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 165: Omnibook, August 1945 (incl. excerpt of "Black Boy" by Richard Wright)

Paperback 165: Omnibook, August 1945

• Includes: "Authorized abridgments of four best-selling books," including "Black Boy" by Richard Wright - plus a "Back of the Book" essay by Bennett Cerf
• Cover artist: Stefan Salter

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• He's cyanotic! Clear! Stat! Seven cc's of ... something (my 1990s "e.r." lingo has run out)
• This painting is eerie and gorgeous. That kid is scaring the hell out of me, though. He does not look happy. He looks like he wants his lunch money back.
• I don't know if Salter intended for the kid's collar (the open neck part) to sort of kind of look like an outline of Africa, but either way - awesome.
• I have a student who looks just like this kid. Well, he's just dark black, not blue, but that combination of menace and wonder in the eyes - the likeness is startling. Sadly, said student is currently in maximum security prison.

Best things about this back cover:

• Hey, Bennett Cerf - I may know him from such game shows as "What's My Line?"
• This article is actually really engaging - too bad it's "to be continued" inside the magazine (where you can't see it).
• The cartoons in the corners are fabulous.
• This article is reminding me that I have Terry Teachout's bio of Mencken still waiting for me, unread, on the bookshelf downstairs. I basically live my life surrounded by books that are staring at me, disgusted at my never having read them.

Page 123~

from "Coming Home," By Lester Cohen:

There was something about Stell, he thought, if she kissed you, if it was the real thing to her, the rest just came with it.

"The rest?" What? Her lungs? Her lunch?

~RP

Paperback 116: The Dain Curse / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 295)

Paperback 116: Pocket Books 295 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Dain Curse
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: sadly, uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "Demons, I cast thee out!"
• Where did her pupils go?
• This is the rare "beheading" cover (I'm kidding - though her head does look like it was photo-shopped, badly, onto her torso)
• I think her head has snapped back in revulsion from her assailant's fetid odor. That may explain the disappearing pupils as well.
• I do like how he knocks her head so hard it goes out of frame.

Best things about this back cover:

• "... and you're cursed with your mother's blood on your hands in babyhood" - aside from being enigmatic and disturbing ... "Babyhood?" Is that a word? Sounds like a good title for a talking babies movie starring at least one of the Wayans Brothers and, oh, let's say Ice Cube. It'll be like "Baby Geniuses," only ... blacker.
• This may be the first book I've posted to feature the wartime exhortation to the reader to mail the book to a serviceman overseas. Very cool historical marking.

Page 123~

It was postmarked San Francisco, nine o'clock Saturday morning. Inside was a soiled and crookedly torn piece of brown wrapping paper, with one sentence - as poorly printed with pencil as the address - on it: "Any body that wants Mrs. Carter can have same by paying $10000-----" There was no date, no salutation, no signature.

~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