Paperback 277: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse / Mike Avallone (Gold Medal 718)

Paperback 277: Gold Medal 718 (PBO, 1957)
Title: The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse
Author: Mike Avallone
Cover artist: Jack Floherty

Yours for: $19


Best things about this cover:

• Peek-a-boo nighties are a staple of vintage paperback covers, but you rarely see the women in said nighties *actually* playing peek-a-boo.
• Or maybe she's just sad. Or performing some odd modern dance routine. Whatever she's doing, she appears to be doing it while wrapped in the kind of cellophane they use to cover fruit baskets.
• "Oh, what's a corpse to do!? [sob sob, toe point]"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Flounced" is a fabulous word.
• Nice contemporary hot-chick references in the opening sentences. I like how the writer is on a first name / first name / last name basis with these legendary lookers.
• "She wore clothes nakedly" = Avallone at his Hammettiest.
• Second paragraph reads like a tagline discard pile. "You put those on the cover!? Those were just notes!"
• Rarely, upon taking candy from a baby, do you demand that it take off its clothes.

Page 123~

He dug a thick fold of something from his pocket, fanned it out. Checked it the same way you do a map. It was a map.

Sometimes, you gotta stay literal. Keeps readers on their toes.

~RP

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Paperback 214: Black Mail / Did She Fall Or Was She Pushed? - Doris Miles Disney (Ace G-506)

Paperback 214: Ace G-506 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, 1963)

Title: Black Mail / Did She Fall Or Was She Pushed?
Author: Doris Miles Disney
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the mail now prefers to be called "Negro"
• Sexy librarian look is basically ruined by the straitjacket
• "I got rejected from Haverford?! But that was my safety school! Noooo!"
• Awesome psionic powers - that horn-rimmed lady is packing the double whammy: Swirling Disorientation Vortex and Orange Implaing Lance of Death
• "Authentic background," HA ha. "The sky and fields look so real..."

Best things about this cover:

• That guy wins the award for Most Oddly Proportioned Detective. His feet are gigantic. And hazy.
• Experimental art - sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here ... thumbs down. No action? Is it cold or just desolate? What in the hell is on her head? Her vacant look does nothing for me. I'll take the freaked-out letter reader and even the freaky four-eyes on the flip side of this book over this lavender-hooded nobody.
• That title is laughably bad. The whole book should be just one word long: "Pushed."

Page 123~

Monday had figured so consistently in the pattern that this was the day on which he expected the watch to bear fruit.

That is, by far, the most exciting sentence on the page. Reading her prose is like watching paint dry. Beige paint.

~RP

P.S. where are my snarky, enthusiastic commenters? I've actually lost two "Followers" in the past week? Boo hoo. I know I have been *slightly* behind on my postings, but come on - help me out here a little. Give me a push. A little momentum. Somethin'. Thx.