Title: Modesty Blaise
Author: Peter O'Donnell
Cover artist: Uncredited
Yours for: $15
Best things about this cover:
- I challenge the spy-worthiness of those boots. Everything else is sleek and pragmatic (even the pile of hair, which could be hiding, I don't know, throwing stars or a bottle opener or something), but those heels wouldn't last 10 seconds in Abbottabad.
- She has the look of a McGinnis girl, but there's something ... not quite right. A lifelessness. I mean, I usually think McGinnis girls look a little dead-eyed, but they have a certain something that pops. This woman doesn't have it.
- This is a movie tie-in paperback. Movie is apparently a kind of spoof of spy movies. The "Modesty Blaise" franchise is weird. Starts in comics (as a female alternative to 007), and blows up from there.
- As for the background—looks like something borrowed from a kindergarten classroom. What the hell?
Best things about this back cover:
- Her expression in that second drawing. Is she flipping a man and singing "My Prerogative" at the same time? Impressive.
- Wow, this cover copy is leaden. Not campy, not funny, not outlandish—just predictable and stupid.
- "Dirk Bogarde" will now be added to my long list of potential aliases.
Page 123~
"Yet she's all woman," Hagan said, and felt his loins throb with sudden memory of her.
I don't think that's quite how loins work. Even a 16-yr-old isn't going to go from zero to "throb" at the speed of thought.
~RP
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