Paperback 886: The Girl From Midnight / Wade Miller (Gold Medal s1221)

Paperback 886: Gold Medal s1221 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Girl from Midnight
Author: Wade Miller
Cover artist: Robert Abbett

Estimated value: $20

Best things about this cover:

• Houston, we have Hair Failure.
• She has my hairline.
• Not sure how you manage to make naked lady with giant cat look like an alien extra on "Star Trek: TNG," but here we are.
• Where the hell is Midnight?
• Kitty thinks you're hilarious.

Best things about this back cover:

• Seriously, just scooch her wig forward like an inch and you're in business.
• Rand Hammond is like something out of a Square-Jawed Sap Name Generator.
• I like the idea of Rand Hammond working quietly in his veterinarian's office when suddenly a naked bipedal cat just drops from the ceiling.

Page 123~

"His name's Wingy Heller, alias the entire phone book. Anybody remember him?"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 693: The Big Guy / Wade Miller (Gold Medal 279)

Paperback 693: Gold Medal 279 (PBO, 1953)

Title: The Big Guy
Author: Wade Miller
Cover artist: Jack Floherty

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• When a gorilla of a man meets a tigress of a woman ... Tigrilla!
• Big guy. Short tie. Wide suit. Dumb stare. "Is my tie clip straight ... Well, IS IT!?"
• Did he tear her clothes off her or was she attacked by an ermine that's still semi-attached to her right shoulder?

Best things about this back cover:

• This is either the worst or the best back cover concept ever. It's so ... random. "How 'bout a dictionary entry?" "But that ... makes no sense." "Yes, but if we did it on a little floating piece of torn out paper then ... oh man I'm so high right now."
• "Bloodstained but usable" = lovely.
• Who is this "pa' shens" woman? A woman who teaches you how to drink, carouse and chase women!? She sounds amazing.
• Wade Miller was actually two guys, but you probably knew that.

Page 123~

He took his wife's arm and squared the odd-feeling yachting cap on his head. "Come on down to the barbecue. I got to carve up a pig."

After the first five words, this passage is like "Fuck it, I'm'a do whatever I want."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]