Paperback 915: Murder in Room 13 / Albert Conroy (Gold Medal 806)

Paperback 915: Gold Medal 806 (PBO, 1958)

Title: Murder in Room 13
Author: Albert Conroy
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $6-8

Best things about this cover:

• Women Falling Backwards Over Beds Or Couches should really be a "Tag" on this blog. Happens all the time, or at least, let's say, six times.
• This looks like Barye Phillips, but there's no art credit, so ... Uncredited.
• I think the figure departing via the door is supposed to look sinister, but instead he looks cartoonishly cornball. Like some combination of Peter Lorre and Boris Badinov and a badger.
• I think the giant "13" is where it is because the artist kind of screwed up her middle section. Foreshortening of the body is all wrong and her boobs are just ... odd ... somehow.

Best things about this back cover:

• The evidence! Now in dramatic yellow!
• This reads like the most generic crime story pitch of all time. It's got all the elements. Ex-pug. Alcoholic haze. Motel. Raincoat. I mean, I'd be *in* if you gave me even the *slightest* reason to care.
• Murderer! Now in dramatic italics!

Page 123~

"What the hell do you want?" She sounded surly-drunk.

This novel probably sucks, but I'd say this guy's compound adjective skills are at least promising.

~RP

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Paperback 914: Enter the Saint / Leslie Charteris (Pocket Books 257)

Paperback 914: Pocket Books 257 (1st ptg, 1944)

Title: Enter the Saint
Author: Leslie Charteris
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• Strike a pose.
• The Pocket Books logo went through a lot of versions in the early years. This is one of the more adorable variants.
• I know remarkably little about the Saint, except he was played by Roger Moore on television. There were reruns in syndication on TV when I was a kid. I don't remember a damn thing about them. I had no idea he was known as "The Robin Hood of Modern Crime." I just thought he was a charming cut-rate Bond.

Best things about this back cover.

• It's weird how (relatively) quickly "gay" lost its non-sexual connotation. I was reading "Cotton Comes to Harlem" this week, and Cotton Ed and Grave Digger talk about wanting to get gay, i.e. go out, drink, have fun ... you know: have a gay old time. I wonder when that meaning essentially died, because it has died hard.
• Meet Snake Ganning ... Jane, his wife!
• Piratical!
• This is a war-time book (1944). Pocket Books' whole "Send this book to a boy in the armed forces" thing was a genius marketing strategy. Together with the Armed Services Editions of cheap books, Pocket Books was helping cultivate a huge paperback-buying market for the post-war era.

Page 123~

The removal of the "dope bird" to a quiet cellar where a ruthless interrogation could proceed without interruption.

A sentence ominous in its incompleteness as well as its all-too-common anti-avian rhetoric.

~RP

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Paperback 913: One More Unfortunate / Edgar Lustgarten (Bantam 360)

Paperback 913: Bantam 360 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: One More Unfortunate
Author: Edgar Lustgarten
Cover artist: Bernard Safran

Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• "I was Mr. Arm Veins 1938, 1939, and 1941. Don't ask about 1940. Here, drink this."
• "First, let me show you this here invention I come up with. I call it, 'The Butt Scratcher'...."
• Wow, when he rolls up his sleeves, he really Rolls Up His Sleeves.
• That knife-arm, everything about it, is really striking. And yet I'm weirdly mesmerized by the torn wallpaper patch (authentic seediness!) and her shoes, which I really wish I could see in profile. And closer up.

Best things about this back cover:

• Young Ronald Reagan was not allowed to ride the children's choo-choo train. Would / he / die?!
• I love how the issue here isn't the horrific fate of Kate Haggerty, but how her horrific fate might reflect on Captain White Man.
• Damn evidence. Always with the mounting.

Page 123~

He gave his answer in loud, almost truculent tones.

