Paperback 1145: Ten Plus One / Ed McBain (PermaBook M-4304)

Paperback 1145: PermaBook M-4304 (1st ptg., 1964)

Title: Ten Plus One

Author: Ed McBain

Cover artist: [photo cover]

Condition: 9.5/10

Value: $15-20

[Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY, Sep. 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• [Original title: "Eleven"]
• Am I supposed to believe this guy has just been shot? It looks more like he just realized he forgot to pick up laundry detergent. "My wife's gonna kill me!" "Take it easy, Larry, take it easy!"
• This book is square and unread. Square unread—absolute collector bait. The only "wear" is edgewear. The spine is immaculate. I will pretty much buy *any* paperback published between 1940 and 1970 if it's in this kind of condition. Luckily, today, the cover happens to be supercool and unusual, and the author happens to be major.

Best things about this back cover: 

• "A tiny hole in the head"—or, if you're the guy on the cover, a big red blood splotch hovering about three feet above and to the right of your head.
• This is classic—some might even say "cliché"—thriller stuff. Buncha random shootings! What's behind it all? No one knows! Let's find out!
• Detective Steve Carella subsequently retired from the force, dropped the "a" from his last name, and had a fairly successful career as a comedic actor.

Page 123~

They had searched David Arthur Cohen's apartment from transom to trellis—the apartment boasted a small outdoor terrace overlooking a beautiful view of the River Harb—and found nothing at all incriminating. This did not mean that Cohen wasn't a very clever murderer who had hidden his rifle in an old garage somewhere. It simply meant that, for the time being, the detectives had found nothing in his apartment.

"From Trellis to Transom: The Searching of David Arthur Cohen's Apartment"—OK, it needs workshopping, but it's still a sight better than Ten Plus One. Also, do people really abbreviate "Harbor" like that? 

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]

Paperback 1031: The Great Mail Robbery / Clarence Budington Kelland (Popular Library 432)

Paperback 1031: Popular Library 432 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Great Mail Robbery
Author: Clarence Budington Kelland
Cover artist: [Earle Bergey]

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• "Cheese it, fellas! It's Miss Smokestack 1952!"
• Mr. Freaked Out Impossible-Over-the-Shoulder-Glance in the extreme foreground there is pretty special.
• There is a lot happening in this manframe (n: a framelike structure composed primarily of man parts). There's shocked bighead, Li'l Cap'n Fearhand, and then Gunhand (he handles the guns). The lady does have a manic look—and she's radiating some kind of toxic emissions—but her body language says Bored Tween. Weird.
• They Made A Living Out Of Death = C-minus pun irony

Best things about this back cover:

• HIS!
• Inca! 
• "This side of Hell," LOL. What's on the other side of Hell? A Wendy's?
• "Suddenly there wasn't any robe." So she's some kind of ecdysiast-magician? Must be confusing for poor Will Scarlet.
• This book should be called "Will Scarlet and the Starlet." Or "The Great Female Disrobery."

Page 123~

He had been immersed but a few minutes when his telephone rang irritatingly. He forced himself to get up and, dripping and shivering, walked to the table beside his bed where the telephone stood.
"Hello," he said impatiently.
"This," said a voice, "is Jahala Vidmar."

"... said a voice" is about as pure an example of needless wordery as you're ever gonna see. Made me laugh out loud and completely forget the horrific adverb abuse that preceded it.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 1021: Horns for the Devil / Louis Malley (Pocket Books 894)

Paperback 1021: Pocket Books 894 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Horns for the Devil
Author: Louis Malley
Cover artist: George Erickson

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• "I Want You ... For U.S. Mafia"
• Not many covers break the fourth wall quite this breakingly. "Who are you? You got my sandwiches?! Well then whaddya want? Shut the fuckin' door! You lookin' at my girl!? Jerry, Lou, show this guy what for!"
• This is a fantastic cavalcade of mugs. Hall-of-Fame B-movie extras. Just hanging around, waiting for someone to call them up for another stint in Generic Mid-Century American Crime Story. "Our regular Girl At Bar No. 3 turned her ankle. You're in, kid!"
• It's not exactly like the work of director Louis Malle, but it is ... Malle-y.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Look here! Now I'm big and two-toned and my background is Rage Red! Where's my *&%^ing coffee?!"
• Severio Lebbrosa! That means "seriously like a leopard."
• No, no, no, it's "first you get the money, then you get the power, *THEN* you get the women." Come on, man. Did you not watch "Scarface?"

Page 123~

When they got out of the car Ralph squeezed her hand, but she wanted more than that. It had come so suddenly.

