Paperback 282: If the Coffin Fits / Day Keene (Graphic 43)

Paperback 282: Graphic 43 (PBO, 1952)

Title: If the Coffin Fits
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $50


Best things about this cover:

• One of the greatest hypo covers of all time (yes, "hypo covers" is a thing — very collectible)
• And the award for "Most Realistic Depiction of Hand Hair" goes to ...
• God that spike is glorious. I almost want to start doing heroin just to experience the feel of something so elegantly designed.
• Joe Shirtless does Not want to shoot up, but stone-faced blond guy can't wait. He has that barely-contained psycho-sadistic look about him. I think it's the posture, plus the intent stare: [Trembling ever-so-slightly] "This is going to be @#$#ing awesome!" Maybe he's a hypo connoisseur. Or just likes handling terrified man flesh.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, small type. Less is More!
• This book should be called "Badger Game" — I'd read it just to figure out what the hell that phrase meant.
• Why is "Jail Bait" capitalized and italicized? Is it a novel? (actually, it is, and I own it, but I don't think the book is what's meant here).
• "Mr. Big" — Ouch. One million points off for lack of originality.

Page 123~

I said that was a lot of heifer dust. He was inclined to argue.

I believe "heifer dust" = "bullshit," but it would be a great street name for some drug ... something way, way worse than "angel dust." "We cut the PCP with cow shit ... try it!"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 272: Home Is The Sailor / Day Keene (Gold Medal 225)

Paperback 272: Gold Medal 225 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Home is the Sailor
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best thing about this cover:

• Someone needs to tell him that a captain's hat really does not go with pajama bottoms.
• She is hot in a tawdry bar slut kind of way. The upthrust boobs and hand-on-ass are particularly nice touches.
• I worry that his aggressive and thorny-looking patch of chest hair is going to chafe her delicate boob skin (I am now giggling aloud at the phrase "boob skin")
• She looks lusty, while he looks like he's going to vomit his last daiquiri right in her face.

Best things about this back cover:

• Why aren't guys named "Swede" anymore? Maybe because being named Swede has been shown to cause a remarkable increase in the likelihood that you will die in some miserable, noirish fashion (see Hemingway's "The Killers," for instance).
• Copy writer here is clearly a graduate of the Crappy Metaphor Institute. He seems to have minored in Redundancy (when you've already called her a "tempest," "hurricane" should not be your next go-to image).

Page 123~

That had been in the bar, in a booth, with Corliss sitting opposite me, looking cool and fresh and virginal in white, eating prime ribs au jus, urging me to eat; me unable to eat, nursing a fresh bottle of Bacardi.

Nothing more virginal than a white-clad lady daintily slurping her blood-red meat.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 262: Too Hot to Hold / Day Keene (Gold Medal 931)

Paperback 262: Gold Medal 931 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Too Hot to Hold
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: uncredited, tho' there's something very McGinnisesque about that woman

Yours for: SOLD (7/23/09)


Best things about this cover:

• I Love This Cover. It's unusual and enigmatic and just oozes sophistication and coolness and mystery. I *want to know* what she is doing, where she is going, who's in the cab with her, all of it.
• Great Girl Art that isn't hyper-sexed. Great gams, great gloves, and Great Hair.
• "Death" is kind of anticlimactic after "torture." Not really shocking. Kind of the next logical step. Now "... leading men to soup ... and death!" That would be shocking.
• Sadly, this title has put the theme to Ghostbusters II in my head: "Too hot to handle / Too cold to hold / They're called the Ghostbusters and they're in control!" — Oh, Bobby Brown, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Best things about this back cover:

• If you like green/brown, or off-center typography, this is the cover for you.

Page 123~

Linda Lou stopped pretending and ran her hands over her flat body. She could be carrying the first of them now. The thought made her blush. After the way she'd acted, if it was possible for a woman to conceive more than once in a night, she probably had a whole family inside her.

You'll be relieved (maybe) to know that this passage is not directly related to the scene of abuse and torture (possible rape?) on the book's back cover. Still, though ... I'm kind of creeped out. "A whole family?" OB/Gyn: "Hey, there's a mom and dad, three kids and a dog in here. How'd that happen?"

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 212: Notorious / Day Keene (Gold Medal 372)

Paperback 212: Gold Medal 372 (PBO, 1954) - Canadian Edition

Title: Notorious (no, not that "Notorious")
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• The fact that the Canada-only "35c" price tag overrides the Giant "25c" sign in the middle of the cover painting.
• Innocent country girl tries to make it in the big ... Carny?
• "I want to look like her. Can you do that, leering carnival barker man?"
• "So, whatcha got in the suitcase, lady?" "Murder." "Oh ... I see."
• "Murder in her suitcase" - this makes me hope for something gloriously bloody, like a small chainsaw with which she starts beheading everyone in site: "Is this part of the show, mama?"
• I Really wish the lady in the foreground weren't so damned shadowed

Best things about this back cover:

• Say what you will about Day Keene, he could totally rock the 'stache.
• Ferron! "They call me Ferron: The Iron Man"
• "the main chance"? - is that Canadian for "the big score"?

Page 123~

Kelcey struck Ferron in the face. "Where's the money, carny? Where's the eighteen grand?"

