Paperback 338: Dead Man's Tale / Ellery Queen [Stephen Marlowe] (Pocket Books 6117)

Paperback 337: Pocket Books 6117 (PBO 1961)

Title: Dead Man's Tale
Author: Ellery Queen (ghostwritten by Stephen Marlowe)
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "He ... he was out picking tulips and his sabots slipped and he hit her head on a windmill blade, which caused him to choke on some edam. I do not know how we ended up underwater. Dike broke, I suppose."
• This title is superlame.
• Never would have known this was ghostwritten by Stephen Marlowe if I hadn't gotten on Abe Books to check prices. There's a signed copy available there in which Marlowe writes "Just this once..."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Hacha" sounds like some kind of drink you'd order at a hipster café in Brooklyn.
• This plot sounds interesting. I really want to know what they're going to tell Hacha once they find him. It better have something to do with a dead man, or a windmill. Otherwise, total ripoff.

Page 123~

Then they heard Lou Goody tramping up the hill.

And I thought "Barney Street" was a good name.

~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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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: Book 45

Title: The Philadelphia Murder Story (Popular Library SP408, 1960)
Author: Leslie Ford (redefining the word "prolific")
Cover artist: uncredited. Criminally uncredited.

Yours for: $7

• This guy better be a zombie or involved in some kind of performance art because there is no way I'm buying the guy died that way, with his (ghastly) hand lightly fondling a lily pad.
• The hand-flower-face triad is just genius. Absurd, horrific genius. It does not, however, scream "Philadelphia" to me.
• "OK, we got some ideas for the title of your new book. You remember that famous movie, 'The Philadelphia Story?' Yeah, Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, right. So we were thinking: 'The Philadelphia ... MURDER ... Story.' Huh? Huh? Whaddya think? Catchy, right? P.S. the cover will feature the undead playing hide-and-seek."

• Talk about giving up — they've not only replicated the front cover painting, but the *front cover blurb* as well.
• Again ... you're saying one thing and I'm seeing another. Didn't see Philadelphia ... not seeing this "web" thing you speak of either.

Page 123~

The people at the Post all had them on their desks for paper weights.

I'm just gonna let that hang there. You can decide for yourself what "them" are.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 27

Title: Danger Woman
Author: Abel Mann
Cover artist: [Roger Kastel] Kastel? Kassel? Signature is super faint, and there's no credit

Yours for: $8

• Short-lived Wonder Woman nemesis of the Swingin' '60s
  
• This cover was painted in cheap lipstick
• Fabulous painting in the parts that have people. The rest is the kind of sloppiness-posing-as-avant-garde that I hate
• She is doing a bad job of hiding that gun
• "The Danger Woman" is a woefully unimaginative name

• "It" seems to have two antecedents. Or does "It" refer to the two prior statements. If so, then I am sure one of my students wrote this cover copy.
• Apparently The Danger Woman has a right-handed twin
• So ... she never said no to a job? Nope, no jokes to make there

Page 123~

"You think I should have a child."
Bertha wrung her hands. "Please."
"Don't you, Bertha?"
"Such a beautiful body — a young girl's body — unfulfilled," Bertha said.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 5

Title: The Man in Lower Ten (Dell D276, 1959)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Muni

Yours for: best offer

• I'm intrigued the modernist book design in the book hammock
• More gruesome lefthanditude
• This cover gets awesomer once you realize that it is a wrap-around...

• Free verse. Interesting. I am imagining this being read at a Poetry Slam. Now I'm imagining it being read by Garrison Keillor. Both versions have their charms / horrors.
• "Confirmed bachelor" — awesome! The main character is gay! That must be why there's that dash for shocking emphasis in the phrase "he fell desperately, unequivocally / in love — with a woman!" [gasp!]
• Mmmm, 9. My favorite number. I am the man in lower nine.

Page 123~

Hotchkiss had penetrated the steaming interior of the cave, and now his voice, punctuated by the occasional thud of horses' hoofs, came to me.

What are horses hoofs doing in the middle of an otherwise very hot sex scene?

~RP

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Paperback 293: Give 'Em the Ax / A. A. Fair (Dell 389)

Paperback 293: Dell 389 (1st ptg, ca. 1952)

Title: Give 'Em the Ax
Author: A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $22

Just received this book in the mail as a gift from a generous reader, C. Cope of Weatherford, TX. I already own it, but am psyched because now I have a copy to read. I'll get right on it, right after I finish rereading "The Long Goodbye" for the umpteenth time (teaching it this week). The copy offered here is from my original collection.


Best things about this cover:

• Gams. Heels, hosiery seams ... the works.
• World's shallowest bathtub.
• Where is the ax that she gave him? I wish I could see it.
• What kind of skirt is that? Looks like a pelt of some kind.
• They killed Big Bird to make that bath mat.
• I love the horrid realism of that guy's face folds.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback! Always awesome.
• When I open a gin joint, it will be called "Rimley's Rendezvous." Actually, scratch that. Too many syllables, a little too French. Still, it's colorful.
  
