Paperback 339: The Case of the Backward Mule / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 6083)

Paperback 339: Pocket Books 6083 (5th ptg, 1961)

Title: The Case of the Backward Mule
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• A conceptual mess. What century is it? Why is the space princess massaging her scalp, and what does it have to do with bizarrely mustachioed Chinese man on the donkey? No wonder I've never heard of "Terry Clane" and "Inspector Malloy"—how do you expect to get an enduring series off the ground with this muddled a marketing campaign?
• "Behold, as Eva Gabor summons miniature Chinese ghosts from the distant past using the power of her Magic Updo!"
• God, the more I look at this cover, the uglier and sillier it gets. Different colors on all the different (stupid) fonts? I'd cut Everything But The Girl and start over.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Don't touch anything! You're leaving blue fingerprints everywhere!"

Page 123~

"In our business, we don't do too much speculative thinking, Mr. Clane. We investigate. And when we investigate we make it a point to cover all of the possibilities."

"I see."

"Even," Malloy went on, "including that poker-faced Chinese servant of yours, Yat T'oy."

"I see."

~RP

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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 310: Four O'Clock on Friday / Philip Storey (Novel Library U177)

Paperback 310: Novel Library U177 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Four O'Clock on Friday
Author: Philip Storey
Cover artist: Robert Bonfils

Yours for: $22


Best things about this cover:

• Oddly unmoving for a peek-a-boo nightie cover.
• "I like to paint with my hands — much more sensual than painting with rollers or brushes. I call this color 'The Blood of My Latest Victim.'"
• "Pretend you're shopping..." — sorry, but your role-playing skills need some work.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Tits!" — ha ha. Klassy.
• I love how the plot description basically alleviates us from the burden of reading for the plot, thus freeing us up to scan quickly for the "part-lesbian" (?!) scenes.
• I also love how the cover copy seems hell-bent on debasing the word "hero" as much as possible. Starting with "The hero is a personnel manager..."
• "This, however, is not complicated enough" — I'm gonna disagree with you there, partner — though the "weird brother" plot does have, uh, novelty on its side.

Page 123~

"You could have knocked me over to hear Celia had been married to Fred all along. You knew it? Oh yes, darling, I can see it in your handsome face. Don't be made at me, love, I'll never talk."

It would be hard to express to you how poorly this book is written without also boring you to death. Also, I think "Don't be mad at me, love, I'll never talk" should have been the tagline of this book.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 56

Actually, I have no idea what the last two books are from the Book Sale. They appear to have sort of blended in with the rest of the collection. So the last two books will just be ones I can't place, not yet officially in The Collection — stuff that *could* have come from the Book Sale. Enjoy.

Title: Some Slips Don't Show (Pocket Books 6095, 1st ptg, 1961)
Author: A.A. Fair (aka Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Yours for: $8

• Expression on that guy's face is Nightmarish. That chair, however, is pure '60s gold, as is the Jackie-O style of Miss Primping there. I love the mysterious inscription over Dean Martin's ugly cousin's head: "Amy." It's as if he's thinking, "Amy, I'm sorry I barfed on your other dress."
  
• I believe this painting represents the seated drunk green guy's perspective. He's so sloshed that the objects of his ogling have huge, sickly, sweeping motion lines. Throwing back her hair creates a Pollockesque swoosh. Kind of looks like the number "9."
• On second, or third, glance, I believe that that is not a chair he's sitting in, but a hovercraft. He's reminding more and more of that Martian from the "Flintstones" every time I look at him.

• Seriously? You decide to reprise an image from the front cover and you choose *him*!? "Hey, [hic!], look at me! I'm flying through your doorways! Lady!"
• I'm not sure I get the joke? Is she naked under clothes? Is her slip really showing? Is there a pun on "slip," so that I'm supposed to understand that she's made an error of some sort. Is "slip" some horrible anatomical code word? Only the racially ambiguous drunk alien knows.

