Paperback 908: Six Seconds to Kill / Brett Halliday (Dell 8001)

Paperback 908: Dell 8001 (1st ptg, 1970)

Title: Six Seconds to Kill
Author: Brett Halliday
Cover artist: photo

Estimated value: sentimental, at best ($10?)

Best things about this cover:

• This is either the story of the world's most efficient lady assassin or the story of a lady executive determined to squeeze all the joy she can out of the world's shortest helicopter layover. Pilot: "You need to be back here in six sec—" Lady: "I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"
• I feel sorry for the model. That can't have been an easy pose to hold. Not in those nutso clog-heels.
• I bought this book in a vintage clothing store in Minneapolis, MN.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ladies and gentlemen—my new business card.
• Also, ladies and gentlemen—my new bride. (My wife will understand. She had a good run.)
• I love this classy lady: "I will drink [yes] and fuck [you go, girl] and kill Ed Meese [of cour— ... wait, what?]"

Page 123~

Shayne set the handbrake and got out. Understanding suddenly that she was about to be taken prisoner, she scrambled for a shotgun lying on the grass. Shayne kicked it away, pulled her to her feet and thrust her into the car.
"The fight's over. You're all by yourself, as far as I know."

I like the part where he set the handbrake.

~RP

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Paperback 907: Treasure of the Brasada / Les Savage, Jr. (Dell 673)

Paperback 907: Dell 673 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Treasure of the Brasada
Author: Les Savage, Jr.
Cover artist: Stanley Borack

Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• She's got the whole gun / amulet / boob trifecta going. Dude's like "Whoa... easy."
• Gun-crotch nexus. Who has the phallus now, buddy!
• I think she stopped a lynching. Or else she interrupted some very risky sex play.
• Hey, it's Les Savage's son, Even Less Savage!
• I got this paperback in a vintage clothing store in Minneapolis. 

Best things about this back cover:

• Look out! Arrows!
• "The faint rattle of mesquite berries" is how I will describe the sound of my next chest cold.
• This (long!) description is vague to the point of making me not care.
• "Try it. Come on, try it. I'm here. Try it." These are some pretty mediocre 70s dance song lyrics.

Page 123~

"Let's close the poke," he said.

Early Texans had very lively idiomatic sexual expressions.

~RP

P.S. I've been pretty lax with the updates recently because of a million things, but I'm gonna try diligently to get on a (minimum) M / F posting schedule.

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Paperback 906: Amorous Dietitian / Mary Shomette Gooch (Novel Library U171)

Paperback 906: Novel Library U171 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Amorous Dietitian
Author: Mary Shomette Gooch
Cover artist: [I know his name but it's eluding me right now...] [Is it Robert Bonfils?]

Estimated value: $INFINITY (no copies listed at abebooks)

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• "O god you smell like onions [smack smack smack] that's so hot [slurp]..."
• Tony Curtis *is* ... The Dietitian *in* ... "Some Like It Hot (& Sour)!"
• This is possibly the dumbest concept in the history of sex fiction. "We've done the whole doctors/nurses thing ... where can we go? ..." "Uh ... truck-driving?" "Really? Truck-driving? DO TRUCK DRIVERS WEAR WHITE LAB COATS, BOB? DO THEY!? How's anyone gonna get properly aroused without white lab coats, you idiot!"
• Nice inner side-boob, which I think used to be called "cleavage."
• What kind of antiseptic seraglio is this? Between our breath-smellers in the foreground and the butt-grabbers in the background, there doesn't appear to be much dietitianing happening up in here.

Best things about this back cover:

• First sentence = instant LOL. You can "grin" words now?
• Ladies and gentlemen, meet your newest dietitian: Clete.
• Mmm, breasts in the raw. Pretty sure I saw that on a Brooklyn bar menu.
• Jesus, does this woman have any body parts that aren't breasts?
• "She was a woman and clean." One of the all-time great mic-drop lines. Biblical in its epicness and crypticness. All other writers can suck it. There's a new word sheriff in town.

Page 123~

Warren Grant turned, looked at her, then grinned and sauntered over. His eyes rested on her jutting breasts for a moment, then lifted to her face.

Mary Shomette Gooch graduated summa cum laude from the Grin & Boob School of Writingticians.

~RP

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Paperback 905: Perverted Lust Couple / Val Grasse (Royal Line 118)

Paperback 905: Royal Line RL 118 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Perverted Lust Couple
Author: Val Grasse
Cover artist: photo cover

Estimated value: Infinity dollars (none are offered on Abebooks, so I don't even know...)

