Paperback 940: The Problem of the Wire Cage / John Dickson Carr (Bantam 304)

Paperback 940: Bantam 304 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Problem of the Wire Cage
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Gilbert Fullington

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 9/10

Best things about this cover:

• Game, set, MURDER!
• MURDER, anyone?!
• MURDER commits a foot fault!
• "Oh my, I think he's dead. I'll just check his pulse. Let's see, I ... I just push my hand against his left shoulder, right? Like this? Right, Steve? Steve, honey, is this right? Knuckles-to-shoulder?"
• So much Fear Hand in this picture. They are both double-Fear-Handing it, for the rare QuadraFearHand™.
• "She's trapped in there with a corpse! How will I ever ... oh wait this is just a chain link fence, I'll just walk around ha ha silly me."

Best things about this back cover:

• MURDER has a respectable two-hand backhand!
• *Someone* has never solved a jigsaw puzzle, or sucks at metaphors.
• Old Nick Young, winner of Most Oxymoronic Name three years running. Take that, Big Steve Small!

Page 123~

"I suppose you know you could get into a lot of trouble for what you've been doing here today?"
The words jerked Hugh upright.

No more jerking, Hugh! 

~RP

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Paperback 922: Scandal at High Chimneys / John Dickson Carr (Bantam A2155)

Paperback 922: Bantam A2155 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: Scandal at High Chimneys
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Stanley Zuckerberg

Estimated value: $7-12

Best things about this cover:

• You know she's a vampire 'cause you can't see her butt crack in the mirror.
• Seriously, I love love love this cover. It's like she got caught going at it with the carriage driver, so she grabbed his uniform to protect herself from the prurient eyes of "sanctimonious Victorian London," only to re-eroticize the whole shebang by standing with her backside to the mirror like that. It's a metaphor for (alleged) Victorian prudishness—an injunction to cover up that only ends up foregrounding the whole naughty business.
• Is that a cane? It's ... quite long. And yes, that is what she said.

Best things about this back cover:

• Bats!
• World's creepiest author close-up: "Mmmm. Fly my pretty bats, fly."
• Ablest was I ere I saw Tselba.

Page 123~

"Bale up, grandpa! What's a yard o' white satin among friends?"

I'm begging you, pleading with you, to make "Bale up, grandpa!" the "Where's the beef?" of 2016.

~RP

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Paperback 746: The Avon Book of Detective and Crime Stories / ed. John Rhode (Avon 21)

Paperback 746: Avon 21 (1st ptg, 1942)

Title: The Avon Book of Detective and Crime Stories
Editor: John Rhode
Cover artist: NA

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• The font? Maybe? Also pink. Pink is nice.
• This old Avon has held up *really* well. I love a good old paperback that's beat-as-f*ck but still perfectly solid and tight. You could read this a hundred times and it would just get more broken in.
• This is a classic detection bonanza right here. Not really my cup, but a pretty sweet collection nonetheless.

Best things about this back cover:

• Shakespeare-Head!
• Shakespeare likes mysteries and also the US Armed Forces. Heed Shakespeare's plea, y'all.
• You can store paperbacks in such things as "clothing" or those new-fangled contraptions, "bags."

Page 123~ (from "A Shot in the Night" by The Baroness Orczy)

My experience is that in all emotions and all weaknesses, in all virtues and in all vices, women invariably outdo the men.

But this is beside the point.

~RP

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Paperback 734: Fire, Burn / John Dickson Carr (Bantam A1847)

Paperback 734: Bantam A1847 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: Fire, Burn
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• So, uh, title: are you giving instructions to the fire (which I doubt it needs), or … are you Frankenstein's monster remarking up on what fire does, or …?
• "Oh, hi there, I was just fixing my hair and … my boobs? … oh yes, there they are. Whoops, how careless of me."
• Giant pink bookmark.
• Cape/cane frame.
• God, 19th-century interior decorating was dreadful.