This was the very least boring sentence, which is wedged in between a conversation with an old lady and a scintillating drive to Westchester. I probably shoulda just let you think it was prelude to a steamy sex scene. Sorry.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 1005: All Men Are Liars / John Stephen Strange (Dell 438)

Paperback 1005: Dell 438 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: All Men Are Liars
Author: John Stephen Strange
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Condition: 6/10
Estimated value: $5-10

Best things about this cover:

• "I solemnly swear ... aw, who am I kidding? All men are liars, amirite!? Up top!"
• Her side-eye! I really should have a "Women Looking At Losers" blog tag. (See Paperback 1004)
• Her mustard suit is smokin'
• Shouldn't "man about town" be hyphenated? ... wow, even dictionaries seem divided on this one. One thing no one's divided on: the Ben Affleck movie "Man About Town" is probably best left back in 2006.

Best things about this back cover;

• Mapback!
• Love the Gay '90s font on the title, wtf
• How have they managed to make Manhattan look so boring? So many things on that island we get ... a generic courtroom interior!?
• The crossword maker in me is like "hmm... is HDQRS really a valid abbr.?"

Page 123~

Won Way Street rose and strolled across the well of the court.

Sorry. I'm dead. That name just killed me.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 990: Sugar Shannon / Adam Knight (Belmont Books 217)

Paperback 990: Belmont 217 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Sugar Shannon
Author: Adam Knight
Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 9/10
Estimated value: $20

Best things about this cover:

• I love this cover. Mostly I love that it's so ****ing purple, and then that the title is yellow and oddly placed. I also love her big, calmly intense eyes, and the way she cradles that gun lovingly between her breasts. Either this is a next-level sexy role-playing scenario, or someone is gonna get very murdered.
• I know when I go to rendezvous (-vouses?), my preferred method of travel is drifting.
• Series!? Here's the other Adam Knight book in the Pop Sensation archives—throwback! (2007).

Best things about this back cover:

• Scorching yellow!
• Tiny Shannon. That is a weird use of the front cover image.
• Wow, this passage and synopsis tell us ... nothing. It's boiler-plate, bot-written cover copy.

Page 123~

Serena's flat was a paradox. It screamed mediocrity, it stank of the buckeye in art and upholstery.

Don't know what it means, don't care what it means—but "it stank of the buckeye" is my new go-to judgment phrase.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 987: New York: Confidential / Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer (Dell 1534)

Paperback 987: Dell 1534 (2nd ptg, 1951)

Title: New York: Confidential
Author: Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Estimated value: $12-15
Condition: 8/10

Best things about this cover:

• Guys! Dolls! Together!
• Robert Stanley's people are always ridiculously rich and creamy.
• Seriously, the art is gorgeous. That dark aquamarine NYC night sky somehow works perfectly.

Best things about this back cover:

• Map! Back! Mapback!
• It's a pretty dang dull map, from a design point of view, but the "Key" on p. 240 is amazing. All those little numbers on the map represent "Hotels," "Night Clubs & Restaurants," "Theaters," and "Shopping":

Also, there are appendices of cool info like "Headwaiters' Names" (!?) and a "Glossary of Harlemisms":



Page 123~

Do not use cheap perfume when night-clubbing (or at any time).

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 860: Case of the Petticoat Murder / Jonathan Craig (Gold Medal 784)

Paperback 860: Gold Medal 784 (PBO, 1958)

Title: Case of the Petticoat Murder
Author: Jonathan Craig
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $20


Best things about this cover:

• The second movement of "Eroica" *is* pretty groovy…
• That hand is halfway between Fear Hand and "You Want Some of This?" Hand.
• I really, really like that bare suggestion of a bed frame. It's a pair of lips! It's a gun sight! The whole spirit of Sexy/Danger conveyed in a few graceful black arcs.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mustard. I think that's what I'm looking at.
• I wish all the non-green words would just drop away. Now that's what I call "poetry."
• You rarely see detectives so proud of their necrophilic tendencies.

Page 123~

"Because, for one thing, I don't care for alligator."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 762: Case of the Cold Coquette / Jonathan Craig (Gold Medal 645)

Paperback 762: Gold Medal 645 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Case of the Cold Coquette
Author: Jonathan Craig
Cover artist: George Mayers

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Cold? Maybe if she put her shirt back on …
• Oh, *that* kind of iceberg. The ones that are beautiful and are thawed by money. I was thinking of the ones that are made of ice and float in the ocean and are thawed by the rays of the sun. But I get it now. Good analogy.
• If you're looking for your right shoe, lady, it's under the bench … there … toward your left … no, not in the corner—down … straight down … are you even trying? 
• Seriously, what is she doing? Some kind of weird half-naked bench yoga?

Best things about this back cover:

• "I'm a cop." Original!
• Champagne tastes … but caviar guts-on-the-track!
• We get it. Cold, thaw, etc. Give the metaphor a rest; I think it's tired.
• I always say, the best leads are succulent leads. Like aloe. A great lead, aloe.

Page 123~

"The mark is so hotted up he can't think straight."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]