Paperback 327: The Case of the Constant Suicides / John Dickson Carr (Dell 91)

Paperback 327: Dell 91 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Case of the Constant Suicides
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Gerald Gregg does great borderline-abstract covers. Bold shapes and colors. Simple, but I like it a lot.
• That is some thick, thick, possibly polyethylene blood.
• I'm trying to imagine what "constant suicides" could possibly mean. Are they literally occurring non-stop, around the clock? That's rough.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• I want to live in Angus Campbell's room.
• The only castle in all of Scotland made entirely of red Legos.
• I'm not buying "Courtyard." Looks more like "Sheep Pen."

Page 123~

"No, my boy. The real meat of the thing is here." Dr. Fell made the pages riffle like a pack of cards. "In the body of the diary. In the account of this activities for the past year."

He frowned at the book and slipped it into his pocket. His expression of gargantuan distress had grown along with his fever of certainty.

"Hang it all!" he said, and smote his hand on his knee. "The thing is inescapable! Elspat steals the diary. She reads it. Being no fool, she guesses—"

"Smote!" I didn't know anyone but God ever did that. Cool.

~RP

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Paperback 320: Gunpoint! / John L. Shelley (Graphic 124)

Paperback 320: Graphic 124 (PBO, 1956)

Title: Gunpoint!
Author: John L. Shelley
Cover artist: Saul Levine

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• I love how excited the title is just to be alive! Exclamation point! And I *love* how the exclamation point is *so* excited that it's falling over.
• I also love how the shooter is making that great, wincey, western, "I'll get ye, ye rascally varmint" face.
• His partner has fallen in perhaps the most awkward position I've ever seen a dead body in on a paperback cover.
• Check out the interior title page — very cool:

And the back cover:


Best things about this back cover:

• "Let Sleeping Lawdogs Lie" is phenomenally lame. Is "lawdog" even a word?
• "Lived to kill ... killed to live ... wrong end of a rope ... right end of a gun" — somebody's been practicing his bad movie trailer patter.

Page 123~

Broady came to him, an ancient Sharps buffalo gun in the crook of his arm. His broad face split in a dusty grin and he patted the stock of the weapon.

~RP

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Paperback 313: Night Walk / Bob Shaw (Banner B60-110)

Paperback 313: Banner B60-110 (PBO, 1967)

Title: Night Walk
Author: Bob Shaw
Cover artist: Frank Frazetta

Yours for: $15

In honor of Frank Frazetta (1928-2010)

• "Pwn3d!"
  
• Toothpicks: Now in "Giant Arachnid" Strength!
• Colors are incredibly striking / horrifying. And the design is simple but gorgeous. Memorable.

• Love that the green on these eyes matches the mystery-green on the front cover.
• "Emm Luther" — subtle!
• This sounds like a combination of "King Lear" and "The Stars My Destination." That is, it sounds good.

Page 123~

"I'm sorry about this bit of nonsense," Tallon said. "I suppose you feel like a kid hiding in a hollow bush?"

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 57

Title: Fightin' Fool (Pocket 2316, 5th ptg, 1956)
Author: Max Brand
Cover artist: Tom Ryan

Yours for: $7

• "Fightin' Fool!" — well, title, you're at least half right.
• Before the Tiger Woods fist pump, there was this.
• You gotta love this guy's enthusiasm. He hasn't even managed to get out of the manacles, and yet he's still super-psyched: "That's right, I got guns ... plural!"

• Best tag line in a long, long time. Jingo! It's like Jenga and Yahtzee rolled into one, and yet dangerous close to a racial slur at the same time. Edgy! I only wish it read, "Nobody plays Jingo, sucker!"
• This back cover copy is a random excerpt and tell us nothing about the story. Except that Jingo is kind of shooty.
  
• The last simile doesn't really work, in that getting your fingers into a glove can be awkward and would likely involve way more time than your enemy would need to drop you. You also need two hands to do it (unlike drawing and firing a sidearm ... assuming westerns haven't been lying to me all these years). I think the writer was thinking of the idiom of something's "fitting like a glove," and then just ... went off track.

Page 123~

Wheeler Bent was silent. He stared at the girl with half-closed eyes, for suddenly it came over him that Jingo was as like this girl as though he had been born her twin.

