Paperback 615: Death Is My Comrade / Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal 986)

Paperback 615: Gold Medal 986 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Death Is My Comrade
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: Uncredited (Barye Phillips?)

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "You must be this tall to ride this comrade."
• Mad Maxine in "Beyond Oniondome"!
• Not a fan of Gold Medal's late-50s/early-60s "Don't-Finish-The-Painiting" phase.

Best things about this back cover:

• Generic Detective Head Shot!
• "Tune in" — ha ha. It thinks it's TV.
• Hmmm, I'm no Chet Drum, but 'Rodzianko' and 'Rodin' sound awfully similar.
• Ooh, ripe *and* luscious *AND* underage! Just like Chet likes 'em.

Page 123~

Gone was the hail-fellow-well-met attitude, gone the booming voice. The big, shaggy man slouched slowly and wearily across the room. I gave him a cigarette. His big hand shook as he cupped the flame I offered. "For some of us dialectic reasoning makes the difference," he said. 

Silly commies, no longer hailing your well-met fellows. Chet Drum scoffs at you!

~RP

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Paperback 471: Model for Murder / Stephen Marlowe (Graphic 94)

Paperback 471: Graphic 94 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Model for Murder
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $16

Best things about this cover:

• I have no idea what these people are up to, but that cigarette and that cigar are getting it on.
• Finally, a taut thriller about the exciting, dangerous world of copyediting.
• Steve is puzzled to find that his meticulously researched paper, "Broads: Stacked vs. Unstacked," merits only a B-. "I don't think I understand this whole 'Women's Studies' thing, Bernie."

Best things about this back cover:

• Kinsey!
• Out-Kinseyed Kinsey! "Screw this survey stuff, let's just install hidden cameras."
• Lady wrestlers! Be still my heart.
• Talk about ... Pop Grujdzak. Talk about ... Pop Grujdzak.
• If I had to invent a stupid-sounding last name, and had several days to do it, I still couldn't beat Wompler.

Page 123~

The clothing was Ken's naturally, and as I dressed and tested the stiffness in my left arm, I began to wonder. The arm couldn't have punched its way through a wet Kleenex tissue.

So ... he dresses up like Barbie's boyfriend and he has a lot of experience testing the tensile strength of wet Kleenex. He sounds dreamy.

~RP

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Paperback 338: Dead Man's Tale / Ellery Queen [Stephen Marlowe] (Pocket Books 6117)

Paperback 337: Pocket Books 6117 (PBO 1961)

Title: Dead Man's Tale
Author: Ellery Queen (ghostwritten by Stephen Marlowe)
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "He ... he was out picking tulips and his sabots slipped and he hit her head on a windmill blade, which caused him to choke on some edam. I do not know how we ended up underwater. Dike broke, I suppose."
• This title is superlame.
• Never would have known this was ghostwritten by Stephen Marlowe if I hadn't gotten on Abe Books to check prices. There's a signed copy available there in which Marlowe writes "Just this once..."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Hacha" sounds like some kind of drink you'd order at a hipster café in Brooklyn.
• This plot sounds interesting. I really want to know what they're going to tell Hacha once they find him. It better have something to do with a dead man, or a windmill. Otherwise, total ripoff.

Page 123~

Then they heard Lou Goody tramping up the hill.

And I thought "Barney Street" was a good name.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 186: Danger Is My Line / Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal 947)

Paperback 186: Gold Medal 947 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Danger Is My Line
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: Uncredited (looks like Barye Phillips a little)

Yours for: SOLD! (Jan. 11, 2009)


Best things about this cover:

• "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just..."

1. "tying my ... pump"
2. "doing some very advanced step aerobics"
3. "trying to figure out the most auspicious way to present my magnificent rear end to the world"

• Chester Drum looks like he's prepping to give someone a very unpleasant exam
• "Danger Is My Line" is a beyond-lame title - along with the author's last name (Marlowe), it furthers the impression that the book will be a horrid rip-off of Chandler (who wrote "Trouble Is My Business")

Best things about this back cover:

• So Chester Drum is ... a lamb. Either that, or one of Mary's lambs wants to screw her.

Page 123~

Maybe he got the belly from drinking too much beer or maybe he got it from eating criminals alive - but the overall impression he gave, penguin-body, rimless hexagonal glasses, merry twinkling eyes, was about as deadly as a house-cat's. Still, I told myself, these things are relative - house-cats are pretty deadly: to rats.

"Deep Thoughts," by Chester Drum

~RP

Paperback 96: Jeopardy Is My Job / Stephen Marlowe (Gold Medal s1214)

Paperback 96: Gold Medal s1214 (PBO, 1962)
Title: Jeopardy Is My Job
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: SOLD! (5/19/08)


Best things about this cover:

• "Jeopardy Is My Job: The Alex Trebek Story" - exciting!
• If you cover up or otherwise ignore the dot on the "i" in SPAIN, it really really looks like SPAM. I imagine that Chester Drum there is putting on his spam-handling gloves.
• What is he doing with that glove? Is he about to commit a crime? Or give some kind of probing examination? The whole thing is very O.J.
• I like how he's balancing Madrid on the very tip of his index finger

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, too much text
• "Robbie Hartshorn" - Well that's a silly name. I wonder if his heart (or hart) has been shorn, and if so, what that means.
• "They were paid a monthly stipend to do their drinking on foreign shores" - How do I get that job
  
• This whole description sounded boring to me until I got to "... the cave where Ruy lived with a gypsy woman ..." That has narrative possibilities.

PAGE 123~

"You are free to go," one of the Guardia said in English. "The Colonel says to tell you if you do not leave Rondo before dark," he added, the words heavily accented and hard to understand, "you are being in bad trouble."

~RP