now, I repeat, Say 'Aaah!'"
Lynn: "But Jim, my mouth only opens this far."
Jim: "Well then, we have our work cut out for us, and I do mean 'cut out'"
[both characters chuckle amiably]
Jim: "Here, take two of these gigantic Mexican aspirin and take off that dress."
Lynn, reading: "'Aspirina...' Is that safe?"
Jim: "For the violently insane, yes. It helps numb your lobes. P.S. your slip is showing."

FIN

Title: Angélique
Author: Anne Golon
Cover artist: photo cover

• "RO RO RO your boat..."
• The casting of "Ginger" on "Gilligan's Island" was a long and arduous process, and involved many a gland check.
• Dondie says: here is a one-scene play I have written about this cover:

Ginger: "Don't hate me just because I'm wrapped in a curtain!"
The Count: "But my cuffs are so satiny and superfluous, I must strangle!"
Ginger: "Perhaps if I expose my teeth in a feral grimace, I can convince you to leave me alone and shave your sideburns."

FIN

Title: Dance of Love
Author: Arthur Schnitzler
Illustrations: Rene Gockinga
Cover artist: Uncredited

• Dondie says: "Those are pretty nice boobs ... If I had those boobs, I'd probably have a lot more money."
• Why is her right boob so much longer than her left one?
• Her hair is patriotic.
• She has a face that says one or more of the following:

A. "My boyfriend is a douche."
B. "Thanks for the heroin."
C. "My left breast casts an impressive shadow."
D. "Are you looking at ... this nipple?"
E. "Get me a beer, put the money on the dresser, and get out."

Join us next week for Further Tales from the Book Sale.

RP (with Dondie)

Paperback 18: Avon F-148

Paperback 18: Avon F-148 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Bad Man
Author: Joseph Wayne
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

"Before he went to the gallows Al Cobb wanted to do one decent thing ... so he shot a man in the face and abducted his child"

Apparently "decent" meant "psychopathic" in The Old West.

RP