First, why are the girl's eyes half-closed? Second, "Wheeler Bent" indicates that Max Brand was awesome with names, and that Jingo was no fluke. Third, everything after "Jingo" in that second sentence is a stylistic disaster. We could start with the redundancy of "born" (how else can you be somebody's twin?) but by the time the sentence gets there, it's already an ungainly mess.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 46

Title: Murder is the Pay-Off (Popular Library 50-426, 1st ptg, 1960)
Author: Leslie Ford (she can't be stopped)
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $7

• "Here, hold this dead man against your chin. It'll stop the swelling."
• She looks like a lady in a commercial for some cleanser that gets blood stains out of your carpet.
• The horrific palette on Ms. Ford's books continues unabated.
• "Wallop" is a funny word.

• I'm not sure you want to suggest that the reader has to be "dragged along."
• "GUARANTEE!" — I can't wait to see what this "full reading satisfaction" is all about.

Page 123~

Swede Carlson's thick hand planted itself quickly in the dark on Gus Blake's knee.

Mmm, I smell full reading satisfaction up ahead ...

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 35 and 36

Last two non-fiction (-ish) books from my library sale haul. They make a nice pair, I think.

Title: Jefferson: A Great American's Life and Ideas (Mentor 70 — 2nd ptg, Dec. 1952)
Author: Saul K. Padover
Cover artist: Jonas

Yours for: $5

• Love the way "Abridged" is used as a major selling point — "Finally, our most important Founding Father, in a dose you can manage!"
• Floating Head of Thomas Jefferson backed by the Floating Declaration of Independence. My Most Powerful, Floatingest cover ever.
• "This planting season, why not outfit your team with Dr. E. J. Samuelson's newly patented Invisible Oxen Rigging! Amaze your friends as your oxen appear to pull your plow by sheer force of mind alone ..."

• "Living Words ... written on dead sheep."

Page 123~

For Aaron Burr was not famous for virtue or steadfastness of character, and the idea of such a man's occupying the presidential chair was disturbing to responsible men.

Title: Masters of Deceit (Pocket Books 75099 — 22nd ptg!?!?!, 1966)
Author: J. Edgar Hoover
Cover artist: Ben Feder (designer)

Yours for: $10

• "The Communists Will Spray Our Most Precious Documents with Ketchup, Make No Mistake!"

• "Hello, Frederick's of Hollywood? This is, uh, Edwina Hooverston ..."
• Blurbed his own book. Clever.

Page 123~

Five minutes later, a fourth person, a woman in a dark coat, arrives. Everything is quiet: no loud voices, no cars parked in front, no reason for the neighbors to suspect that a Communist Party meeting is in progress.

This book is really a fantastic window into Cold War paranoia. I might actually read it.

~RP

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Paperback 295: The Three Coffins / John Dickson Carr (Popular Library 174)

Paperback 295: Popular Library 174 (1st ptg, 1949)
Title: The Three Coffins
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Rudolph Belarski

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• "Lady in Peril" week continues with another Lady in Peril — and another Rudolph Belarski cover with serious hand action! Can't decide which hand is better, the blood-soaked one or the ... what the hell is that other hand doing? Signing? Is it clutching something? If she were that horrified, would she really have gotten down on her knees and plunged her hand into the red stuff oozing from under the door? I doubt it.
• This makes me not want to see "Behind the Green Door"
• What is with the NYT syntax? Subject at the end ... no verb ...
• CARR is a common crossword answer. If you solve crosswords, it is good to know who created Dr. Gideon Fell.
• Belarski clearly prefers distressed women in solid, bold colors, and with ultra-expressive, super-plastic hands.

Best things about this back cover:

• More text-only dreck.
• Oooh, a locked room mystery. That should be zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
• This back cover sounds like a "Twilight Zone" plot ad-libbed by someone very drunk or very high. (Happy 50th birthday to "The Twilight Zone," by the way — I live in Rod Serling's home town, so there are "Twilight Zone" city buses driving around town and everything)

Page 123~

"Well, sir, there's blood, for one thing," replied Somers. "And also a very queer sort of rope ..."