• This is like some architect's sketch pad — an architect preparing to enter a "Best Rectangular Shape-Drawing" contest.
• Love love love the bungalow-style old skool motel. Motels are the bestest of all crime novel settings.

Page 123~

Bertha's jaw was pressed forward like the prow of a battleship. "What's your proposition?" she said ominously.

If you've ever read a Lam & Cool mystery, then you know Bertha Cool is not to be @#$#ed with. She's ... imposing. 165 lbs and "hard as barbed wire." I really like Gardner's Lam/Cool stuff. Perry Mason, not so much, though, to be fair, I haven't read a Mason novel in a long, long time. Maybe it would hold my interest better now.

~RP

Paperback 289: Kill Him Twice / Richard S. Prather (Pocket Books 55025)

Paperback 289: Pocket Books 55025 (6th ptg, 1968)

Title: Kill Him Twice
Author: Richard S. Prather
Cover artist: Schlocky Crapperson

Yours for: Not For Sale (gift of Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• Well, it's yellow. With orange font. That's pretty original.
• Her hair ... her hair ... it's OK, until it gets over her elbow, and then it becomes something unrecognizable, bordering on unholy. Are those dead stoats hanging off her head? A dirty bathmat? A skein of brownish yarn.
• It appears that Pocket couldn't afford to pay cover artists any more, and so had to resort to picking old sketches and doodles out of the waste baskets and passing them off as art. Here, we see the partial remains of "Artist practicing drawing a dead guy."
• "I said 'Kill him twice,' not "Kill him and a guy who looks just like him!'"

Best things about this back cover:

• Nice big gun hand. Can't ask for much else.

Page 123~

They were lips that said hello and were warm friends two seconds later, carrying on a conversation Cassanova would have censored, carrying on a dialogue to bring dead libidoes back from limbo, carrying on a bedroomy hoo-hah in hot, hushed whispers—man, how they carried on.

I think "hoo-hah" means something different from what I thought it meant.

~RP

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Paperback 288: Bianca in Black / Elizabeth Sax Rohmer (Airmont M3)

Paperback 288: Airmont Books M3 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Bianca in Black
Author: Elizabeth Sax Rohmer
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: not for sale (gift of Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• First of all, if the cover is to be believed, then the bride wore navy. Second, it appears the bride also wore a wig the color of pink lemonade.
• If Elisabeth Sanxay Holding and Sax Rohmer and Cornell Woolrich wrote a book together, it would be this book. In fact, I'm not convinced "Elizabeth Sax Rohmer" is a real person. Who gives his first name to his daughter as a middle name? Elisabeth Sanxay Holding was very big at the time this pb was published, and many of her book covers have this rain-streaked, pseudo-gothic look to them. Cornell Woolrich wrote "The Bride Wore Black," a great revenge story (though his greatest was probably Rendezvous in Black, one of my favoritest works of crime fiction of all time).
• "Bianca" means "white" in Italian. Cute.
• God, her neck is a hot mess. Looks like a colorful, irregular UPC (i.e. barcode).
• Doug Peterson gave me a bunch of campy old paperbacks when I saw him at a recent crossword tournament I attended. I'll be showcasing them all week. This is the first of four.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Now they're just patently, blatantly, shamelessly ripping off Cornell Woolrich (who wrote "The Bride Wore Black")
• "Internationally famous mannequin"!? More famous than that chick from the movie "Mannequin?"
• I wish the front cover had more "daring black swimsuit" and less "startling red-gold hair."

Page 123~

"Normally, Natalie has a very good brain."

~RP

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Paperback 238: She Woke to Darkness / Brett Halliday (Dell 867)

Paperback 238: Dell 867 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: She Woke to Darkness
Author: Brett Halliday
Cover artist: Robert Schulz

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• "She Woke to a Massive Head Wound"
• Doesn't everyone wake to darkness from time to time? I mean, when you gotta go ...
• Her left hip has grown its own hand. Creepy.
• That's one big, rectangular pool of blood.

Best things about this back cover:

• Love the caricatures of the characters. Second one looks more like an 80's fashion model than a 50's dame who likes capital-M Martinis.
• Here's where Mike Shayne and I differ: I prefer vintage broads and vivacious brandy.
• "Who Is This Girl?" - early, eventually discarded title of Madonna's hit "Who's That Girl?"

Page 123~

The duplicating office had been able to shed no light on Halliday's disappearance. He had left with the original manuscript under his arm about six o-clock, and that was all they knew.

That's right. Writer "Brett Halliday" is a character in a novel by ... writer Brett Halliday.

