Paperback 549: Passion Panamania / J.X. Williams (Leisure Books 1203)

Paperback 549: Leisure Books LB1203 (PBO, 1967)

Title: Passion Panamania
Author: J. X. Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $28


Best things about this cover:

• When the women's beach volleyball team says "Closed Practice," they mean "Closed Practice."
• I'm a bit worried for that guy. I mean if he were shirtless and she had a whip, that would be one thing, but pantsless, spread-eagle, and she's got a knife? No. All the boobs and butt cheeks in the world aren't going to make this situation erotic.
• What is her right hand doing!? Please don't say "anointing the sacrificial lamb."
• Winner: Frondiest Cover of 1967.
• A Latin Lesbos, eh? So ... and island ... in, let's say, the Caribbean ... Well, there's Jost Van Dyke, but I'm gonna say "too spot-on."

Best things about this back cover:

• Yeah, if you're having marital troubles, just go camping. Works like a charm.
• Um, question? What is "the PASSION PANAMANIA"? Because, grammatically, it seems to be some kind of miasma or disease or sea god.
• "And the swapping and sharing could begin..."—so it's some kind of convention for Beanie Baby collectors? No, wait: "no conventions" ... I'm stumped (which is what the guy on the cover is going to be saying in 3, 2, ...)

Page 123~

They understood each other too well to waste words. Maria said, "We all—all five of us—took part. But only one—not me—did the terrible thing you know about. We others were as surprised and felt as horrible about it as you do—I swear it, _mi amiga_!—but we just stood there as she—Oh, _madre_, it was so awful, the blood..."

Dear god, who is jacking off to this!?!?!

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 405: This Way for Hell / Spike Morelli (Leisure Library 7)

Paperback 405: Leisure Library 7 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: This Way for Hell
Author: Spike Morelli
Cover artist: Reginald Heade

Yours for: $30

Best things about this cover:

• That woman died from a severe case of Volcano Nipple, and the jogging mermaid hitwoman couldn't care less.
• "If I can't be Miss Sea Foam 1952, no one can! Taxi!"
• "This way for hell, that way for linens, sundries, and men's wear."
• Love her right earring, which is trying desperately to swim away from her face (I assume that's a fish, given the nautical hue of her gown and (prodigious) gloves).

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow. Kids, see that second sentence? Don't write like that. Just make "completely merciless" into an adjectival phrase and put it before "syndicate."
• "Even Venus de Milo"??? That armless statue? That's your paragon of shamelessness? Never thought of her as a slutty exhibitionist.
• Seriously, this was written by an eighth-grader. You will go to a limit. You won't go beyond it. Come on!
• Uh, it's This Way FOR Hell, not TO Hell. Stupid eighth-grader.
  

Page 123~

"You could still go for me if you wanted to let yourself go. You know you could."
"You're all mixed up inside, Julie. There could never be any room in my life for a dame like you."
"You make it hard, Shaun. I don't know what to do."
"When dames get tough they usually do silly things. Things they live to regret afterwards."

This dame doesn't "live to regret" her behavior so much as (on the very next page) fling herself through a window to her splattery death in the alley below. Sorry. I should have said "SPOILER ALERT!"

Also, pretty sure the eighth-grader who wrote the cover copy wrote the whole damn book as well. The entire dialogue between dick and dame is hilarious, wooden, C-grade patter.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]
[Follow Rex Parker on Tumblr]