Paperback 1100: The Devil Wears Wings / Harry Whittington (Black Lizard [unnumbered])

Paperback 1100: Black Lizard [unnumbered] (1988)

Title: The Devil Wears Wings

Author: Harry Whittington

Cover artist: Kirwan

Condition: 7/10

Value: $15

[The Book Den, Santa Barbara, CA]

Best things about this cover: 

• I'm always impressed by artists who can draw hands but this is maybe too much hand. Creepy levels of hand. Like the digits are five different personalities operating independently of one another, just flying their own freak flags...
• I guess the hand has smashed through ... a bank ... window? And that's where the bank keeps the cash? Not sure that's where I'd keep the cash, but what do I know?
• That ring is insane. If you've got a ring like that, it better give you superpowers or some shit, because otherwise, tacky.
• Harry Whittington rules. Totally reliable read. Never bad, sometimes great, paperback-pulp legend. Never read this one. Got this copy so cheap, and it's already so broken in, that I might just move this one to the top of the "To Be Read" pile...

Best things about this back cover: 

• Of all the blurby adjectives, "effective" has to be the least ... effective. Effective at what? Exciting me? Putting me to sleep? Give me something more.
• Love the name "Buz"—just gonna presume it's pronounced "booze"
• BANK CAPER! Yes, please, thank you. This is definitely going to the top of the pile

Page 123~

    She stared at me as if trying to see inside me. I felt my face going white and bloodless. All my blood seemed to be congealing in the pit of my stomach. 

    "Buz—you—didn't do it?"

Pretty sure Buz did it. Just a hunch.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and BlueSky]

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and BlueSky]

Paperback 1093: Black Friday / David Goodis (Black Lizard [unnumbered])

Paperback 1093: Black Lizard (unnumbered) (1st ptg, 1987)

Title: Black Friday

Author: David Goodis

Cover artist: Kirwan

Condition: 9 or 10/10 (they don't come any better—looks brand new)

Value: $25

Best things about this cover: 

• Well, sure, if you live in the sewer, every Friday is Black Friday
• A jug of wine, a single boot, a weird ... I'm gonna say 'coin purse' ... and thou ...
• It looks like a hand gun fossilized inside a coin purse, or handbag. Maybe if we could get a little more light in here...
• I love that Kirwan works his name into the objects in his paintings. No way you're gonna cheat him out of an artist credit! (check the neck on the bottle)
• I adore these late-80s, pre-Vintage takeover Black Lizards. They go through a white-spine and then a later black-&-gray spine incarnation. This one is of the white-spine variety:

• I'm so mad at the lack of complete vintage paperback checklists online. My kingdom for a one-stop shop featuring numbered lists of every paperback by ever imprint, including reprint houses like Black Lizard. Sigh. Everything out there is incomplete and/or hard to navigate—though I do like BookScans pretty well

Best things about this back cover: 

• Woof. Pretty bland back here.
• According to backyardchickens.com, pickled eggs are "100% absolutely horrible frozen." In case that Mike Wallington blurb was giving you any ideas.
• Ah, good, they gave Kirwan his artist credit after all. Nice.

Page 123~

"There's the other dog. Over there, Charley. You looking?"

"No," Charley said. "You look."

"Aw, don't, Charley. Don't be that way."

"What way?" Charley asked mildly. "I'm just telling you to look, that's all. I want you to have a good look."

"Jesus," Rizzio said. And then he sobbed it. "Oh Jesus—"

The dog is a Doberman and the Doberman ... seems to have had a mild disagreement with Charley and Rizzio's partner, Mattone. The phrase "there was little of his throat remaining" makes an appearance. I'm usually a "root-for-the-dog" kind of person, and since these guys shot a dog a few pages back, I don't feel so bad for Mattone, frankly.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and BlueSky]

Paperback 1033: The Black Mass of Brother Springer / Charles Willeford (Black Lizard nn)

Paperback 1033: Black Lizard (no number) (1st ptg, 1989)

Title: The Black Mass of Brother Springer
Author: Charles Willeford
Cover artist: Kirwan

Condition: 9/10
Estimated value: $35-40

Best things about this cover:

• An interesting variation on the "Killer's POV" cover. Hands that would normally be coming to strangle her are instead filled with Bible.
• Those thumbs get creepier the longer you stare at them.
• Willeford is a master. I have read stuff where he has written really interestingly and provocatively about race (and racism). I have no idea what kind of territory this book gets into, though...