~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 239: The Lady Kills / Bruno Fischer (Gold Medal 148)

Paperback 239: Gold Medal 148 (PBO, 1951)
Title: The Lady Kills
Author: Bruno Fischer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Sometimes, you just have to stop and recognize awesomeness when you see it. This cover is everything I love about vintage paperbacks in one beautiful package: a paperback original from a very good author, in beautiful condition ... a girl with a gun and a guy with a whip ... a dynamic composition with cool depth of field perspective ... shredded clothing ... a title that is also a complete sentence. My only response when I pulled this off my shelf was "Damn, that's good."
• That's some serious violence; he seems to have @#$ed her up good with that whip, despite the fact that he's holding it in a way that would not be conducive to hurting someone. He's gotta let go of the tip. It's like threatening someone with a gun that has the safety on. Looks cool, though.
• She looks a little like that actress ... what's her name ... star of "Medium" ... like a young version of her ... Patricia Arquette? Is that right?

Best things about this back cover:

• "Old Cleave" = great name for an axe murderer
• This copy is nuts. Makes almost no sense. Is Old Cleave her father? Her husband? What is the "it" in the penultimate sentence? Did our narrator literally see Beth's husband "learn the truth." How exciting, watching someone learn something.
• "Understood least of all" — yes, that's clear

Page 123~

My laughter had broken through the crust of her where words couldn't.

I love a girl with a good graham cracker crust.

Now I'm hungry.

~RP

Paperback 219: Combat Nurse / Frieda K. Franklin (Pocket Books 1147)

The Make-Your-Own-Commentary Experiment, Part the Third (sound off in "Comments" section)
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Paperback 219: Pocket Books 1147 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: Combat Nurse
Author: Frieda K. Franklin
Cover artist: Charles Binger

Yours for: $10



Page 123~

In the subdued light their faces were hard voluptuous masks of powder and rouge and thick gleaming lipstick smeared like coating of fat over their pouting mouths.

~RP

Paperback 190: Deadlock / Ruth Fenisong (Dell 808)

Paperback 190: Dell 808 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Deadlock
Author: Ruth Fenisong
Cover artist: John McDermott

Yours for: SOLD! (1/23/09)


Best things about this cover:

• This guy doesn't look dead. He looks tuckered out after an evening of sloppy hamburger-eating. He's got that silly, sated grin on his face. He does have dead-hand, though, I'll give him that. That, or he's amusing his house guest by making shadow puppets on the ground
• This man, and thus the couch, is apparently 8 feet long. Seriously, if the dead guy stood up, his head would clearly no longer be in picture.
• This is the day that Dr. Carlotta Fiore decided, "No more housecalls!" - another day, another gigantic, drunk, ketchup-stained man.

Best things about this back cover:

• Torn from today's headlines! ... seriously, TORN. See the tears. We tore it. Torn!
• "Gridley Nelson" is officially my new crossword-solving moniker / alter ego. I might even have to keep the "Lieut." title.
• "Basement sordidness"!!! Man, I really need to know what that is.

Page 123~

"No." Gaudio turned his wobbly head from side to side to implement the weak denial. The effect was grotesque.

Though surely no more grotesque than the use of "implement" as a verb in that first sentence. Yikes.

~RP

Paperback 180: Hunters of the Red Moon / Marion Zimmer Bradley (Daw UJ1713)

Paperback 180: Daw UJ1713 (9th ptg, 1973)

Title: Hunters of the Red Moon
Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Cover artist: Carl Lundgren

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• O dear god if he lifts that left knee any higher... First rule of warfare: protect your junk
• Whose blood is on that sword? Or is he posing in triumph after winning the jelly application portion of the PB&J Olympics?
• Are they on some team? Why are they wearing the same uniform?
• "Manitoba Curling Champions, 2210"

Maughta, over at "Judge a Book by Its Cover," very coincidentally featured this very book just last week. I even delayed writing about the book because I didn't want it to be the subject of the one write-up a week that I crosspost on her site. She likened the cover to the movie poster for "Star Wars." I'd like to provide two other movie posters for your consideration:




And now, the back cover:



Best things about this back cover:

• Boring!
• This plot sounds like the plot of "The Most Dangerous Game"
• "This is how adventure should be written" - this is not, however, how book reviews should be written: "Excellently evoked settings and characters"? Who says that??

"You know what I think of her characters?"
"No, what?"
"They are excellently evoked."
"I want to kill you right now."