[Part of the esteemed Doug Peterson collection]

Best things about this cover:

• "I'm *bored*. This perversion is *stupid*. Why is there a *tree branch* stuck in my hair? You said you were going to get a *nice* birdcage. This one smells like bird. God. It's like 'perverted lust couple' doesn't even mean anything any more..."
• The only kind of sex I can see this cover inspiring is missionary, in the dark, under the covers, weeping.
• My favorite thing about this book so far is not about the book at all, but about my blog: namely that I *already have* a "Birdcages" label/tag. What the hell were those other books?

Best things about this back cover:

• Oddly, the most confusing word on this cover is "one."
• "Hidden"? Check (twice). "Twisted"? Check (twice).
• Sorry, but "lesbian" and "homo" sound positively vanilla compared to whatever avian/oral fetish thing is happening on the cover.

Page 123~

"See, I got everything a man wants. I'm physically a woman. She placed her hands to her lower body and parted herself lewdly.

Missing close quotes here are part of the book's unique "style." This book seems to throw quotation marks in randomly. There are at least three errors (missing quotation marks) on this page alone. I think the book was typeset in some terrible sweatshop where English competence was minimal and desperation was high. And you thought the *content* of the book made you feel dirty...

~RP

P.S. this book is in amazing condition

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Paperback 904: Redburn / Herman Melville (Anchor A118)

Paperback 904: Anchor Books A118 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Redburn: His First Voyage
Author: Herman Melville
Cover artist: Edward Gorey (!)

Estimated value: $9

Best things about this cover:

• Well, it's a Gorey, so there's that.
• Sooooo much erotic tension.
• His shirt is so red it hurts my teeth.
• Barefoot! Adorbs.
• Look at the rounded serifs on the "U" and "N"; again, adorbs.
• I want a big checklist of all Gorey's cover art work. I don't actually want to see the covers ahead of time. I just want to know the titles to hunt for, so when I finally discover them, my joy can be fresh.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, nothing, so ... moving on.

Page 123~

"What was not wrong then, is right now," said Max; "so, mind your eye, Buttons, or I'll crack your pepper-box for you!"

OK that's as good as any hardboiled tough-guy film noir dialogue I've ever heard, even though I think he's just making phrases up.

~RP

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Paperback 903: Joy Killer / Ralph Brandon (Vega V-4)

Paperback 903: Vega Books V-4 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Joy Killer
Author: Ralph Brandon
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $20 (unread / perfect condition)

[Newest addition to the Doug Peterson Collection!]

Best things about this cover:

• I think that's her underwear on the floor wax can there. I think. For their sakes, I really hope the floor wax is for the floor.
• Seaman Apprentice! Subtle.
• I can't get over the fact that together, their names make BABY KILLER.
• Once again, Vega (and Fabian, and Saber) books are the best, that is, the worst, in a good way. God bless Sanford Aday and his short-lived Fresno-based softcore ridicu-porn empire.

Best things about this back cover:

• That first sentence of the second paragraph makes me think the writer hasn't really mastered the art of the conjunction.
• So they're both kinky, but not in compatible ways? Am I reading that last sentence right?
• I believe that the title "Joy Killer" makes absolutely no sense. Unless there is some as-yet unmentioned character named Joy ... nope, even then, no sense.

Page 123~

"An orgy of sensual lust! Oh Killer, that sounds so exciting."
"I'm trying to help you, you depraved female. Now pay attention to what the book says."

There follows several pages of Killer reading aloud from some kind of sex-phobic sex manual for new wives, which is then followed by a marriage consummation scene in which "I plunged my throbbing masculinity into the depths of her quivering feminity [sic]."

~RP

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Paperback 902: The Black Curtain / Cornell Woolrich (Ace H-104)

Paperback 902: Ace H-104 (1st thus, 1968)

Title: The Black Curtain
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Cover artist: Stan Hunter [signature]

Estimated value: $12

Best things about this cover:

• Conjoined twins connected at the forehead are pulled apart like taffy. The good twin becomes a stock broker, while the evil twin becomes someone who shoots squirrels with a shotgun. The stress of all this causes their mother to have a stroke that lands her in a wheelchair. I hate covers that give away the whole plot.
• The one-mass-of-images style of cover art was, unfortunately, a popular thing for about five years in the '60s. It's as if, as the amount of real estate for images on covers shrank, the images that should have filled a whole cover decided to huddle together in a kind of amorphous glob. Rather than give the cover art room to breathe, or simplifying the art concept, the cover designers give us ... this.
• My favorite part of this cover is the astonishingly legible full-name signature of the cover artist. Now I know whom to be mad at.

Best things about this back cover:

• Text. Boring. Boo.
• "You've heard of amnesia victims." Have I? How do you know? You don't know me.
  "An average person, like you..." Hey, that stings. YOU DON'T KNOW ME!
• Frank Townsend would eventually find out he's spent three years pretending to be Dick Nixon.

Page 123~

The awful propinquity was over.

~RP

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