Paperback 901: The Queen's Awards / Ed. Ellery Queen (Perma Books M-3015)

Paperback 901: Perma Books M-3015 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Queen's Awards
Editor: Ellery Queen
Cover artist: William George

Estimated value: $10-14

Best things about this cover:

• Hunting Che Fear Hand Strangulation Revolutionary Ponytail! I love this story!
• Those frames are a bit ... ornate. That said, I'd kill for a real-life version of Strangulation in Red, frame and all.
• Ellery Queen was a pseudonym for these guys. Also the name of the main character in their novels.

Best things about this back cover:

• I give the opening alliterative salvo a C-.
• "Anyway you like your murders..." is a phrase that bespeaks a certain Coliseum-esque savagery in the typical mystery story audience.
• Eleazar Lipsky wrote the story that was the basis of the film noir classic "Kiss of Death" (1947).

Page 123~ [From "The Stroke of Thirteen" by Lillian de la Torre ("as told by James Boswell, August 1780") (!?!?!)]

"The ingenious Captain Donellan," replied Dr. Johnson, "is a disciple of Linnaeus. He grows the oriental poppy. With that cord-handled claw by his tent he sacrifices the capsule of the poppy, as I have been told they do it in the East Indies where he served. He collects the gum that forms. To put a name to it, it is opium. I smelled opium in the affair when I was informed that Allan MacDonald had been hearing 'sounds colored crimson,' as drugged men may do."

18th-century drug-induced synesthesia! Who saw that coming?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 628: Dead Giveaway / Hugh Lawrence Nelson (Dell 520)

Paperback 628: Dell 520 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Dead Giveaway
Author: Hugh Lawrence Nelson
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Legato-erotic asphyxiation.
• "There was no stool!"
• I love the thick, sweaty, unshaven humanity of Bob Stanley's painting.
• I also entertained "auto-melodic asphyxiation." But I stand by my first choice.

Best things about this back cover:

• When Cartography Goes Bad. A confused and ugly mapback. Too many keys and insets and overlays. San Francisco has never looked more dull.
• If that is the "zany troupe of entertainers" there in the inset, then we have very different ideas about what "zany" means.
• There's someone named "Deasy" in this book? And it's not called "Deasy Does It." The titling folks are slacking.

Page 123~

"And Mr. Gates passing out and going—"

"Thump!" They shouted it in unison.

Abbott jumped.

They beamed with pleasure.

I'm guessing "they" are the "zany troupe of entertainers." And I'm also guessing Abbott shoots them within the next couple pages.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]