Paperback 507: Guilty Bystander / Wade Miller (Penguin Signet 677)

Paperback 507: Penguin Signet 677 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Guilty Bystander
Author: Wade Miller
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• It's like someone threw a vase painted with a decorative seascape right into this dude's eye. That, or his right eye is a kind of dream projector. And he dreams of ... a boat.
• Was Jesus crucified on that boat? There are three crosses. And blood.
• I love jonas's work. More surreal and abstract than the representational style that would come to predominate in the '50s (James Avati covers would come to define the Signet aesthetic once Signet was no longer in this weird hybrid phase with Penguin)

Best things about this back cover:

• Wacky photo!
• Ugh, early pb designers really did flounder—picture should be at least three times its current size and the absurdly long bio + extensive summary of critical history should be cut to ... virtually nothing. This was back when publishers imagined that paperback consumers cared about things like "critics." I mean, can you imagine someone using the word "encomiums" on a crime fiction (or romance or thriller or western) cover today?
• When did people start using the phrase "Hammett-Chandler school" and can we go back in time and unstart using it?
• Boucher was essentially the only critic taking all this crime stuff seriously, so you see him quoted A Lot. He was a big fan of "unexaggerated hardness." But who isn't!?

Page 123~

Ham and eggs and two cups of coffee cost sixty-two cents. Max Thursday put them away at an all-night joint on Market Street and strode in to the Bridgway, jingling three pennies in his pocket. Despite the beating, he felt fairly good. 

~RP

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Paperback 41: Penguin-Signet 670

Paperback 41: Penguin-Signet 670 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Author: Horace McCoy
Cover artist: T.V.


"Oh Jim, they were so cruel. They made fun of my severe bangs and lime-green sweater. Hold me, Jim!"

"Yes, that's right, rest your head on my shoulder while I use my salt-and-pepper hair to bathe us both in a magical brown penumbra."

Best things about this cover:

• T.V. is a well-known cover artist. Don't know what the initials stand for. I just like that they are T.V. If only there were an artist with the initials V.C.R. or D.V.D.
• The man is embracing the woman, but even he can't help looking at her haircut with derision. "What was she thinking!?"

Horace McCoy is a fantastic hard-boiled writer. This novel is better known as a 1970s movie starring Jane Fonda. It's actually not about horses, or bad haircuts, at all. It's about marathon dancing during the Depression. And some dude who gets sentenced to the death penalty. How's that for an eloquent summary?

• He looks like the B-est of B-Movie actors
• You should know that his "resumé" here is Very Very typical of paperback writers at the time. I'm not sure we are to take much of it at face value. Seems like every other paperback writer had tough odd-jobs like carny or blackjack dealer or lion tamer or the like.

RP

PS, This book was published during the brief period of time when Penguin was transitioning to Signet / NAL in the U.S. (late 40's) - a handful of books have this hybrid imprint, "Penguin Signet." Shortly after the switch, Signet would make a boatload of money as Mickey Spillane's publisher.