57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 52

Title: The Swimming Pool
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Carl Bobertz

Yours for: $6

• Uh ... I don't think she's "swimming."
• Ross Macdonald had a novel called "The Drowning Pool" ... You should take titling lessons from him, Mary.
• "... as the rare yellow octopus sucked the last ounce of life from Judith's brain."

• Just one question: if she is safe "in the solitude of a padlocked bedroom," then how could "her private terror" spread "to all around her?" No One Is Around Her.

Page 123~

Only three of us went to the inquest the next day, Phil, Bill, and myself. For Judith was sick. She had worked herself into a fever, I suppose because she always hated the idea of death.

"I suppose." Well, thanks for the not-at-all medieval diagnosis, doc.

~RP

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Paperback 292: The Four False Weapons / John Dickson Carr (Popular Library 282)

Paperback 292: Popular Library 282 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Four False Weapons
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Uncredited (Bergey? Belarski?)

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• Another deservedly famous cover. Vivid, sensational, boobtastic.
• If it weren't for the evident violence that has been committed here, I would say her posture suggests an accompanying statement of "Go ahead, take them! Take my breasts! They are all yours, cheri!"
• The tendons on the back of his left hand are doing something awfully scary.
• I love the word "wanton" as a noun.

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, OK, I get it, she was a whore, a strumpet, an easy lay, etc. No need to belabor the obvious. Give the poor dead girl a break.
• Look, Sherloque, *I* could have told you that if you find four different weapons near a body, *at least* three of them are "false."
• The last line here takes the story from contrived to ridiculous.

Page 123~

Mrs. Toller had now an air of complete boredom. You would not have thought the broad-nostrilled nose could have gone so high without absurdity, yet there it was ...

Her high bored nose now provided shelter to several small animals and a family of Hobbits. And yet still, no absurdity. Astonishing.

~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 209: The Opening Door / Helen Reilly (Dell 917)

Paperback 209: Dell 917 (1st ptg, 1956)
Title: The Opening Door
Author: Helen Reilly
Cover artist: Victor Kalin

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• Given how it's cut and hung, I'm surprised the door opens at all
• That lady makes for a very nice-looking corpse. Normally, I go for women who are more than 3 ft. tall, but in her case, I'll make an exception.
• I change my vote. The expression on her face says not "dead" but "drunk and happy about it."

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa. What the ... see, I almost like this. Dramatic meltdown, in slo-motion. That, or she's doing her best Elvis/James Brown song-ending pose. The one big difference: I think both those guys had more than three fingers on their right hands.
• "Taint of murder" - oh, man, that's the worst kind of taint
• "The Knob Is Turning" - a. that should have been the title of this book, b. that's what she said.

Page 123~

Gerald was talking to Cicely Thwaight near a clump of palms. How he had - dwindled, Eve thought dispassionately.

But Thwaight! There's more!

~RP

Paperback 120: While Murder Waits / Bruce Cassiday (Graphic 145)

Paperback 120: Graphic 145 (PBO, 1957)

Title: While Murder Waits
Author: Bruce Cassiday
Cover artist: Al Puhn (that's a painting!?!?!)

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Alternative titles:
  
• "Saran-Wrapped for Murder!"
• "Shrink-Wrapped for Murder!"
• "Harlot Under Plastic!"
• "I Spent My Prom in the Shower"
• "I'm this many years old!"

Best things about this back cover:

• OMG, yes. Please please please can we call it a slay!?
• It began like a game of what?
• "Cash Madigan!" - awesome name, but how much of a tough guy can he be if he has to struggle to fight his way out of some dame's arms?
• "Some like 'em dying!" - god I love this cover copy writer. That phrase isn't even remotely close to an actual phrase. "What rhymes with 'Hot?' ... I know, how 'bout 'dying'?!"

Page 123~

Marty Roan's eyes were narrowed and bright with thought. "Granted she did not have money, there still might be reason for the badger game."

