Paperback 1129: The Postman Always Rings Twice / James M. Cain (Pocket Books 443)

 Paperback 1129: Pocket Books 443 (11th ptg., 1953)

Title: The Postman Always Rings Twice

Author: James M. Cain

Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Condition: 7/10

Value: $8

Best things about this cover: 

• Love their faces! "Fraaank ... you thinking what I'm thinking?" "Oh yeah, baby, it's murder city for hubby there. I got a foolproof plan..."
• This cover really gets across the idea that her husband is dragging her down. Physically, literally down. He's like a horny aging hell-imp come to besmirch the pure white maiden (that white is about to become superironic). Anyway, big diagonal energy in this one (from the glass on the table through the handsy Greek up through Miss Innocent and smack into Frank's cigarette-stuffed mug).
• Look at Frank there. He's like a tree. Just a straight up-and-down piece of solid wood. Actually, he seems to be emerging from a block of granite. He's got meaty hands, strangler's hands. But that t-shirt ... that's kinda jaunty. What is that, mint green? Snazzy.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Meh, this book's trying too hard to be highbrow. Quotes from Important Sources and whatnot. Where's my florid, sleazy cover copy!? Do you think I really care what [squints] Herbert Bayard Swope has to say? I do not.
• I can't believe no one calls this story "Frank," as it literally has a "Frank" in it.
• What is "the metal of an automatic?" Is he trying to say "gun?" The "bullets?" Which part of the automatic isn't metal? And can you really not lay a gun down? Sorry, Saturday Review of Literature, you're not up to the task here. Maybe go back to reviewing Louis Bromfield or John P. Marquand or whatever.

Page 123~ (actually, p. 23 ... there's only 121 pages total in this thing!)

    "Even if we had gone through with it they would have guessed it. They always guess it. They guess it anyway, just from habit. Because look how quick that cop knew something was wrong. That's what makes my blood run cold. Soon as he saw me standing there he knew it. If he could tumble to it all that easy, how much chance would we have had if the Greek had died?"

    "I guess I'm not really a hell cat, Frank."

It's a sad day when a girl has to give up on her childhood dreams of being a hell cat. But we all have to grow up sometime, I guess. 

~RP

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Paperback 1094: Mardios Beach / Oakley Hall (Perma Books M-4042)

 Paperback 1094: Perma Books M-4042 (1st ptg, 1956)

Title: Mardios Beach

Author: Oakley Hall

Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Condition: 8-9/10 (mild dings to the corners, else perfect)

Value: $15-20

Best things about this cover: 

• "Wilma!"
• "Stella!"
• He was a heel and worshiped only one god—SUSPENDERS!
• William Holden just woke up and wants to know where his goddamn shirt is!
• The lady looks sad and frightened, but actually she's just petting and gently whispering to a small mouse on her arm named Marvin. "I don't know why the mean man is yelling, Marvin. Maybe he's rehearsing a play. You want some cheese?"
• His left hand is so dramatic, perhaps because his right fingers are caught in the hinges of the door?

Best things about this back cover: 

• "Frank" alert! "Frank" alert. We have "Frank," I repeat, we have "Frank"! (And "Brutally frank" at that—that's the best kind of frank!)
• Now I'm wondering how louses (lice?) are typically made.
• From what I gather from this back-cover description, this is a novel about a guy who just punches people in the groin over and over. It's a hard life, but if you wanna be a louse, you gotta put in the work.

Page 123~

"All right. Quick! What's a woman's function?"

"Give up? The answer is: to Find My Damn Shirt! These suspenders are startin' to itch! Now open this door right now. Hey, is Marvin in there? You and Marvin better not be talkin' about me again ..."

~RP

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Paperback 892: Dark Laughter / Sherwood Anderson (Pocket Books 878)

Paperbacks 892: Pocket Books 878 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Dark Laughter
Author: Sherwood Anderson
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Her expression is somehow both lascivious and bored. It says "You … sure, you'll do."
• Maybe if you angle your boobs toward him just a little bit more, Lady Chatterley, he'll get the hint.
• The husband … is one of my favorite cover elements of all time. Without him, you've got a pretty typical paperback cover. With him, and his ham-sized pate and his spectacles and his "can't talk, reading" and his vibrant, shlubby boredom, this cover skyrockets to comedy. "What? Sure, fuck him, don't fuck him, whatever. I gotta check my stocks…"
• Reader Michael 5000 sent me this book. Since I hardly ever check my mail at school, I didn't discover this book until very recently. I had, very, very weirdly and coincidentally, checked out Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio that same week. Anyway, Michael sent along a nifty postcard with its own spot-on commentary:

And the back cover:


Best things about this back cover:

• Who wrote that tagline, Douglas Sirk?
• Not "love as few men have ever loved," but "love as few men ever have time to love"—like that's the issue. "Damn my 6pm squash game! I could be LOVING right now, but nooooo…"
• "… when she saw Bruce Dudley  she knew physical desire for the first time." Uh … I challenge. That is simply not a plausible statement.

