Paperback 1097: A Holiday for Murder / Agatha Christie (Bantam 20968-X)

 Paperback 1097: Bantam 20968-X (28th ptg, 1980)

Title: A Holiday for Murder

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Tom Adams

Condition: 8/10

Value: $8

[Little Free Library outside the cafe I go to on Sundays]

Best things about this cover: 

• Look at this freak show. God I love weird covers. "What if the screaming head of Ebenezer Scrooge were flying through the air just bleeding holly berries, his voice shattering a wine glass that happens to be nearby for some reason?" "... That's it?" "Uh, no, no ... there's ... there's also a chair!" "Hmmm..." "And a statue!" "OK, sold!" 
• The great thing about Christie (well, one of them) is that she was such a guaranteed seller, such a book-moving juggernaut, that you could collect *only* Christie paperbacks and have no hope of ever "completing" your collection. And her career traverses all of paperback cover styles. She's a design universe unto herself.
• Murder for Christmas is better, not sure what they think they're doing on the retitle here.
• I pulled four Christies from the LFL (Little Free Library) outside Batch Coffee in Binghamton—that's the other great thing about Christie: like Gardner, her books are Everywhere. I read an early one, The Secret of Chimneys (1925), which featured not Poirot or Marple but someone named Superintendent Battle. He was a recurring character, appearing in five (!) of her novels between '25 and '44. The book was genuinely hilarious, closer to slapstick than most conventional  detective fiction. I honestly don't remember Christie being that funny. In fact, I recently read the much later At Bertram's Hotel, and it wasn't that funny. Funnyish, but nothing like the whizbang near-goofiness of The Secret of Chimneys.

Best things about this back cover: 

• "Violent Night, Holey Night" ('cause you're full of holes ... from all the bullets or stab wounds ... OK, OK, I'll work on it)
• Cannot believe they're just wasting all this valuable space. Why not make the font big and stupid, or add some of the old man's dumb kids? Something, anything. You can't get visually upstaged by barcodes, man! Come on.

Page 123~

"Perhaps it is better to speak frankly.”

It is the formal position of this blog that it is always better to do Everything "frankly." 

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and BlueSky]

Paperback 845: Uncle Good's Week-End Party / John Faulkner (Gold Medal 1031)

Paperback 845: Gold Medal 1031 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Uncle Good's Week-End Party
Author: John Faulkner
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Estimated value: $20-25


Best things about this cover:

• Try to find a creepier title/cover art pairing. Go ahead. I'll wait.
• Uncle Good likes to watch. And smoke. And hunch. And not tuck his shirt in.
• The funniest thing on this cover is "Faulkner."
• MTV canceled this after one season.
• What is "NOOT?"

Best things about this back cover:

• I like how this cover starts, anyway.
• Let me get this straight: I'll laugh at the side-splitting antics of an old man who rents out his own daughters? An old man who is his daughters' pimp? Or does he rent them out as clowns for children's birthday parties? Please say "B."
• ORTA. That is all.

Page 123~

Orta June and Jewel Mae had stood up as the husbands came stumbling and crawling across the porch. Soon the husbands were thick around them.

This is like a zombie movie. But with husbands.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]