~RP

Paperback 155: Naked Fury / Day Keene (Phantom Books 509)

Paperback 155: Phantom Books 509 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Naked Fury
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: sadly, uncredited

Yours for: $70 (not a typo - it's super-rare)



Best things about this cover:

• Angry mob!
  
• "I'm gonna beat him with this coffee table leg!"
  
• "I'm gonna pull my pants up to my rib cage and burn the town down with a troupe of my pasty-faced brethren!"
• The title is pure pulp - fantastic!
• One of the greatest pieces of Girl Art I own - her face looks insane, but that dressing gown is gorgeous and the way she's captured in crazy panicked motion is very believable.
• She is giving us some kind of sign with her right hand: "C" ... Uh, Call the Cops? Crazy people are trying to kill me? C-cup!?
• I thought the big palooka with the awesome left Fist of Fury was wearing some kind of jacket and open-collared shirt ... but then I noticed the length of that jacket, which appears actually to be some kind of robe. At night, it seems, he likes to dress up like Joan Crawford. Is that why the mob is chasing him? Hate crime!
• "Revenge" is one of my very favorite words / topics.

Best things about this back cover:

• Too much Fury, not enough Naked, frankly

Page 123~

Malloy speaking:

"You're not tough. You only think you are. If you guys hadn't been chicken, you'd have let me have it out in Reardon's garage. But killing a two hundred pound man who's willing to fight for his life is a hell of a lot different than shooting a drunken cop from a fire escape or strangling a ten dollar tart."

Mmmm, ten dollar tart ...

~RP

Paperback 153: Seed of Doubt / Day Keene (Dell 7733)

Paperback 153: Dell 7733 (1st ptg, 1962)

Title: Seed of Doubt
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: Clark Hulings

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• "Explosive," "Seed," and a variation of "semen" all on one cover!? That's ... ballsy. Also makes me a little queasy. Oh god, all this seed-talk is making even "Unexpurgated" look pornographic.
• "You expect that man to take care of that baby!?"
• "You expect us to believe that that man is responsible for that stain!?"
• The judge looks like he wants to say "Excuse me, sir, but the fencing class is down the hall."
• "The pattern of ANATOMY OF A MURDER" - HA ha. High praise. That's like saying "As many pages as THE GREAT GATSBY" or "Set in the same general region as GONE WITH THE WIND"

Best things about this back cover:

• Cast of characters! With quotes!?
• "I'd rather see her dead" - I hope he's not supposed to be sympathetic character. "No wife of mine..." - how many does he have?
• "I loved Eric so much ..." - of course. Women love men who would rather see them dead than see them bear the child of another man.
• "Who is to say that I was wrong ...?" - nice defense, Perry Mason. I believe This Court is to say, you jackass.

Page 123~

Jenny emerged from the restaurant wearing a tight black skirt and a green blouse under a thin white sweater that accentuated her heavy breasts. She pretended to be surprised to see him.

"You still here?"

Eric continued to pick his teeth. "It would seem. You live far?"

Eric is suave - he knows what all real men know: that there is no surer way to seduce a heavy-breasted lady than to pick your teeth.

~RP

Paperback 140: Carnival of Death / Day Keene (MacFadden Books 50-239)

Paperback 140: MacFadden Books 50-239 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Carnival of Death
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "Shhhhh. Keep quiet, or it's curtains for you, pillow!"
• Title sounds like it belongs to a "Kojak" episode.
• My favorite Carnival of Death can be seen in "The Killing Joke"
• Yet another girl who prefers to pet her gun rather than hold it properly. Where is her thumb? Her finger is behind the trigger!
• This cover is like one of those perception-skewing pictures: depending on how you look at her, she is looking either at the pillow or toward the noise coming from the next room. If you stare at her long enough, you can actually make her eyes head in opposite directions.
• This cover turns sleazy into SLEE-ZAY'. Something about the photo just looks low-rent and tawdry. The roughly-handled book doesn't help (or helps a lot, depending on your affection for SLEE-ZAY')

Best things about this back cover:

• OK that balloon is flat-out awesome. I can't hate on that.
• Anywhere a clown is throwing things at you ... that's somewhere you don't want to be. Trust me.
• Sadly, "gay scene" meant something different in '65.

Page 123~

A moment later the light in the living room came on and, peering through one of the leaded glass panes in the front door, Daly could see a tall, attractive, bare-legged, black-haired girl wearing a baby doll nightdress trying to slip her arms into the sleeves of a matching negligee while she held a crying infant in one arm. It made a pleasant, homey picture.

O man, I was with you until the crying infant. Worst peeping tom letdown ever. The fact that the infant pleases this guy makes him far creepier than your average peeping tom, in my book. "That's it ... burp the baby ..."

~RP

Paperback 22: Graphic 87

Paperback 22: Graphic 87 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Homicidal Lady
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: Unknown

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• More terrible cover art from Graphic. Her face is fantastic, but everything else is a complete mess. Smeary, indistinct, off-model. Plus, she has man hands. Homicidal ... Lady?
• Why is there an old cheeseburger wrapper just inside her overcoat?
• What is that arc by her face that kind of looks like a cross between a smudge and a dust bunny? Smoke?
• The lettering on the title - again, it's subprofessional. Like an apprentice, or an apprentice's monkey, did the lettering
• Lady on the cover looks just like Rita Hayworth in Gilda

RP