Page 123~

"And furthermore," I told her, "don't hand me that line about what I owe you. I don't owe you a damned thing!"

He's short, but Donald Lam can talk down to the ladies like nobody's business (I actually really like the Cool + Lam books by "Fair")

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 48

Title: The Window at the White Cat (Dell D411, 1st ptg, 1961)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Victor Kalin

Yours for: $6

• "Meow, I'm a house."
• Isn't "cathouse" another word for "whorehouse?" Yes. Yes it is.
• Cool wraparound cover by Victor Kalin, though the back just has some Tim Burton-esque tree, the eerie effect of which is deadened by the avalanche of text that's covering it.
• "The Cat With Wide-Set Ears and Mutton-Chops!"

Page 123~

The figure stopped to read the taximeter, shook his fist at the chauffeur, and approached me, muttering audibly.

Isn't muttering inherently audible?

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 32

Title: Inside the John Birch Society (Gold Medal d1141, PBO, 1961)
Author: Gene Grove
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $7

• Because nothing says "Happy New Year" like the John Birch Society
• Can you be shrouded in non-secrecy? Shrouded in fame? Redundant, I say, to thee, Mr. Grove.
• Look out! Commie! ... sorry, false alarm. This Welch guy's just got me all spooked.

• I'm kind of with him on the republic vs. democracy thing.
• That part about Eisenhower is the real departure-from-planet-earth moment for the Birchers (hmm, similarity to "Birthers" — Coincidence? Or Conspiracy!? ... since "Birchers" isn't a word anyone uses, I'll say "Coincidence").
• Someone sent me a "news" article about the dangers of the H1N1 vaccine, only ... it was from the John Birch Society's website. Said person was mortally and rightly embarrassed when I pointed this out.

Page 123~

In charging during a 1961 speaking tour that some 7,000 Protestant clergymen are Communists or "Comsymps," Welch was parroting the charges of one of his closest associates, J.B. Matthews.

"Comsymps"! Why didn't that catch on? Let's bring it back for '010! Happy New Year, Comsymps!

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 16

Title: The Education of a Poker Player (Cardinal, 1961)
Author: Herbert O. Yardley
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: SOLD (11/21/09)

• I love this book. Design is impeccable. Vegas/neon-style font = total WIN.
• All poker players should look like this guy. Those douchebags on ESPN2 make me want to stay as far away from the game as possible, but I would sit next to Fred Mertz here.
• "Lusty!?" — not a word I would have associated with this guy, but OK. Good for him.

• OMG it's an interactive quiz cover!
• "One Big Pair" — see "Lusty," front cover.

Page 142 (page 123 is a buncha technical poker stuff) ~

The only kibitzers were Maria, Bing, who spied on foreigners, and a Polish girl who broadcast Chinese propaganda — for what reason I could never understand, but then most foreigners managed to get on the Chinese payroll.

~RP

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Paperback 301: Behind Every Door / Julius Horowitz (Belmont L522)

Paperback 301: Belmont L522 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Behind Every Door
Author: Julius Horowitz
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, the cover painting looks cool. If they'd bother to make it bigger than a !@#$ing postage stamp, maybe I could appreciate it a little more.
• "Hey, baby, we're two tall, thin, cool people standing in the middle of the street ... the world is our oyster! What say we ..." / "I said 'twenty dollars,' mister"
• Remade 11 years later as "Behind the Green Door"
• Really, you're going to asterisk "The Way Between the Sexes" as something the N.Y. Times said. That's not a blurb, that's an arbitrary phrase capture.

Best things about this back cover:

• What's that title again? I forgot.
• "Guys who want to buy your pants ..." — I did not see that coming.
• "The real test is when you come up against your problem." — Words to live by, if your goal is to live as vaguely as possible.

Page 123~

He saw that these kids, the oldest of them only ten, had a vocabulary of definite opinions and many of their inculcated ideas were quite opposed to his own.