~RP

Paperback 216: The April Robin Murders / Craig Rice and Ed McBain (Dell D306)

Paperback 216: Dell D306 (1st ptg, 1959)

Title: The April Robin Murders
Author: Craig Rice and Ed McBain
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: SOLD (June '09)


Best things about this cover:

• Signature super-hot McGinnis woman ... until you get up to the head. Then it's The Joker's mom. Holy moly.
• I hope I don't offend anyone when I say that McGinnis draws the best asses, anywhere, ever. His women tend to be a little gaunt and a little dead-eyed for me, in general, but from waist to knees I have zero complaints.
• Oddly comical cover for McGinnis, perhaps because the book is a kind of dark comedy. Love the Spy vs. Spy wavy dagger in the dead guy's hand. Also, love his hand. Awesome agony hand.

Best things about this back cover:

• I think you mean "A Front," but OK.
• I want you to write a story for me that begins "So Bingo and Handsome..." I would read that story.
• Why are those phrases hyphenated in the second paragraph. So Wrong. So Wrong. Trying to see humor ... failing ...
• I would wear a t-shirt that read simply "What You Need In Hollywood Is "Front"" - enigmatic!
• Um, I just noticed that she has pompons on her ankles for some reason. What the hell is that all about? Or is she being attacked by Evil Tribbles?

Page 123~

There were a great many things to say, Bingo reflected, and none of them really seemed to fit the occasion. He stood by the doorway, deciding between "How did you get in?" "What are you doing here?" and "Who are you?"

~RP

Paperback 203: Who's Afraid + Widow's Mite / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace G-524)

Paperback 203: Ace G-524 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, ca. 1963)

Titles: Who's Afraid / Widow's Mite
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Brulé / uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Man hands. Seriously, look at those things. My god. I fear for her upper head.
• "I remember embracing some generic man ... and the corpse of Bela Lugosi was there ... oh, it's all so fuzzy..."
• This book should be called "Who's Depressed?"

Best things about this other cover:

• "... and he threw the decapitated head of the young boy through the open window. The End."
• I guess there was a sale on "Dour Blue" at the art store when these covers were being painted.
• That blurb is pretty tepid: "Eh, you could do worse, I guess."
  
• Is a "mite" what I think it is? Dang, a "widow's mite" is "A small contribution made by one who has little" This is disappointing, as I was imagining this would be a story about a. a widow who kept a tiny bug as a pet, or b. a widow who enjoyed wearing a MITRE (of mysterious origin)

Page 123 (of "Widow's Mite")~

"Now!" she said. "Now you're going to get what's coming to you, you damn smug little bitch! You're going to be arrested, any minute. You'll be in jail tonight. And you'll end up in the electric chair!"

~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 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 163: Hungry Dog Murders / Frank Gruber (Avon Murder Mystery Monthly 12)

Paperback 163: Avon Murder Mystery Monthly 12 (1st ptg, 1943)

Title: Hungry Dog Murders
Author: Frank Gruber
Cover artist: [William Forrest]

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• Well, I guess they weren't that hungry ... this guy's corpse looks in pretty good shape
• "If only I had used the leash and collar ... right ... there ... so close!"
• This guy's face is gruesome.
• The scariest part of this cover: The risen skeleton of Andy Warhol! Wearing academic regalia?! That is the weirdest logo you are likely to see in the world of paperbacks (or anywhere)
• This book is really well made - it's beat to hell but still completely solid: no loose pages, very square. It's an early, digest-sized paperback, produced during wartime, in the first five years of the existence of the mass-paperback market. Lots of experimenting still going on in terms of design, packaging, promotion, etc. Check out these features:

On the inside flap, an explanation of how important the activity of READING is during wartime:


Reminds me a little of the recent idea that we could fight terrorism by shopping. Precedent!

The first page actually looks remarkably similar to that of many modern, hardbacked, "literary" books of today - tons of blurbs:


A War Bonds ad at the end - "Yeah, we're talkin' to you too, Canada!":


A miniature drawing at the beginning of each chapter!


And then there's the back cover:


Best things about this back cover:

• "Thrillers" used interchangeably with "Mysteries" - interesting in the history of genre nomenclature. Slippage! Conflation!
  
• A. Merritt was a big deal scifi writer, and "Creep Shadow Creep" is one of the greater titles I've ever seen
• Avon was clearly really, really big on getting you to get on board - "Order! Ask your Newsdealer! Do it! Creep Shadow Creep!"

Page 123~

"Ha-ha," Johnny laughed mirthlessly.
"It just struck me as funny, Johnny. That fat slob, Maggie. I never had a fight with a woman before. But you - you treated her just as if she'd been a man."

Ah, the '40s. Following a precedent (precedent!) set by Dick Tracy (it's true), Johnny Fletcher liked to smack broads around and then laugh about it afterward. "Women these days ... sometimes you just gotta hit 'em!"