Ooh, I like that. I think I'm gonna steal it. "Almost Truculent: The Rex Parker Story"

~RP

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Paperback 912: Coming of Age in Samoa / Margaret Mead (Mentor M44)

Paperback 912: Mentor M44 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa
Author: Margaret Mead
Cover artist: jonas

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• Striking design. Love the stylized monochrome foliage against the stark white backdrop.
• They seem like they're having fun.
• This probably shouldn't remind me of John Travolta and Uma Thurman dancing in "Pulp Fiction," but it does.
• The most important difference between Samoan society and our own is No Nipples ... For Anyone!

Best things about this back cover:

• I enjoy mentally changing "earnestly" (in Dorsey's review) to "salaciously," "lustily," "hornily," and the like.
• Freud!?
• "The domain of erotics." I want to go to there.
• I read "primitive heart-stirrings" as "primitive heart-strings," because it's nicer.

Page 123~

People forgave her violence and her quarrelsomeness for sheer mirth over her propitiatory antics.

She got away with shit 'cause she was fun to be around and sometimes bought the drinks. (You're welcome)

~RP

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Paperback 911: Darkness at Noon / Arthur Koestler (Signet 671)

Paperback 911: Signet 671 (2nd ptg, 1950)

Title: Darkness at Noon
Author: Arthur Koestler
Cover artist: [jonas?]

Estimated value: $7-10

Best things about this cover:

• This looks like me at roughly 9:30am on the days I don't teach. Minus the cigarette, I mean. Ladies ... liquor ... mystery dude in a hat ... these are where my thoughts wander.
• This is a classic, but I haven't read it. I am surprised to find it is about a lazy dude fantasizing about Parisian booze and broads.
• It's a prison novel, but this doesn't really evoke prison. Faint hints of "brick" in the walls, but that robe looks too comfy for prisonwear.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ah, the era of the author-smoking photo. So ... debonair.
• But also so tiny, what the hell's with the picture shrinkage?
• That cover copy does not offer much in the way of breathing room. Yikes.

Page 123~

Woe to the fool and the aesthete who only ask how and not why.

This is in the middle of a dense philosophical section that is all italics and also a bummer.

~RP

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Paperback 910: The Key / Junichiro Tanizaki (Signet D2073)

Paperback 910: Signet D2073 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: The Key
Author: Junichiro Tanizaki
Cover artist: [gah, can anyone make out that signature underneath the noodle bowl?!]

Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• Font Victory! That title is smashing.
• In case you could tell the people on the cover are Japanese ... chopsticks!
• This painting is beautiful yet boring. It really really wants you to believe that the hardcore marital boning inside is tasteful.

Best things about this back cover:

• "It leaves one both roused and afraid." Uh ... TMI, "The Reporter."
• Mid-century was a big time for arguing that books about Doing It could be "art." Like, you had to justify it because of stupid hypocritical censorious America. Note the critical armature on this book's covers. Some kind of Chatterley-related hold-over. "If critics like it, then it's OK to jerk off to."
• Love the author photo. "Just take the fucking picture. You weary me."

Page 123~

All through March I'd written that I was still stubbornly defending the "last line," and I did my best to convince him of it. In fact, it was on March twenty-fifth that I surrendered that last "paper-thin" defense.

It seems like she is talking about "anal sex" but I "can't be sure."

~RP

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Paperback 909: Music out of Dixie / Harold Sinclair (PermaBooks P203)

Paperback 909: Perma Books P203 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Music out of Dixie
Author: Harold Sinclair
Cover artist: Uncredited :(

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• "Well you ain't no John Tesh, I know that."
• There are 31 flavors of Disappointment on that woman's face.
• I like this painting a lot. Perfectly positioned burning cigarette is a nice touch.
• I love his shirt. I want his shirt. I also want to wear a sleeve garter for no good reason.

Best things about this back cover:

• Dade Tarrant! LOL, sure, that's a plausible name, why not?
• I hope his business cards read: "Dade Tarrant / Slum-Bred Pianist"
• Raffish! Is that like "rakish"? [looks word up...] Hey, look at that: first synonym. So I *kinda* knew what it meant...

Page 123~

"Oh, Jesus lover, let's don't have that routine at this time o' day. I can't take it."

This expresses a sentiment I feel on a regular basis.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]