Title: The Ipcress File
Author: Len Deighton
Cover artist: Photo cover
Yours for: $9
Best things about this cover:
- Simplicity - B&W still photo that is the epitome of mid-century hard-boiled cool. Espresso vs. Smith & Wesson - Paper Clips vs. Bullets. Such great, simple balancing of iconic images. Gives you a sense of the Where and What and even the Who of the story before you've even opened the book. Details are incredibly precise. You can even read the "Gauloise" on the cigarette and the "Wesson" on the barrel of the gun. This book is from outside my collecting window (i.e. post-1969), but when I saw it at my local University book sale, I had to have it. If I ever publish a book, I want it to look like this, no matter what it's about.
- LEN Deighton is a frequent crossword puzzle answer
- The paper clips are somehow charming the hell out of me
Best things about this back cover:
- Stamp!
- A near complete lack of punctuation, including standard blurb quotation marks. No exclamation points, commas ... figure it out for yourself, reader!
- Quaint passive voice construction in the last sentence. So British (Panther is a British imprint, in case you didn't know)
PAGE 123~
Wriggling away from the legs of the tower, black smooth cables and corrugated pipelines rested along each other like a Chinese apothecary's box of snakes.
~RP
