Paperback 716: Dark Intruder / Vin Packer (Gold Medal 250)

Paperback 716: Gold Medal 250 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Dark Intruder
Author: Vin Packer
Cover artist: Amos Sewell

Yours for: [not for sale]


Best things about this cover:

• Hide-and-seek fail.
• He doesn't look that dark.
• The only way that pose of hers makes any sense is if she's plunging her left arm down into the hay in hopes of recovering a lost earring.
• OMG his right hand WTF? For Halloween, I'm gonna dress as this guy's middle finger. Frightening.
• Vin Packer is a pseudonym for Marijane Meaker, a fine writer of PBO thrillers. Also, a woman. Also, the lesbian paperback writer Ann Aldrich. Also, the children's lit writer M.E. Kerr. And other things.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Father and daughter rode roughshod..." is not my favorite phrase.
• "Then Luke Came" would be a great gay porn paperback title.
• It's interesting to me how much the front and back covers play up "Spring Fire"—I think I underappreciated what a sensation that book was. See it here (Paperback 466).

Page 123~

She could not help thinking of what Raol had said about his mother, feeling a slow, teasing jealousy mount inside her.

First, yes, Raol, not Raul or Raoul. Second, the end of this passage makes me giggle.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 466: Spring Fire / Vin Packer (Gold Medal 222)

Paperback 466: Gold Medal 222 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Spring Fire
Author: Vin Packer (aka Marijane Meaker)
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: [not for sale]

Best things about this cover:

• I wish the cover depicted whatever that blonde is looking at, because it must be Amazing (unlike this cover).
• "Frank(ly)!"
• Brunette: "Why do you always leave your nylons on the floor?" Blonde: "Whoa ... look at that pigeon on the windowsill. He looks just like James Mason ..."
• I like how this book treads Very Very Lightly on the whole lesbian issue. Art director: "Two women ... in a room together ... sitting on what is probably a bed ... that's far enough, boys. Make their negligees look like party dresses, have them look away from each other, and leave the door ajar so we can always say they're just two girls waiting for their dates to arrive. Their big, male dates."
• That is one imposing head of blond hair. It appears to be giving off solar flares.

Best things about this back cover:

• "A girl called Mitch"—how is that not the title?!
• "... a theme too important to keep from the light ... but not important enough to be mentioned directly on this cover." 
• "Vin Packer" is another alias of Marijane Meaker. You may remember her from such classics as "Take a Lesbian to Lunch" (which she wrote as "Ann Aldrich"). "Vin Packer" is probably my favorite paperback author name. If Rex Parker had an alias, it would be Vin Packer.
• The very first thing my eyes lit on when I opened the book: "Dripping and curious, Mitch hovered in a wide towel as she took the call in the booth outside the bathroom." This made me change my mind about what the book's title should be...

I'm replacing Page 123 today with Page 136. Too good to pass up:

The ticking of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch made the ticks come in three beats in her mind—Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-tick-tick.

Yet another great potential title that was passed up. And now clocks will never sound the same again.

Bonus: Page 126~

It was different when I could say it wasn't this way, that I was bisexual and all that rot. Bisexual—that's sort of like succotash, isn't it? Only this succotash hasn't got any corn in it. It's straight beans!

Without question, the single greatest metaphor in literary history.

~RP

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Paperback 331: 5:45 to Suburbia / Vin Packer (Gold Medal s731)

Paperback 331: Gold Medal s731 (PBO, 1958)

Title: 5:45 to Suburbia
Author: Vin Packer (pseud. of Marijane Meaker)
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50

This copy is SIGNED


Best things about this cover:

• Douchey salesman by day ... vampire by night.
• That is the color red seen only on 1950s/60s paperbacks. Looks like the work of Barye Phillips, but the book gives no credit.
• Love stories of tawdry goings-on in the suburbs. Post-war pop fiction kind of obsessed with the suburbs, as they were relatively new and probably put on a sanitized, happy air that made writers sick—i.e. easy pickins.

Best things about this back cover:

• One of the few back covers that makes me genuinely want to read the book. The language isn't just descriptive—it bounces: his wife's impeccable tweeds, her wicked martini, their daughter's (!) long legs, the phrase "hatchet man," all great. Even the language of addiction in the second paragraph is compelling, and timely—makes Charlie Gibson sound like a different species of Burroughs' "Junky." Mmm, '50s underbelly. Delicious.
• Despite the obvious opening, I'm finding it hard to make any good jokes about the name "Charlie Gibson" (a onetime prominent morning TV host, in case you didn't know).

Vin Packer is Marijane Meaker (also Ann Aldrich, for her explicitly lesbian writing; M.E. Kerr, for her young adult fiction). She is a really compelling literary figure and a very good writer. I recommend her memoir about her relationship with Patricia Highsmith. In doing some research on the Mattachine Society (for a future writing project on a different pulpy literary figure), I came across a bunch of stuff by and about Meaker—a controversial figure among some gay people. Apparently, not all of Meaker's gay characters (and the lesbians she chronicles in her non-fiction books) were "sympathetic" enough for some. Hurray for someone's caring more about giving a realistic and complex picture of humanity rather than sanitizing and enhaloing her characters in order to push a political agenda. I really want to meet this woman, who (last I checked) is still alive. I own close to a dozen of her books, many of them signed (I can only hope the sigs are authentic, as I didn't get them myself).

Page 123~

"Very simple, boss—the child's in love with you."
"Hogwash!" Bruce Cadence snorted. "I'm old enough to be her father."
"That's the point." Keene laughed.
He waved and went out.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]