~RP

Paperback 94: The Man from Scotland Yard / David Frome (Pocket Books 153)

Paperback 94: Pocket Books 153 (1st ptg, 1942)

Title: The Man from Scotland Yard
Author: David Frome
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• You can tell this cover was produced before sensationalism (sex and violence) became unstoppable forces of commodification in the paperback industry. This corpse is practically polite. In fact, I think he might just be sleeping after a tough day of pawn-brokering.
• Trench-coated woman! You don't see many of those. I love how incognito she is with her strategically placed umbrella. Is she going to pawn something, or just passing by?
• This book is from 1942, just three years after Pocket Books began. That is, the mass market paperback was exactly three years old when this book came out.
• The painting is subtle, smooth, understated, moody, detailed, elegant. Fantastic and respectable. Makes me sick - where's the action? the blood? the gratuitous partial nudity!?
• Books just held up better in the olden days. This book has been heavily read, but it is square, tight, solid. You could read it a million more times and it wouldn't change its appearance much. Eventually Pocket Books and all paperback producers lowered their quality standards, and books became much more susceptible to decay, fall-apart, and other cheapness-related injuries. I'm telling you, the interior pages on this thing are still Astonishingly white. Red color of the page edges has barely faded. This book may be quaint-looking, but it's tough.
• I love how the author's name is incorporated into the painting itself, made to look like the name of the dead/sleeping guy's pawn shop. That's just beautiful. Too bad that light fixture kind of ruins everything with its potent combination of insectiness and testicularity.
  

~PAGE 123

Leighton pressed the bell on his desk. A callow young man came in and took the paper. The firm had dispensed with the services of women in their offices since an attractive young lady typist had become the senior Mrs. Doubs, stepmother of the two younger Messrs. Doubs, each some ten years her senior.

~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 59: The Mighty Blockhead / Frank Gruber (Superior M655)

Paperback 59: Superior Reprint M655 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Mighty Blockhead
Author: Frank Gruber
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• Boring art, but one of the better titles of its time. Memorable, at any rate.
• Frank Gruber was the poor man's ERLE Stanley Gardner. He could crank it out. He was a serious working writer, getting paid pennies a word to write in nearly every genre imaginable. He wrote a really informative book about working for the pulps called Pulp Jungle. Out of print, but possibly in your better libraries. I own a first edition, but I'm dorky that way.
• Superior Reprints were bought up by, I think, Bantam, sometime in the late 40's. Remaining Superior books were then issued in dust-jacketed versions, which are Very Hard to come by. I think I have about 5 dust-jacketed paperbacks in my entire 2000+ book collection. One of them is Frank Gruber's Navy Colt, which I bought, in near perfect condition, for $4. Just writing that makes me smile.

Best things about this back cover:

• Nobody could rock the pencil mustache quite like Frank Gruber. You don't see them much anymore, but they were a staple of character actors (and pulp writers, I guess) from the 30s well into the 50s.
• Here again, you see the convention of listing all the odd jobs that a writer did before he "hit it big." These jobs are at least within the plausibility ballpark.

RP

Paperback 48: Pyramid G432

Paperback 48: Pyramid G432 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Private Eyeful
Author: Henry Kane
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours For: SOLD! (4-18-08)


Best things about this cover:

Everything - this cover is so great that I actually have nothing mocking or jokey to say. It's gorgeous, and has so many of the elements I look for in a cover:

• Girl with Gun (GWG)
  
• Great Girl Art (GGA)
  
• Great design
• Great title
• Gorgeous condition

Plus: Orange!? That's hot. You Never see a woman in an orange dress on these covers, let alone one wearing matching pumps! The heavy black outline makes her look a little bit like Miss Halloween, 1959, but whatever. It hardly matters. I love her. And she's a female detective - at a time when that was Not At All common, especially in the hardboiled genre. Also love the colorful angular design near the spine - and her proud look / defiant posture really seals the deal. A Hall of Fame cover for sure. Bob Maguire was one hell of a cover artist.


Best things about this back cover:

"It was cockeyed..." - That's what she said.

Ooh, this back cover's ugly - what a horrible contrast with the front cover

Question of the day: Is the man pictured above

a. wearing Merlin's robe
b. tunneling out of prison
c. suffering from a debilitating attack of scabies that also somehow affects clothing, or
d. Dorian Gray?

Answer: I have no idea.

RP

Paperback 36: Gold Medal K1344

Paperback 36: Gold Medal K1344 (3rd ptg, 1963)

Title: Go Home, Stranger
Author: Charles Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited

SOLD 9/18/10

"Back off, ladies! This shirtless swamp drunk is mine!"

Or, how 'bout:

"Go home, stranger! - or I'll drag your shirtless ass home!"

Why not invent your own caption and / or imaginary dialogue.

RP