Paperback 346: Death Takes an Option / Neil MacNeil (pseud. of W.T. Ballard) (Gold Medal 807)

Paperback 346: Gold Medal 807 (PBO, 1958)

Title: Death Takes An Option
Author: Neil MacNeil (W.T. Ballard)
Cover artist: Uncredited (can't read that signature) [probably Gerry Powell]

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Ugh—somewhere in the 800s, perhaps a bit earlier, GM covers tend to get ugly as hell. There's this aesthetic that is all about sloppy. Everything looks sketched and half-finished and generally terrible. Also, the books seem flimsier overall, but that may be an unfounded impression. All I know is that lady's right thigh is a cartoonish "flesh" tone, esp. compared with the flesh on the rest of her body.
• What the hell is up with that guy? Is he a. rapping b. playing a zombie c. walking on a very narrow beam or d. about to put a quick end to a pig-catching contest?
• Title appears to be an allusion to 1934 Fredric March movie "Death Takes a Holiday."
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Only one thing: "Their descriptions."

Page 123~

She had red hair and good eyes and a beautiful figure. He wondered if the stories were true that some of these girls were dancers who, coming to Vegas with a company, found out that they could make three times as much juggling a tray as they could kicking their legs in one of the floor shows.

"What's your name, honey?"

~RP

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Paperback 251: Episode / Peter W. Denzer (Popular Library 621)

Paperback 251: Popular Library 621 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Episode
Author: Peter W. Denzer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: not available (property of "Paperback 250" contest winner!)


Best things about this cover:

• "Why won't the braless zombie look at me directly!? O, the melancholy. Where's my diary...?"
• "Vanity, thy name is braless zombie."
• "I brought you that braless zombie milk you asked for, honey. You'll have to come over here and get it, as I can't take my eyes off this hideous portrait of myself."
• "Hard-hitting" = "It hurts!"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Shh! Did you hear that? Sounds like braless zombies!"
• "Oh god, please don't let her take my salmon throw pillow away!"
• "Many will flip straight to not like the brutal scenes of callous indifference; of patients in orgies for the amusement of attendants..."

Page 123~

He was free, but his freedom produced for the moment no more emotion than any short walk might have. His motive now in being free was not the motive which had produced his first plans. He was not sure what his motive was. He did not know where he was going.

Riveting! If only that paragraph had the word "motive" in it at least four more times.

~RP