Paperback 1132: Mercedes / Carl Demarco (Midwood 33-714)

 Paperback 1132: Midwood 33-714 (PBO, 1966)

Title: Mercedes

Author: Carl Demarco

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 6/10

Value: $11

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover: 

• The long-awaited sequel to Hyundai.
• So ... she discovered that there was a staircase as well as an elevator? Exciting.
• I wish she filled more of the frame—so much more of the frame that the dope who's looking at her got pushed right out. There is a long tradition of "cardboard-cutout dude who is there only to ogle the hot woman" in paperback art, but this guy may be the cardboard-cutoutiest. She's so bored by him that she's turned to us for help.
• Her hair is perfect. The rest of her is pretty good too. I know I'm meant to look at her ass, but I kinda wish I could see the whole dress.
• I would lose my fucking mind if I spent more than three minutes in a room this color. So relentlessly This Color.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Just a B&W version of the cover?? The look and tone of both the art and the cover copy are so weary and half-hearted that I feel like that final line should read "[Sigh] Yet Another Midwood Original (We're Out Of Ideas)"
• I keep looking at her right hand to see if it has the correct number of fingers. There's something slightly ... mangled about it.
• "Penetrating"? OK, easy there, copy guy.
• "With whom"? Well, la-di-dah, copy guy.

Page 123~

    With a strange urgency, she passed her hands over her body—nude beneath the sheets—as if to reassure herself that she was all there, intact [!], that she hadn't left a part of herself with the sensuous Suzanne!

"My left kneecap ... Where's My Left Kneecap!? Curse your lesbian witchery, Suzanne!"

~RP

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Paperback 1027: The Needs We Share / Rea Michaels (Domino 72-793)

Paperback 1027: Domino Books 72-793 (PBO, 1965)

Title: The Needs We Share
Author: Rea Michaels
Cover artist: photo cover

Condition: 5/10 (terrible stain on back, else 7/10)
Estimated value: $25-30

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• This is like a half-step away from the cover of, like, a knitting magazine from the same time period. That font! That font color! Those houseplants! Put her in a cardigan and bam—feel the craft work!
• The divorcee on the couch is giving me life! She's like, "Yep, life without Harry is O, K!"
• Miss Bouffant is also amazing. So fierce. "You wanna watch! I don't care, ya ****ing pervs!" The cheapness of that slip, though, is making me very sad. I can almost hear the crappy thick nylon rubbing against, well, everything.
• I love love LOVE the Kinsey-inspired books (they are a significant subgenre of 50s/60s sleaze). Kinsey's peering behind facade of American sex lives (semi-) legitimized readers' natural voyeurism. "I'm reading this ... for science!"

Best things about this back cover:

• Yep, she's great even in isolation like that.
• Oh man, that stain. I think Dolores the divorcee got her cigarette a little too close to her nighttime reading material...
• FIND THE SINNER is soooo tacked-on. It makes no sense, especially after the dramatic final ellipse on the cover copy. Also, was the sinner hiding? Psst ... she's right there.

Page 123~

As far as the eye could see there was whiteness.

Yep, that *does* sound like suburbia.

~RP

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Paperback 971: Convict Lust / Robert Wallace (France 58)

Paperback 971: France 58 (PBO, 1963)

Title: Convict Lust
Author: Robert Wallace
Cover artist: photo cover

Estimated value: $25-30
Condition: 7/10

Best things about this cover:

• Fishnet headboard. Interesting.
• Bouffantastic!
• Her get-up, despite color clashing, is pretty cute. Those stockings, however, were not meant to be seen below the ankle.

Best things about this back cover:

• This non-centered block of text is oddly common. There doesn't appear to be any particular aesthetic at work. Maybe it adds the aura of "cheap and forbidden" the publisher's trying to create.
• Hemingway's "The Killers" has a main character called "the Swede." I'm guessing this story isn't as good as "The Killers."
• This book should've been called "His Welding Equipment."

Page 23~ (Page 123 being boring and unrepresentative)

A few hours ago I was a happy-go-lucky goof-off going on twenty-seven. Then I run into the best lay in the land and—presto! chango!—I'm an old broken-down jerkhead and frightened stiff.

