Paperback 321: Wicked Women / ed. Lee Wright (Pocket 1263)

Paperback 321: Pocket 1263 (PBO, 1960)

Title: A Butcher's Dozen of Wicked Women
Editor: Lee Wright
Cover artist: Morgan Kane

Yours for: SOLD!


Best things about this cover:

• If they'd just get rid of the text and let me see what she's looking at, this cover would be perfect.
• Great Girl Art, Girl With Gun, Gams Galore, all overlooking a cityscape. I live for covers like this. Subtle, sexy, delicious. Her arm position, her hip cock ... perfect. If I woke up in a hotel room and *this* is what I saw when I looked over at the balcony, I could die a happy man.
• Problem: the painting gives off an urban, hard-boiled vibe. Those authors ... do not. I mean, they're fine, if you like more traditional mysteries, but the ones I recognize are somewhat cozier than authors I tend to read. There *is* a Kenneth Millar (aka Ross Macdonald) story inside. Not sure why he's not on the cover, as he is pretty well established at the time of this book's release.

Best things about this back cover:

• Cool '60s design — vaguely rectangular swatches of different bright colors arranged in asymmetrical relationship to one another — continued from front cover.
• I'm torn between the practical Lucy and the vengeful Daihili.

Page 123~

from "Suspicion," by Dorothy L. Sayers

He sipped it thoughtfully, standing by the kitchen stove. After the first sip, he put the cup down. Was it his fancy, or was there something queer about the taste? He sipped it again, rolling it upon his tongue. It seemed to him to have a faint tang, metallic and unpleasant. In a sudden dread he ran out to the scullery and spat the mouthful into the sink.

I read one novel by Sayers and the mystery (or rather, its solution) was So preposterous that I never read another. I will say, however, that the woman knows her way around a sentence. She translated Dante, after all.

~RP

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Paperback 310: Four O'Clock on Friday / Philip Storey (Novel Library U177)

Paperback 310: Novel Library U177 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Four O'Clock on Friday
Author: Philip Storey
Cover artist: Robert Bonfils

Yours for: $22


Best things about this cover:

• Oddly unmoving for a peek-a-boo nightie cover.
• "I like to paint with my hands — much more sensual than painting with rollers or brushes. I call this color 'The Blood of My Latest Victim.'"
• "Pretend you're shopping..." — sorry, but your role-playing skills need some work.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Tits!" — ha ha. Klassy.
• I love how the plot description basically alleviates us from the burden of reading for the plot, thus freeing us up to scan quickly for the "part-lesbian" (?!) scenes.
• I also love how the cover copy seems hell-bent on debasing the word "hero" as much as possible. Starting with "The hero is a personnel manager..."
• "This, however, is not complicated enough" — I'm gonna disagree with you there, partner — though the "weird brother" plot does have, uh, novelty on its side.

Page 123~

"You could have knocked me over to hear Celia had been married to Fred all along. You knew it? Oh yes, darling, I can see it in your handsome face. Don't be made at me, love, I'll never talk."

It would be hard to express to you how poorly this book is written without also boring you to death. Also, I think "Don't be mad at me, love, I'll never talk" should have been the tagline of this book.

~RP

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Paperback 277: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse / Mike Avallone (Gold Medal 718)

Paperback 277: Gold Medal 718 (PBO, 1957)
Title: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse
Author: Mike Avallone
Cover artist: Jack Floherty

Yours for: $19


Best things about this cover:

• Peek-a-boo nighties are a staple of vintage paperback covers, but you rarely see the women in said nighties *actually* playing peek-a-boo.
• Or maybe she's just sad. Or performing some odd modern dance routine. Whatever she's doing, she appears to be doing it while wrapped in the kind of cellophane they use to cover fruit baskets.
• "Oh, what's a corpse to do!? [sob sob, toe point]"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Flounced" is a fabulous word.
• Nice contemporary hot-chick references in the opening sentences. I like how the writer is on a first name / first name / last name basis with these legendary lookers.
• "She wore clothes nakedly" = Avallone at his Hammettiest.
• Second paragraph reads like a tagline discard pile. "You put those on the cover!? Those were just notes!"
• Rarely, upon taking candy from a baby, do you demand that it take off its clothes.

Page 123~

He dug a thick fold of something from his pocket, fanned it out. Checked it the same way you do a map. It was a map.

Sometimes, you gotta stay literal. Keeps readers on their toes.

~RP

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Paperback 6 - Dell D102

Paperback 6 - Dell D102 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Great Smith
Author: Edison Marshall
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Yours for: SOLD (June '09)


Best things about this cover (Where to begin!?):

• "I'm ... too sexy for this shirt..."
• Peek-a-boo pants!? Why not?
• World's least supportive bra: "Keeps your breasts from floating up toward your face!"
• "Great Smith"??? "Smith" somehow doesn't go - it's anticlimactic, like "Fabulous Jones." Unless this guy is, in fact, one hell of a blacksmith.
• I want all of you who read this to start using the exclamation "Great Smith!" in your daily lives in place of profanity.

This is definitely from the cheesier regions of my collections. Despite its bad condition, and its ordinariness, its cheapness, its run-of-the-millness, I love this book - or this cover, I should say; I certainly haven't read it. Stanley is a great realist cover artist, and though his women always look the same, his art has a softness to its edges that makes it very easy on the eye, very pleasant to stare at. Still, it's hard to imagine someone, anyone, looking at this book in line at the supermarket and thinking, "Wow, that guy is Hot!" That said, I would kill to look like him from the neck down.

This book also has a painted back cover! More art!


Best things about this back cover:

• "I bring you ... maize" (which here looks like a giant puff of smoke, likely the result of a sticker pull)
• "Magnificent, lusty love-making" - that's both graphic and oddly tepid
• I believe that knight to be quite anachronistic, unless Great Smith is jousting in some early RenFest

RP

The Great Paperback Project - Paperback 3: Gold Medal 899

Paperback 3: Gold Medal 899 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Bier for a Chaser
Author: Richard Foster
Cover Artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• The title - my general hatred of puns is well documented, but this one is so cheesy and forced (like the title of an "Itchy & Scratchy" cartoon, e.g. "Field of Screams," "Dazed and Contused," "Remembrance of Things Slashed," etc.) that it actually works.
• The woman, and the body (which looks like it's going by on a conveyor belt, or else relaxing in corpse pose) form an upside-down cross.
• Peek-a-boo nightie - Collectors love these. The art here is fantastically subtle because while she is covered by a nightgown, it is quite clear that this killer is not wearing panties. She did, however, find the time to put on a fierce pair of red high-heeled shoes. She's not big on practicality, this one.
• Even though she has dropped the gun, I am still totally counting this as part of my "Girls With Guns" collection.

The back cover copy makes this book sound dreadfully generic (I haven't read it, just as I haven't read the Vast Majority of my collection): "Remember my name - it's Pete Draco [I've gotta steal that]. It's even money you'll be seeing it in the headlines soon." I'm sorry, what was your name again?

RP