Page 123~

Being in Rose's apartment that night was, for all the people who had been there, a good deal like walking into a bedroom in which a woman lies naked. They had all felt that.

I really, really wish I … knew what the hell this meant.

~RP

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Paperback 738: The Lady in the Lake / Raymond Chandler (Pocket Books 389)

Paperback 738: Pocket Books 389 (4th ptg, 1947)

Title: The Lady in the Lake
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: [Tom Dunn]

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Not my favorite cover, but I love the movie tie-in angle. Audrey Totter died just last month.
• It's a pretty, evocative cover—I like the way the bubbles and her hair float up in soft curves. I also like how her bright purple dress pops against the blue/yellow/green-ness of the rest of the cover.
• Ten years later, this cover would've been way more sexed-up, which I realize is a morbid thing to say about a cover featuring a corpse, but … you know I'm right.

Best things about this back cover:

• Gah. Nothing. 
• I like "susceptible blondes," but "moves with the speed and general effect of a well-aimed bullet to its suspected target" is noxious, for more reasons than I care to go into.
• If these scans look a little odd, it's just the permagloss, which is fraying (book still in excellent condition, though)

Page 123~

"Women are always leaving their handkerchiefs around. A fellow like Lavery would collect them and keep them in a drawer with a sandalwood sachet. Somebody would find the stock and take one out to use. Or he would lend them, enjoying the reactions to the other girls' initials. I'd say he was that kind of a heel. Goodby, Miss Fromsett, and thanks for talking to me."

So *that's* what he meant by "The Long Goodbye"—it had an "e" on the end, unlike all his other goodbys, which, apparently, didn't.

~RP

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Paperback 697: Out From Eden / Victoria Lincoln (Pocket Books 935)

Paperback 697: Pocket Books 935 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Out From Eden
Author: Victoria Lincoln
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• FRANK!
• An interesting variation on the typical Great Girl Art cover—this is more like one of those annoying modern covers where the women are always facing away or their heads are out of frame and possibly there is mist or water. If you think I'm kidding, just want into what they call a "book" "store" and look around.
• Any sexiness she brings to this cover, the schlubby painter dude totally takes out of it.
• I am having a Hate/Love relationship with that mug in the foreground.

Best things about this back cover:

• Are there different varieties of Edens? An Eden of Pancakes, maybe?
• "Raffish"—wow, that's not a word you see .... ever. Cool.
• So that must be Jessica on the cover. She seems nice.
• I don't want to know the "special and painful way" Todd learned about love because I am quite sure the version in my head is much better.

Page 123~

"You mean a is to b as c is to d?" again the intelligence faded. "How could you? They're letters and arithmetic is numbers."

"A frank and moving story of a naked girl who learned algebra."

~RP

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Paperback 431: The Disappearance / Philip Wylie (Cardinal C-40)

Paperback 431: Cardinal Books C-40 (2nd ptg, 1952)

Title: The Disappearance
Author: Philip Wylie
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Quiz: Our hero is

a. trying cast the "Disappearance" spell on her dress
b. ordering five beers from the hologram waitress
c. saying "Up top! Don't leave me hanging, Betty!"

• "Suddenly for men there were no women"—that may explain why he's not interested in the advances of this particular "woman": "Stop right there. Pete, I know that's you."

Best things about this back cover:

• There's lots of interesting stuff here, but it all pales and fades before the claim that Philip Wylie is "famed as the exposer of Moms." How do you get *that* job? (outside of the niche porn industry, that is)

Page 123~

In due course a thunderous water wall had poured back upon the gleaming "dent" where Chicago and its environs had been.

This was during the period when Wylie was experimenting with sexual imagery. His wife would later suggest that perhaps "dent" was not as evocative of female genitalia as he thought it was.

~RP

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Paperback 143: Double, Double / Ellery Queen (Pocket Books 874)

Paperback 143: Pocket Books 874 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Double, Double
Author: Ellery Queen
Cover artist: Tom Dunn

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Betty's audition for Macbeth was cut violently short...
• Betty's voracious appetite for men's hands knew no limits...
• Extreme Chiropractics!
• Honestly, this is one of the most vivid and memorable covers in my collection. I want to read the book just to figure out what he's doing to her (or vice versa)

Best things about this back cover:

• Super pastel rectangles. Love them.
• "Town Hermit" - is that an official position? It's capitalized!
• There is a "little" too much use of "scare" quotes on this back "cover.
• It seems a little odd that the selling point of this mystery is that it includes SEVEN murders (arbitrary?) and that there were NO CLUES - what the hell does "Double, Double" have to do with anything? This should have been called "Seven Murders, No Clues"

Page 123~

Now the last lingering bong was gone and Dakin was his proper hatchet self again, and Ellery said, "So," like little Hercule Poirot, and he went over and shut one of the windows, shivering.

This may be my favorite "Page 123" sentence ever, if only for "the last lingering bong."

~RP