Paperback 249: A Bit of Fluff / Kimberly Kemp (Midwood F256)

Paperback 249: Midwood F256 (PBO, 1963)

Title: A Bit of Fluff
Author: Kimberly Kemp
Cover artist: Paul Rader

Yours for: $60


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the word you're searching for is "Dang ..."
• Paul Rader is possibly the best sleaze cover artist that ever was. He and Robert Maguire are like gods to me.
• I love how "Lesbian" is capitalized, like "Mason" or "Scientologist."
• Strategically placed towel means that I cannot see any bit of fluff.
• I absolutely love this cover — the color, the design, the steam, the casual nudity, all of it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh lesbians. Always with the careful soaping.

Page 123~

There it was again. Only it wasn't a slip this time. She was practically informing me that she was a Lesbian. But her tone was meek and humble — and I wasn't afraid of her any more, now that she knew her place.

Again, I say: Dang.

~RP

Announcement: Paperback 250 will go up on Wednesday. To celebrate this milestone ... a contest. It will be Twitter-related, but I will add a Luddite option for those of you who can't be bothered with Twitter. You'll see. I'm off to conscript some other people to help me judge the contest. Oh, the prize will be the book itself — Paperback 250. And it doesn't suck, as my paperbacks go.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 248: Murder Won't Out / Russel Crouse (Pennant Books P24)

Paperback 248: Pennant Books P24 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Murder Won't Out
Author: Russel Crouse (... and somewhere, a letter "L" runs free ...)
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• That's the French whoriest French whore that ever French whored her way from here to French Whoretown. Not sure how she ended up in NYC.
• "Tiny trashcans for sale! ... who will buy ze tiny trashcans? ... I call zem 'Can Cans' ... yes, zat is why I'm dressed like zis ... clevair, no?"
• After "Nights in Rodanthe," Diane Lane decided to start taking much darker roles.
  
• "Murder Will Out" is an old phrase — Chaucerian old — in case you weren't sure what the title was going for here.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Yes, but what's the book about?

Page 123~

It was no longer the Broadway of the Lombardy poplars and the convivial taverns. The trees had long since given way to lamp posts to light its darkest corner. The Great White Way, to coin a phrase, as somebody had once upon a time.

That passage starts out OK, but the wheels really come off in that last "sentence." "... as it were, so to speak, as they say ..."

~RP

Paperback 247: Terror in the Streets / Howard Whitman (Bantam A964)

Paperback 247: Bantam A964 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Terror in the Streets
Author: Howard Whitman
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $10


Best thing about this cover:

• Ah, 1950s paranoia at its finest
• Can't a pretty girl get a haircut at 1 a.m. without being team-stalked by tough guys in olive drab suits anymore? What a world ...
• Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" was based on this book cover
• Maguire would eventually learn his lesson: Put Girl In Foreground!

Best things about this back cover:

• You can tell even from this crowded array of scenes that Maguire is a masterful illustrator. Great faces, action, use of light...
• Love the action in the alley by the garbage cans. Smacked his fedora off with a blackjack. That's about as 50s as 50s violence gets. Fedora still in mid-air. Rich.
• Every quote reads like it's coming out of the mouth of Maude Flanders: "Won't somebody please think of the children!?"

Page 123~

The police are hardly interested in, nor would the average police mentality be capable of understanding, such psycho-dynamics. Police are interested in end-results. When an old homosexual is found dead in his hotel room after picking up a man at a bar, the police just put it down as a "fag murder" and go on from there.

~RP

Paperback 246: The Disenchanted / Budd Schulberg (Bantam A1051)

Paperback 246: Bantam A1051 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: The Disenchanted
Author: Budd Schulberg
Cover artist: Harry Schaare

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Her pose! One shoe! Awesome. I think I love her.
  
• Book should be called "The Dissolute," or "Yeah, I'm Drunk, Whaddya Gonna Do About It, Ya Impotent Bastard? Get Me Another Martini"
• Harry Schaare Loves his Floating Heads — we'll see more in the future.
• Love the little maniacal dancing / jazz club scene in the background
• The novel may be set in the 20s, but these people are not believably from the 20s. Except for emaciated Clark Gable in a tux back there, hitting on the girl who's reclining on the hair of Floating Head. He's 20s all the way.
• "What Makes Sammy Run" is a classic Hollywood novel. Fantastic.

Best things about this back cover:

• LOVE the guy admiring the rack of his drunken lady friend, up-close! "Yes. These will do nicely."
• Toga party or religious visitation? "This angel came into my candle-lit room last night ... man, she was hot."
• I love Michener's precision — like he remembers exactly where he was, three years ago, when he read a novel better than this one.