Best things about this back cover:

• He was white. She was ... ? So much white male gaze here. No idea if the book critiques or revels in this whole way of seeing blackness. I'd guess the former. I really should read it.
• Jim Thompson is the author that got me into vintage paperback collecting (long story I'll tell some other time, when one of his books comes up ... or maybe I've told it already—I've been at this blog a long long time and there's lots I've forgotten about what stories I have and haven't told). Anyway, the irony here is that I don't care for Jim Thompson any more. He was the gateway ... but now the gateway has dissolved, or become irrelevant, or something. Weird how these things happen.
• I think my next collecting effort will involve these '80s Black Lizards, before the imprint was bought out by Vintage (those early Vintage/Black Lizards were part of the whole Jim Thompson Gateway To Paperbackville...)

Page 123~

The shadow I stared at was not a part of the regular inventory I saw every day.
      And then the shadow stretched.

~RP

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Paperback 858: Only in L.A. / Murray Sinclair (Black Lizard [unnumbered])

Paperback 858: Black Lizard unnumbered (1st ptg, 1988)

Title: Only in L.A.

Author: Murray Sinclair

Cover artist: Kirwan

Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is the first Pop Sensation book with a "1988" date.
• It's like she's daring the peeping toms. "You want some of this? Well, let's go! … Pussies."
• That is one of the '80s-est ladies ever. She looks like she's getting ready to go out to audition to be the lady on the cover of Duran Duran's "Rio." Or maybe she's headed out to visit her friend, this lady:

[Artist I'm thinking of is Patrick Nagel.]

And the back cover:

Best things about this back cover:

• Ah, so much high-contrast teeny tiny white text. Gah. Horrible.
• Back cover copy makes the story sound routine: "the usual political work"? "You know, blah blah whiskey blah blah corruption blah blah guns gutter dogs sleaze gun butt noir."
• This sounds like a slightly more interesting "Taken."

Page 123~

Aikens had talked turkey. He hadn't made a mistake or bullshitted me. I told my soul brother I wanted to go over there. 

Long story short, totally not-racist white narrator's black friend "Aikens" gets blown apart by gun fire before the page is over.

~RP

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Paperback 591: Cropper's Cabin / Jim Thompson (Black Lizard nn)

Paperback 591: Black Lizard nn (1st ptg, 1987)

Title: Cropper's Cabin
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Kirwan

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "Look ma, Sissy done given birth to a gun!"
• I love these '80s Black Lizards. They have their own unique look, a kind of '80s/'50s hybrid, rather than just looking like imitations / parodies of the vintage style. Lurid, but stylized.
• Wow, someone's been practicing his action-hand drawing.
• That lady's hair and dress are both aptly nightmarish.
• I like when artists signatures are visible, and especially when they are worked into the art itself (Robert Schulz did this quite a bit)

Best things about this back cover:

• Sadism, incest, and castration are (for better or worse) three of the most common themes in Thompson's writing.
• Don't like the design here so much: too texty, and it's all a little too left-justified.
• Black Lizard (post-Vintage buyout) was my entree into the world of hardboiled crime fiction. Someday I'll tell you the story of the bookstore point-of-purchase display that changed my life (or maybe I've already told that story—blog long enough, and you forget what you have and haven't told...)

Page 123~

I stopped and whuffed my nose out good and dug out my eyes, and it helped a lot. And my hands didn't slip any more. Because ...

Now, this is more like it, I thought. Why didn't I think of this ...

Because I wasn't holding on to anything.

Despite what it apparently means, 'whuffed' is my new favorite word.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]