Best things about this back cover:

• Least flattering author pic of all time.
• Amateurish bats are oddly charming.
• I hope that Lady Flora is either a rapper or has a sister named Lady Fauna.

Page 123~

If anyone had seen the pistol fall from Flora's muff, or seen him hide it under the hollow-based lamp, they might both stand in the dock on a charge of murder.

~RP

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Paperback 557: The Eight of Swords / John Dickson Carr (Berkley G-48)

Paperback 557: Berkley G-48 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Eight of Swords
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $9

Best things about this cover:

• First things first: that dress is Hot. 
• Apparently he did *not* mean "Eight of Spades" and did *not* appreciate being interrupted. 
• The perspective here is weird, creepy, and visually arresting. I like this cover despite its being one of the more aggressive examples of the weapon-to-crotch motif. 
• Maybe he's just tickling her. Or maybe she's not real and we're witnessing some strange sword-painting technique. 
• Maguire is my favorite cover artist of all time. I love how he didn't even bother finishing this painting. "Uh, Mr. Maguire, sir, were you going to finish this painting, or ..." "YOU DON'T TELL BOB MAGUIRE WHEN HIS PAINTINGS ARE FINISHED. BOB MAGUIRE TELLS YOU!"

Best things about this back cover:

• The N.Y. Herald Tribune makes Mr. Carr sound like a mystery rapist.
• I like Dr. Gideon Fell because his name is a complete sentence.
• Strangely, the thing I like best about this cover is the font on the publisher's address.

Page 123~

Spinelli's lip lifted in a sardonic quirk. He sniggered. "Hey, are you a dick?" he asked.

If you like sardonic sniggering, this is your book.

~RP

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Paperback 488: The Case of the Constant Suicides / John Dickson Carr (Berkley G-60)

Paperback 488: Berkley Books G-60 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Case of the Constant Suicides
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $11

Best things about this cover:

• Well, Dr. Gideon Fell, alright. Fell to his death!
• Nobody painted Paperback Women better than Robert Maguire. Nobody. Nobody. I mean, this is some of his least interesting work, and it's still awesome. He also has the greatest paperback cover artist signature. Regular as hell. You could set your watch by that thing.
• This is the story of one woman's painful obsession with the phallic tower that would not love her. Or her painful battle with head lice. Or her painful attempt to follow a rudimentary yoga DVD.

Best things about this back cover:

• How 'bout people just stop staying there. Looks like a shit place to sleep, anyway. Case closed! You're welcome.
• Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of an Agatha Christie novel right now. It's telling that she doesn't praise his writing, but his ability to baffle. I've heard 4-year-olds tell completely baffling stories.

Page 123~

"Angus might well consider himself, in the hard-headed Northern fashion, a useless encumbrance."

Poor Angus is "stony broke," "overwhelved (sic!) with debts," and has an ex-mistress named Elspat. She used to tease him about his "useless encumbrance." Hence *ex* mistress.

~RP

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Paperback 327: The Case of the Constant Suicides / John Dickson Carr (Dell 91)

Paperback 327: Dell 91 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Case of the Constant Suicides
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Gerald Gregg does great borderline-abstract covers. Bold shapes and colors. Simple, but I like it a lot.
• That is some thick, thick, possibly polyethylene blood.
• I'm trying to imagine what "constant suicides" could possibly mean. Are they literally occurring non-stop, around the clock? That's rough.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• I want to live in Angus Campbell's room.
• The only castle in all of Scotland made entirely of red Legos.
• I'm not buying "Courtyard." Looks more like "Sheep Pen."

Page 123~

"No, my boy. The real meat of the thing is here." Dr. Fell made the pages riffle like a pack of cards. "In the body of the diary. In the account of this activities for the past year."

He frowned at the book and slipped it into his pocket. His expression of gargantuan distress had grown along with his fever of certainty.