Page 123~

When he finds out the commercial tie-up he feels like a jerk for having fallen for her. Then, in the finals of the ski-jump, he's injured.

~RP

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Paperback 245: Over My Dead Body / Franklin Mayfair (Book Co. of America 009)

Paperback 245: Book Co. of America 009 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Over My Dead Body
Author: Franklin Mayfair
Cover artist: some guy who sold paintings at swap meets in the early 70s

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Well ... parts of it look finished. Specifically, the eastern part contains elements that one could reasonably call "people." As for the western half ... I think I see a topless dead chick. The rest is a blur. In mid-left section, it looks like the artist was going for bathtub, then changed his mind to tea cup, then just tried to scratch the whole thing out.
• Fans of puke green will be especially drawn to this cover.
• I actually love the expression on the guy's face: "Are you fucking kidding me, lady? You really think that's sexy? Put the flower back in the vase and get out of my office. Why can't you be more like that elegant lady with the white gloves that I sometimes dream of and who is possibly standing right behind us?"

Best things about this back cover:

• Hyphen party!
• "Pub—" = HA ha. "O man, what was he gonna say? Was it "Pubic?" "Pubic something?" Come on!"
• There appears to be punctuation missing somewhere near the end of that first pargraph. I think a period might be in order after "location" (love the scare quotes around "location" — like they're not convinced it's a real term).

Page 123~

"Not so strange," Pesek pontificated from the depths of a chair.

~RP

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Paperback 244: Split-Level Love / Carlton Gibbs (Softcover Library B1057S)

Paperback 244: Softcover Library B1057S (2nd, 1967)

Title: Split-Level Love
Author: Carlton Gibbs
Cover artist: uncredited [Ernest Chiriaka ("Darcy")]

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "This is a rather odd lap dance ma'am ... ma'am ... why are you looking in my ear, ma'am?"
• I wonder what the pink "V" stands for?
• Her lower leg is scary thin.
• Adoption and abortion ... how topical!?
• Carlton Gibbs ... was that the doorman on "Rhoda" or the cousin of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air?

Best things about this back cover:

• Brig Doncaster? Seriously, my paperback collection is killing me with these names! Tell me "Doncaster" doesn't sound like "Dong-caster."
• There's a whole subset of 60s sex paperbacks about "Suburbia" and the goings-on there. Suburbia is to 60s paperbacks what Juvenile Delinquency is to late-50s paperbacks.

Page 123~

She let him divest her, just the same, of the flimsy fluffs he had given her. She trembled at his touch. His was the kind of diabolical male charm a woman could hate and yet become heedlessly intoxicated with. She could stand there loathing the fact that he had taken hundreds of bras off scores of women [pausing ... doing math ...] and yet thrill to his removing hers. She could grow faint when he touched his lips to her taut breast regardless of how many others he had kissed. She could shiver visibly when his hands slid away her final garment although they were far too practiced.

Brig Doncaster, divester of flimsy fluffs and irresistible asshole extraordinaire.

~RP

Paperback 243: Twilight Women / Les Scott (Beacon 156)

Paperback 243: Beacon 156 (1st, late 50s)*

Title: Twilight Women
Author: Les Scott
Cover artist: uncredited

*[dated 1952, but I don't think Beacon was even publishing then ... probably late 50s, probably first Beacon printing ... and a Gorgeous one at that; slight spine lean, but apparently unread]

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• "This tree makes my pits smell awesome!"
• If you are going to adopt a pseudonym for your first lesbian softcore effort, might I suggest "Les"?
• They Worshipped at the Shrine of Passion — this either made them gargantuan or shrunk them to the size of a bonzai tree, I can't really tell.
• Free Mini-Twilight Woman with every Twilight Woman purchase!

Best things about this back cover:

• From the Unbelievable Names Department, we bring you ... Lakla! Aletha! and introducing ... Rance!
• "But Lakla soon thrust upon him her adorable little companion Aletha" — So that's who the small woman on the cover is. Wow, they're not foolin' about "little companion." "You'll love her, Rance. She fits right in your pocket. You don't have any cats, do you?"
• "Punishment by death for penetrating ..." — insert lesbian joke here.

Page 123~

On and on the quivering ship staggered blindly, strained to the limit of her brave endurance, the sea bellowing around her, threatening disaster, savagely wrathful.

Oh yeah, just what I want from my vintage lesbian paperback: Hot Nautical Action.

~RP