Two things — one, this is a very odd, very creepy thought for a grown man to have about children; and two, I can tell from this one sentence that this guy is a terrible, terrible writer. The phrases "vocabulary of definite opinions" and "their inculcated ideas" make me wince. Editor!

~RP

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Paperback 290: Dagger of Flesh / Richard S. Prather (Gold Medal s1157)

Paperback 290: Gold Medal s1157 (4th ptg, 1961)

Title: Dagger of Flesh
Author: Richard S. Prather
Cover artist: no idea

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


Best things about this cover:

• As I told Doug the first time he showed this to me: "Dagger of Flesh ... well, that wouldn't be very effective. It would buckle on you every time you tried to use it."
• At first I thought I was looking at a drug-addled couple sitting/lying on a bed. Then I realized they were sitting/lying on the neck of a donkey.
• Why are the man's hands bound by the wimple of a snow leopard with an Asian lady's face?
• I imagine that these two look as wasted as the artist must have been when conceiving / executing this painting.
• Trite tagline! Come on, copy writers! Shell deserves better.

Best things about this back cover:

• Op Art! I am getting dizzy...
• "Like I had no control over my brain" — been there. Am there, frequently.
• "Maybe I did kill Jay" — now now. No one wants to kill Jay himself. Just his mediocre new show.

Page 123~

This is the day, Logan, I thought. Today you get even, maybe. Today you find out what the hell's been going on and fix some bastard's wagon, if you're lucky.

"Fix some bastard's wagon" is pure awesome. I have to start using wagon-fixing as a metaphor for revenge. For real.

~RP

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Paperback 269: Night Squad / David Goodis (Gold Medal s1083)

Paperback 269: Gold Medal s1083 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Night Squad
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• One of the noirest, hardboiliest covers I've got. Iconic. Buncha badass fedora-wearing crime-fighters going to war. Strong light/dark contrast (just like the high contrast B&W of classic film noir). There's architectural detail in the dark parts, but you can barely see it. (actually, you can see it on the scan better than you can see it on the actual book ... weird)
  
• Love the up-shot angle. Gives the guy in the doorway and the whole building a looming, larger-than-life feel. Also like how his descent of the staircase reflects the cover copy: "... and sent him down into the brutal throbbing heart of the slums."
• Love the sickly green pall cast by the lamps. Also love the comically worried face of Fedora #2. Also love the wee policeman poised to billyclub the @#$# out of the next guy who looks at him funny.

Best things about this back cover:

• Blah.
• I thought it said "rocket boys" the first time I read it, and I wondered why the cops and NASA would be fighting over the same guy. "The terrifying story of two agencies bidding to give a man gainful employment!"
• Do you really aim a bullet at someone's head? You aim the gun. Unless your gun is broken and you are reduced to just hurling bullets at some guy's head. I guess that could happen.

Page 123~

"Where you going? McDermott asked.

Corey stopped. He stood with his back to the desk. He waited a few moments, then said, "Second and Addison. I got a date."

"With who?"

"A double gin," Corey said. "Is that all right with you?"

Great dialogue. That last line actually reads "Is that all right you you?" I hope you enjoy my non-silent emendation.

~RP

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Paperback 150: The Dead Beat / Robert Bloch (Popular Library 60-2299)

Paperback 150: Popular Library 60-2299 (1st, 1961)

Title: The Dead Beat
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Her face - everything about it screams horror hilarity
• She looks like she's about to snap her own neck
• That mouth is So Red that I can only imagine / hope / surmise that this novel involves her drinking blood
• "My hair! O, why did I ever swim in that stupid, over-chlorinated community pool!"
• "My robe! It appears to have fallen open to reveal my impossibly spherical boobs!"
• "My jaw! I can't shut it! How am I even forming this sentence!?"
• Honestly, I love the design on this cover. The jagged backgrounds, the sickly colors. All gold. I believe the word "shocker" is even being struck by something resembling lightning. Fabulous.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Did we mention that Robert Bloch wrote 'Psycho'? 'Cause he did. Write 'Psycho.' It's true. 'Psycho!'"
• "(Remember the author's Psycho)" - um, hey, reviewer from EQMM: the movie adaptation was an international sensation and made a generation of people think twice about getting in the shower. I'm pretty sure folks "remember."
• "Psycho!"