"Hang it all!" he said, and smote his hand on his knee. "The thing is inescapable! Elspat steals the diary. She reads it. Being no fool, she guesses—"

"Smote!" I didn't know anyone but God ever did that. Cool.

~RP

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Paperback 295: The Three Coffins / John Dickson Carr (Popular Library 174)

Paperback 295: Popular Library 174 (1st ptg, 1949)
Title: The Three Coffins
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Rudolph Belarski

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "Lady in Peril" week continues with another Lady in Peril — and another Rudolph Belarski cover with serious hand action! Can't decide which hand is better, the blood-soaked one or the ... what the hell is that other hand doing? Signing? Is it clutching something? If she were that horrified, would she really have gotten down on her knees and plunged her hand into the red stuff oozing from under the door? I doubt it.
• This makes me not want to see "Behind the Green Door"
• What is with the NYT syntax? Subject at the end ... no verb ...
• CARR is a common crossword answer. If you solve crosswords, it is good to know who created Dr. Gideon Fell.
• Belarski clearly prefers distressed women in solid, bold colors, and with ultra-expressive, super-plastic hands.

Best things about this back cover:

• More text-only dreck.
• Oooh, a locked room mystery. That should be zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
• This back cover sounds like a "Twilight Zone" plot ad-libbed by someone very drunk or very high. (Happy 50th birthday to "The Twilight Zone," by the way — I live in Rod Serling's home town, so there are "Twilight Zone" city buses driving around town and everything)

Page 123~

"Well, sir, there's blood, for one thing," replied Somers. "And also a very queer sort of rope ..."

~RP

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Paperback 292: The Four False Weapons / John Dickson Carr (Popular Library 282)

Paperback 292: Popular Library 282 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Four False Weapons
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Uncredited (Bergey? Belarski?)

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• Another deservedly famous cover. Vivid, sensational, boobtastic.
• If it weren't for the evident violence that has been committed here, I would say her posture suggests an accompanying statement of "Go ahead, take them! Take my breasts! They are all yours, cheri!"
• The tendons on the back of his left hand are doing something awfully scary.
• I love the word "wanton" as a noun.

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, OK, I get it, she was a whore, a strumpet, an easy lay, etc. No need to belabor the obvious. Give the poor dead girl a break.
• Look, Sherloque, *I* could have told you that if you find four different weapons near a body, *at least* three of them are "false."
• The last line here takes the story from contrived to ridiculous.

Page 123~

Mrs. Toller had now an air of complete boredom. You would not have thought the broad-nostrilled nose could have gone so high without absurdity, yet there it was ...

Her high bored nose now provided shelter to several small animals and a family of Hobbits. And yet still, no absurdity. Astonishing.

~RP

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Paperback 98: The Corpse in the Wax Works / John Dickson Carr (Dell 775)

Paperback 98: Dell 775 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: The Corpse in the Wax Works
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Richard Powers

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• It's surrealism + gothic - SURROTHIC!
• Richard Powers is probably the best known scifi cover artist. It's weird - highly unusual - to see one of his paintings on anything but a scifi book. His stuff is always creepy and wacked-out, with arcs and bulbous things of indeterminate status. Clearly influenced by surreal artists, especially Yves Tanguy. In fact, this painting, despite its eerie otherworldiness, is far more representational (i.e. it has identifiable things in it) than most of his stuff.
• Love the lurking shadow in the middle background. Not as enamored with the horn-hatted Fu Manchu Dracula guy.

Best things about this back cover:

• This is astonishingly gruesome.
• Marat!

• "Sepulchral" is a beautiful word (like "cellar door," which is two words, but still...)

PAGE 123~

"She had no ticket, Jeff!" Bencolin leaned forward and slapped the arm of his chair impatiently. "Surely you know that if only for appearance's sake each member of the club must buy a ticket for the waxworks when entering. Those blue tickets! You must keep them constantly in mind!"

~RP