Page 123~

Dane stood looking after her for a moment, then bent, on a strange impulse, and lifted the long, silky coil in his hands. It clung there, fine and smooth and springy; he coiled it into a roll and thrust it inside his tunic next to his skin. A favor from my lady, he thought.

This is from the chapter entitled "Creepy Guy at the Renaissance Faire."

~RP

Paperback 174: The Night of Long Knives / Max Gallo (Warner 78-231)

Paperback 174: Warner 78-231 (1st ptg, 1973)

Title: The Night of Long Knives
Author: Max Gallo
Cover artist: Don Punchatz

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Way out of my normal collecting time period, but man oh man this cover is astonishing. Super Gothic Horror Nightmare. That heap of contorted flesh is like a composite being - a monster, bleeding to death - though the guys up top kind of look like they're doing yoga
• That Eagle crown looks like it's pinching him a little

Best thing about this back cover:

• "Orgy of blood" - yes, that's what the cover looks like
• This book is non-fiction, it appears, and has interior photos of all kinds of Nazi-esque stuff, though most of it is just guys in overcoats walking from here to there. I guess I'll take boring over gruesome.
• OK, this book is making me feel dirty, so I'm done thinking about it

Page 123~

There's really nothing even remotely funny to quote, so I'm gonna pass. The first sentence I looked at had "Dachau camp" in it, to give you an idea of the material I'm dealing with here.

~RP

Paperback 82: Zane Grey's Western Magazine, March 1951

Paperback 82: Zane Grey's Western Magazine, March 1951

Featured story: "The Fight for Bunchgrass Basin"
Author: L. P. Holmes
Cover artist: Mayo Olmstead

Priced at: $6



Best things about this cover:

• "Henry is sporting the sexy open-shirt-and-baggy-pants look that's so popular among this year's A-list homesteaders..."
• Henry appears to be duck hunting. Either that, or there are Injuns riding magic carpets in the sky.
• Meanwhile, Henry's partner Cleve has managed to pull off the nearly impossible feat of being shot in the back by an arrow while his back is completely shielded by the covered wagon. Nice going, Cleve.
• Cleve, you can let go of the gun now.
• This picture has a smooth creaminess to it that I like, but what's with the blood placement? It makes no sense, and is completely unconvincing.

RP

Paperback 51: Royal Giant 27

Paperback 51: Royal Giant 27 (PBO / PBO)

Title: Confessions of a Psychiatrist / The Woman He Wanted
Author: Henry Lewis Nixon / Daoma Winston [!!??]
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited [but apparently signed "Uppwal..."]


Best things about this cover (where to begin!):

Confessions of a Psychiatrist:

• I love how the halo of light makes her look angelic, while the positioning of her hands ... let's just say that the less disturbing act she seems to be pantomiming involves strangling children.
• "You are getting sleepy ... hey, it's working!"
• Are they in a boudoir, or his office? Or does it matter anymore?
• What kind of bed is that? It's very low, and appears to consist only of a frame and a giant pillow.

The Woman He Wanted:

• Boobs! Blood! Yikes!
• LOVE the woman on the couch: "Best seat in the house! I'll just lie back here, cross my legs awkwardly, kick over my glass of whiskey, smoke a cigarette, and watch the brutality."
• "Daoma Winston" - I wanted to say that that is the ugliest, worst pseudonym ever, and yet ... "She" appears to have gone on to a long and successful career writing gothic / horror / fantasy stuff. Who knew? Notice how this bibliography of "her" work does not quite stretch back to The Woman He Wanted.

Best things about this back cover:

Copy writing at its histrionic, purply best:

Confessions:

• "Strange rite of nudity" - Nudity has its own rites now??? I am so behind the times.
• "Titillating treatise" = racy alliteration
• "Unblushing frankness" = code for sex sex sex - actually (a side note) "frank(ness)" is common in cover copy for books about all kinds of, let's say, "non-normative" sex-related behavior and conditions (e.g. gayness, transvestism, trans-sexuality, etc.). As I've said before, Kinsey gave this weird license to the publishing world to let loose with "educational" sex fiction.

Woman:

• He works at a "filling station" ... and he's "a crude man" ... HA ha
• STELL!! STELL!! (shout heard in sex-reversed version of "A Streetcar Named Desire")
• In case you missed it, his name is .... Stell. WTF?
• "... taunting him to splurge his passion on one of his other women" = too "frank" for my taste

RP