You tell 'em, Chango! (rhymes with "tango"). P.S. the first sentence of this novel is "She ripped off her panties and hopped into bed." In medias res!

~RP

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Paperback 950: The Screaming Cargo / J.M. Flynn // The Bullet-Proof Martyr / James A. Howard (Ace Double F-130)

Paperback 950 (!): Ace Double F-130 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1962)

Title: The Screaming Cargo / The Bullet-Proof Martyr
Author: J.M. Flynn / James A. Howard
Cover artists: Uncredited / Uncredited

Estimated value: $10
Condition: 7/10

Best things about this cover:

• Screaming babies in the cargo hold? Jeez. Grim.
• Love the Telly Savalas-esque skyward-looking guy. "Who loves you, screaming babies?"
• Cool font. Cool tie. Weird lambada-on-the-tarmac.

Best things about this other cover:

• This looks like someone's intense hate-drawing diary. Ugly, dumb, red.
• Why is the eye candy so tiny? The visual equivalent of burying the lede.
• Her left arm is the dumbest thing I've seen in 950 paperbacks worth of posing. "How's that, baby? You like it when mama puts just one arm in her jacket? Yeah, you like it." What the hell?

Page 23~  (there are no p. 123s) (from The Screaming Cargo)

She was more girl than woman. She wore her hair in a pony tail—soft dark hair. She wore a too-tight blouse and short shorts, and she had a face that might've been innocent a few weeks earlier.

A few weeks earlier ... you know, before she took up knitting. Nobody comes back from that, man. Nobody.

~RP

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Paperback 937: Death of a Stray Cat / Jean Potts (Berkley G492)

Paperback 937: Berkley Medallion G492 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Death of a Stray Cat
Author: Jean Potts
Cover artist: photo cover

Estimated value: $10-15 (condition: purrrfect) (sorrynotsorry)

Best things about this cover:

• Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, kitty kitty.
• I love how her chair is so dark you can't really see it, so it looks like she's kind of shimmying and dancing toward you in some kind of gothic version of The Twist. Let's call it the "Stray Cat Strut" (stillnotsorry!)
• What do you call that hairstyle, where it's a bouffant but with a kind of sinkhole up front? It's pretty glorious.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ooh, his and hers panting! You shouldn't have.
• Uh, safe word. We need a safe word up in here. Stat!
• Hmm, never heard of Jean Potts, or "Go, Lovely Rose," or this book. Anyone know if I'm missing anything?

Page 123~

"We gagged him because he kept talking dirty," said Gen.

This concludes the first meeting of "BDSM 4 Prudes"; please help yourself to mini-donuts and Sanka on your way out. See you next week.

~RP

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Paperback 861: The Case of the Cautious Coquette / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 4527)

Paperback 861: Pocket Books 4527 (8th ptg, 1963)

Title: The Case of the Cautious Coquette
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: [Robert McGinnis]

Yours for: $10-12


Best things about this cover:

• Here's the thing about McGinnis women: dead eyes. They freak me out a level at the face level. At a certain other level (Not Pictured), I find them delightful. So, in short, this cover does little for me from a Great Girl Art perspective.
• From a Holy Crap Pink perspective, it's quite arresting.
• Also, from a hair perspective.
• Also, with the exception of a small tear on the back cover, this book is in like-new condition. Shiny and crisp. The pink is a pure '50s variety rarely seen in the wilds of today.
• Also, a "Girls With Guns" cover is a "Girls With Guns Cover"—I'll take it. Check out these other covers of the same title:

[Silly]

[Whoa!!! Winner]

And now today's back cover:


Best things about this back cover:

• Tire tracks! That's a pretty damned good design element, especially as a way of introducing the idea of a "hit-and-run."
• This is the last time in U.S. history that "$100.00!!" was presented as a compelling figure.
• Della goes next-level with her wordplay banter (from metaphorical "angles" to literal "curves"). And then the cover copy brings the imagery full circle back to the tire tracks. Well done, everyone.

Page 123~

"Della, run out and scout the corridor. Let me know if it's clear."

In case you were wondering who the badass was in this little relationship.

~RP

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