Paperback 365: Drawn to Evil / Harry Whittington & The Scarlet Spade / Eaton K. Goldthwaite (Ace D-5)

Paperback 365: Ace Double D-5 (PBO / 1st ptg)

Title: Drawn to Evil / The Scarlet Spade
Author: Harry Whittington / Eaton K. Goldthwaite
Cover artist: Norman Saunders / Norman Saunders??? (Uncredited)

Yours for: $65


Best things about this cover:

• "Hey, tiger, whaddya think of this cami-" "Aw, shut yer yap, you loony dame!"
• Hazel was afraid to tell Bill that his Vulcan salute still needed a lot of practice.
• "Hey, babe, I just found a buyer for this stolen VHS tape I've got in my coat pocket! Gimme a high five! ... Up top? ... Aw, c'mon, don't leave me hangin', babe!"
• "I will karate chop your ass, so help me God, woman!"
• Norman Saunders was a cover painter in the great days of pulp fiction. His flair for the sensational and overdramatic is strongly in evidence here.

Best things about this back cover:

• In my head, she is making the worst, whiniest, most horrible noise in her throat.
• "Can someone please inflate the blow-up doll the rest of the way! Tom's gonna be here any second ..."
• Are those gigantic ice cubes in the background?
• "Nope, the spade's still black, sweetheart. Try again."

Page 123 (from The Scarlet Spade)~

Denver Calhoun's eyes smoldered in his broad, white face as he watched the full progress of O'Moriarty's exit.

So, some fat-faced white guy named Denver has the hots for some super-Irish guy. So what's new?

~RP

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Paperback 159: Room for the Rolling M / Bertrand Sinclair (Western Novel Classic 112)

Paperback 159: Western Novel Classic 112 (PBO, 1951)
Title: Room for the Rolling M
Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair
Cover artist: Uncredited [A. Leslie Ross? Norman Saunders?]

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "M" is about the last letter I would expect to "roll" anywhere. Too angular.
• That window is some kind of brittle scrim - made out of confectionery, perhaps. Glass does not break like that or look like that.
• His neckerchief is fetching. I also like the shirt. I think this guy has a really bad sunburn or is a rodeo clown. Otherwise, what's up with the aggressively red cheeks?
• His left hand looks contorted / evil.
• What is that "HP" in the corner of the window?
• I love that I can read "Warrant for Arrest" on the document that he has handily tucked inside his gun belt.
• At least this guy can hold a gun, unlike some recent Western cover guys I've featured.

I would show you a back cover, but it's just the same as the last Western Novel Classic back cover. Ho + Hum.

Page 123~

As Mike passed out a rotund Chinaman came bearing a tray.

Poor Mike. I guess it's like they always say: Beware rotund Chinamen bearing trays.

~RP

"Pop Sensation" recommended by "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine" (Nov. 2008)

Just want to thank Bill Crider for recommending this blog in his "Blog Bytes" column in the most recent "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine." You should pick this issue up, both because I'm in it, and because it features a super-fantastic cover by legendary pulp artist Norman Saunders (whose work occasionally shows up in my own collection). Fellow cover art blogger (and Friend of This Blog, and librarian) Maughta also gets a shout-out for her blog, "Judge a Book by its Cover."

The review also points out that I am (or claim to be) the "55th Greatest Crossword Puzzle Solver in the Universe" - two blogs with one stone! Thanks to fellow crossnerd Doug Peterson for alerting me to the "EQMM" write-up.

~RP

Paperback 67: Law from Back Beyond (Chuck Martin) / Vengeance Valley (Roy Manning)

Paperback 67: Ace Double D-46 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Law from Back Beyond / Vengeance Valley
Author: Chuck Martin / Roy Manning
Cover artist: Norman Saunders / John Leone


Best thing about this cover:

• This man is practicing the little-known art of rock phrenology.
• Jane has to ride out to retrieve her mentally-deranged brother, who suffers from the perpetual delusion that he is at the Alamo. Good thing his gun is merely an incense burner.

Best things about this other cover:

• I feel as if I could cut-and-paste this guy into another scene and he would look far more like a guy dancing than a guy falling off a demon-possessed horse (look at its eyes! vacant!)

RP

The Great Paperback Project - Paperback 1: Ace Double D-27

As some of you know, and most of you don't - why would you? - I have a fairly sizable collection of Vintage Paperbacks. They date from about 1939 (the beginning of mass-market paperbacks) to about the mid-'60s, when book design (especially the covers) started to get unimaginative and ugly. I like beautiful books. With libraries so abundant, there is little point owning books any more unless they a. are very useful to you, or b. are beautiful. Cheaply made books with stupid, generic, cooked-up-in-some-marketing-lab covers depress the hell out of me. Someday, I will share with you my theory of contemporary book design (including the ironic similarity between the cover art of "women's literature" and snuff films), but for now, I begin a much happier project - putting my beautiful books on display, web-style! A few times a week, I will post a new picture of a vintage paperback cover from my collection. At that rate, my entire collection should be on-line in about ... 12-15 years. May we all live that long.

These covers will appear in no particular order (just as the books sit on the massive shelves next to me). I pull book off shelf, I scan, up it goes. I hope to spread some wee bit of appreciation for the beauty of mid-century paperbacks. I knew nothing about them until I stumbled on pictures in Robert Polito's great Jim Thompson biography. I found out that I could Never afford any of Thompson's paperback originals (not true, I own a couple now), but when I went into one of the many local used bookstores in Ann Arbor, I found that there were lots of Thompson-era (i.e. '50s) paperbacks lying around, lots of them with sensational cover art, and often available for reasonable prices. So I started buying. And buying. And Buying. This is what I did instead of writing my dissertation. Seriously. Thank you, Mellon Foundation. I know I didn't get my dissertation done during my fellowship like I was supposed to, but I amassed a hell of a paperback collection, so your money was well spent.

Paperback 1: Ace Double D-27 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1953)

Titles: Double Take / The Fingered Man
Authors: Mel Colton / Bruno Fischer
Cover artists: [Julian Paul] / Norman Saunders

Yours for: $17

"Don't shoot him! He's doughy. Shoot me between the shoulder blades instead."

Best things about this cover:

• She is hot
• Tag line: "She Was Hard To Meet And Deadly To Know" - "Meet" and "Know" are like the least active active verbs ever ... unless "Know" is biblical, in which case I take it back
• Brightness of her clothes (and lips) against drabness of the rest of the scene
• Love the "Killer's Eye View" - you'll see a number of these in my collection
• The gun is her spine - lots and lots of interesting / disturbing juxtapositions of women and weapons in my collection
• That's the roomiest interior I've ever seen on a standard automobile

And on the Flip Side...

"OK, ma'am, first thing you're going to want to do is stop choking yourself."

Best things about this cover:

• Her insane eyes, and insaner mouth
• The haunted phone that has wrapped its tentacle around her arm and is now forcing her to choke herself
• The gigantic, unmelting blocks of ice that look like three cars trying to pull into a narrow glass tunnel
• The original title: "Quoth the Raven," HA ha. Literary!
• The artist's signature ("Saunders") nestled along the edge of the newspaper

Ace Doubles are iconic mid-century paperbacks. Almost all paperbacks cost just a quarter from 1939 well into the '50s, but Ace Doubles were a little more, for good reasons. Double the content, double the cover art. Value!

One down, a couple thousand to go.

RP