~RP

Paperback 108: Tobacco Road / Erskine Caldwell (Signet CW 985)

Paperback 108: Signet CW 985 (43rd ptg, I think, ca. 1970)

Title: Tobacco Road
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: somebody Baxter

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• It would be very sexy ... you know, if someone hadn't blown the right side of her face clean off. Really ruins the mood.
• There is something Klimt-y about the shapes and floral patterns in and around her ... dress. I guess that's a dress.
• This book is in near perfect condition. Feels unread, though if I hold it up to the light I can see the very faintest reading crease. Still, it's about as square and tight and shiny as a read book gets.
• Tobacco Road is paperback legend. This is the 43rd printing. It sold tons. A certain rural sexual frankness made this book good fodder for at least two generations of cover artists. I'm just really glad this "Baxter" guy signed, and dated, his cover painting, because Signet is crap for giving artists credit (or for dating their reprint editions clearly).
  

Page 123~

Dude said he was hungry, and that he wanted to go somewhere and eat. Sister Bessie had half a dollar; Jeeter had nothing. Dude, of course, had nothing.

~RP

Paperback 42: Bantam A2096

Paperback 42: Bantam A2096 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Three Roads
Author: Ross Macdonald
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• The story of one woman's feverish nightmares about her missing pink pump with matching pom pon ("Rosebud...")
• Is this a picture of the "stolen passion" or the "brutal murder?"
• Why does her left leg disappear in a smoky mist? Did she forget to take something off the stove?
• Ross Macdonald was a writing star in the mystery world until he was caught using steroids. Now his name is forever haunted by the dreaded asterisk.
• I love the magical sheets, which defy physics in order to give her ass the barest of cover and thus prevent us from enjoying an unbroken line of head-to-toe nudity. Cursed sheets!

Best things about this back cover:

• If you liked this book, you'll love the sequel: MEMORY MURDERED ABSORBING!
• This is what a book looks like when it's designed by someone with a punctuation fetish. For god's sake, it's not Spanish - why are there punctuation marks before the word "MEMORY?"

Here we find out the real reason for the asterisk on the front cover. Kenneth Millar (his real name) wrote under his own name, then John Ross Macdonald, until John D. MacDonald started to make a splash, and then people got confused. This book was published at the height of that confusion, clearly. Eventually, he'd stick with Ross Macdonald (the first "d" is not capitalized). I have written about this guy. Spent days working through his correspondence and other papers at UC Irvine. The best time I ever had being an academic. It was like being ... well, a detective. Hot.

RP

Paperback 15: Gold Medal 605

Paperback 15: Gold Medal 605 (PBO, 1956)

Title: Dead - and Kicking
Author: Frank Castle
Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Yours for: $12

Best things about this cover:

• My eyes! If that skirt's stripes were any color other than gray, I think I'd be having seizures right about now.
• Gray-striped skirt over gray-striped skirt against scribbly ochre background and scribbly gray background. This is one of the most deliberately ugly covers ever (and Mitchell Hooks is a fabulous cover artist, so I have no idea what happened here)
• "Francy" appears to be having a stroke (her right hand!). Wait, which one's "Francy?" The big woman or the small, dead one? Are those supposed to be the same woman? I'd ask that guy in the middle there with the gun and the guilty expression, but he seems anxious to get somewhere.
• Hmm, I'm not familiar with that use of the verb "bloomed" ...
• Red heels. No victim's outfit is complete without them.

Best things about this back cover:

• Correct use of "whom" in penultimate paragraph
• "Desperately enough to comb California for her" - wow, that is desperate
• Apparently in the 50's, plastic surgery had not yet been done on anything but the nose; that, or her body was magically resistant to physical manipulation of any kind: "nothing on earth could alter a single curve of that wonderful body of her..." Really, not even, I don't know, a chainsaw? A year's supply of french fries? Nothing?
• Did that dude shoot himself? His gun is smoking, but he's lurching backward like he's been hit.
• Beware the giant floating head of Francy!

RP