Paperback 789: Having Wonderful Crime / Craig Rice (Pocket Books 289)

Paperback 789: Pocket Books 289 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Having Wonderful Crime
Author: Craig Rice
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• Bubbles! Wait, why are the martinis bubbling? Please don't say "that's champagne" because those are not champagne glasses.
• Also, stars! Because … because!
• I feel like Nick and Nora Charles are *just* out of frame.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wait, does that say "decapitated bride"? That's pretty gruesome for a 1940s crime comedy.
• Ha ha scare-quote *burn* on "free" verse.
• This book actually sounds kind of awesome.

Page 123~

"Yes, but the thing is," the medical examiner said again, "where is the other body, and where is the other head?"

My favorite part of that quotation is "again."

~RP

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Paperback 788: Bell Timson / Marguerite Steen (Perma Books P110)

Paperback 788: Perma Books P110 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Bell Timson
Author: Marguerite Steen
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• She is what I'd call "WASP-hot," though she does look a bit like she's been modeled out of Play-Doh, and those are really more flippers than hands.
• Something about her dimensions are just … off.
• This cover does not say "illicit business." It says "some lady, probably a lady named 'Bell Timson'."
• "The Sun Is My Undoing"—damn, that was gonna be the title of my autobiography! I'll have to go with my second choice, "Beyond the Pale."

Best things about this back cover:

• You said it, sister.
• "Ten years too long" made me legit laugh.
• If you named your kids Kay and Jo, you could refer them collectively as KayJo. Like, all the time. I would.
• Who is Bob and how does that relate to Bell's being a (I'm guessing) hooker? I'm really, really hoping that Jo discovers her fiancé once slept with her mom. That would at least be interesting.

Page 123~

"She was supposed to have 'touched pitch' and therefore been contaminated; you know what villagers are." Mr. Somervell laughed shortly.

~RP

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Paperback 787: The Man Who Never Was / Ewen Montagu (Avon 640)

Paperback 787: Avon 640 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Man Who Never Was
Author: Ewen Montagu
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Exciting to imagine Ghost Major—riding the seas, thwarting the Nazis.
• Less exciting when you find out "the man who never was" was actually an "anonymous corpse" that doesn't reanimate or nothin'.
• This cover manages to be clever without being particularly interesting or exciting.

Best things about this back cover:

• More visual riffs on The Invisible Man theme.
• Silly Germans—Tricks are for Victorious Americans!
• "Operation Mincemeat" sounds like a WWII-themed Looney Tunes short featuring Sylvester and Tweety Bird.

Page 123~

An attempt at an immediate thrust into the area of SALONICA and THRACE need not be reckoned with.

And that's how Major Martin avoided the clap.

~RP

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Paperback 786: The Celebrity / Laura Z. Hobson (Perma Books P190)

Paperback 786: Perma Books P190 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Celebrity
Author: Laura Z. Hobson
Cover artist: Owen Kampen

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• That is some grade-A bitch-glance. Not that she's a bitch, but that she appears to be thinking, "Pfft, bitches" and/or "Bitch, please. Fawning high school groupies ain't shit."
• And the winner of "Best Middle Initial" goes to …
• Surely the greatest painterly representation of folding chairs since Monet's "Folding Chairs sûr le Pont D'Argenteuil"

Best things about this back cover:

• Thornton Johns—Folding chair magnate!
• I don't know if his wife was a "loud-mouthed bitch," but those other questions don't seem very rhetorical. "Was he living with Jill Goodwyn?" Well, he either was or he wasn't. "Was he 6'2"!? Or 5'11", as his license indicated? READ AND FIND OUT!"
• Damn, "blunt" just isn't "frank." I like "blunt." But mainly it makes me miss "frank."

Page 123~

A larger life, a larger Thornton Johns. The persisting fear that something might again reduce him to the lesser Thornton Johns was a nightmare, to put it politely, of amputation.

I.e. plastic surgeons gave him a substantial penis extension and he was *not* giving it back.

~RP

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Paperback 785: O'Mara / Laurence Greene

Paperback 785: Lion 182 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: O'Mara
Author: Laurence Greene
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Drunk guy remembers that one time he was really drunk.
• It is my life's ambition to be a swaggering hellhound. 
• Well that's either "fear hand" or "remembering-breast-feel hand." For womankind's sake, I'm gonna go with "fear hand."
• Any sane cover artist would've shrunk Tipsy McBowtie and blown up the languorous becouched redhead.

Best things about this back cover:

• Fred T. Marsh knows from "unlaydownable." Just ask the ladies.
• Least shocking tagline of all time: "O'MARA WAS A MAN"
• "He was enormous with a woman" — but only with a woman. In the locker room: puny. Hashtag magicpenis.
• FRANK (ly brutal)!!!!! Oh, I've missed you, "frank." It's been a while.

Page 123~

Living in New York through the wettest Prohibition years, she had come to think of intoxication as a generally droll state.

That needs to be a caption underneath a picture of a flapper on the wall of some New York bar. Like, yesterday. Make it happen, NYC!

~RP

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Paperback 784: Mac Bird! / Barbara Garson (Evergreen Black Cat BC-132)

Paperback 784: Evergreen Black Cat BC-132 (1st ptg, 1967)

Title: Mac Bird!
Author: Barbara Garson
Cover artist: [Lisa Lyons]

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• I … don't know what this is. Hang on. OK, here we go—from wikipedia:

MacBird! is a 1967 satire by Barbara Garson that superimposed the transferral of power following the Kennedy assassination onto the plot of Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Thus John F. Kennedy becomes "Ken O'Dunc", Lyndon Johnson becomes "MacBird", Lady Bird Johnson becomes "Lady MacBird", and so forth. As Macbeth assassinates Duncan, so MacBird is responsible for the assassination of Ken O'Dunc; and as Macbeth is defeated by Macduff, so MacBird is defeated by Robert O'Dunc (i.e. Robert Kennedy). This action is significantly influenced by the Three Witches, representing Students, Blacks, and Leftists.

• Is he green because … Scottish people … are green?
• Love the cowboy boot / kilt combo.
• I don't remember foot-jousting in Macbeth.

Best things about this back cover:

• I like how they made it seem as if LBJ were blurbing this thing. But otherwise, just a bunch of quotes. Moving on.

Page 123~

The EARL OF WARREN, carrying the crown, stand next to KEN O'DUNC. The "Hallelujah Chorus" plays in the back ground as he speaks.

~RP

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Paperback 783: The New Pocket Quiz Book / Slifer & Crittenden (Pocket Books 255)

Paperback 783: Pocket Books 255 (1st ptg, 1943)

Title: The New Pocket Quiz Book
Authors: Rosejeanne Slifer and Louise Crittenden
Cover artist: I doubt it

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Well … is it the New Pocket Quiz Book or not?? Do I have to guess? I guess Yes.
• Why don't these ladies get their first names on the cover? I BLAME THE PATRIARCHY!
• If you enjoy WWII-era trivia, this is the book for you. Question: "In flying, which is the stronger tendency, to climb or to dive?" I would've thought that depended on your mood / sanity. Interesting.

Best things about this back cover:

• I like this cover's predilection for lively phrases like "Bone up!" and "Quiz-whiz!"
• "Do not under any circumstances send this to a girl in the armed forces. Anywhere."
• I don't remember seeing this exact Pocket Books logo before. The joey acts as a kind of book stand. Levenger should be all over that.

Page 123~

Who ran and ran and ran but never became president?

Answer: Jesse Owens

~RP

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