Page 123~

Then he walked in. Opportunity knocks, but Larry walked in. He knew where he was going.

Did I mention that Bloch is a pretty good writer?

~RP

Paperback 144: The Girl from Las Vegas (J.M. Flynn) / To Have and to Kill (Robert Martin) (Ace Double F-111)

Paperback 144: Ace Double F-111 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1961)

Title: The Girl from Las Vegas / To Have and To Kill
Author: J.M. Flynn / Robert Martin
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Q: What's the one thing that could upstage a half-naked, armed redhead reclining on your hotel room bed?
• A: Those pants

• This cover makes me feel funny ... I like that she's, uh, packing heat, but does she have to hold it like that. It's making me worried/confused. I think she's ordering me to kneel, but ... I'm scared to ask why.
  

• It's like Ann-Margaret killed "I Dream of Jeannie," stole her hair, and then ran off to Las Vegas to, I don't know ... let's say, join Clown College.

Best things about this cover:

• "Aaargh, Krull angry. Who paint words on Krull's back? Krull make someone pay for cleaning bill..."
• "Abridged" - HA ha. "Long story short, he married her, killed her, and then carried her half-shod corpse over the threshold. Cue the music, fade to black, roll credits."
• I should be keeping track of all the low-rent outfits that provide blurbs for my books. The Charleston News & Courier!? When did anyone ever take reading advice from South Carolina? (No offense, guys ... Go Gamecocks!)

Page 123~

He had shaved and changed into a light blue short-sleeved shirt and gray cord slacks. His attire surprised me a little, perhaps because I had subconsciously expected him to wear a dark mourning suit and somber tie. He still looked tired; eyes sunken, dark half moons beneath them. I leaned back in the chair and said, "Hi."

-from To Have and To Kill

~RP

Paperback 130: You Kill Me / John D. MacDonald (Popular Library - Eagle Books G507)

Paperback 130: Popular Library - Eagle Books G507 (2nd ptg??, 1961)
Title: You Kill Me
Author: John D. MacDonald
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• The former title - which tells you everything about the difference between selling hardbacks and paperbacks. "You Live Once" = subject intransitive verb adverb = "zzzzzzz," whereas "You Kill Me" = subject transitive verb object = entire lurid plot in three words = sales gold
• She has a wasp waist and is wearing vaguely waspish colors
• "I am crazy for the salsa dance!"
• She has that ambiguous look of reckless abandon / sadistic glee
• John O'Hara is straight-up awesome - many paperbacks by him in my collection, some we've already seen.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, not much. Another image retread.
• For once, the copy writers got it right: "a go-to-hell" look. Nice.

Page 123~

"I put my shoes on and stood by the car in the darkness. Soon I heard the sounds of his dying."

~RP

Paperback 107: Love in a Goldfish Bowl / Jack Sher (Cardinal C-409)

Paperback 107: Cardinal C-409 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Love in a Goldfish Bowl
Author: Jack Sher
Cover artist: one very confused photographer

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• The dog. By far, the dog. The dog is looking to us for help.
• This cover would actually be beautiful if you just replaced the photo with ... well, anything. Title font design is gorgeous.
  
• I know a Jack Sher. Hey, Jack, you wrote a book ... many years before you were born. Congratulations. [my friend's real name is Jack Shear, so this is funny only to me and possibly him]
  
• This photo = rejected Alpo campaign still #178
• What ... I ... just what the hell is supposed to be happening here? Why is she ... what is that ... what's in the ... why are they ...?
• "Gee, Blythe, where'd ya get the giant snail, and why are you keepin' him in a goldfish bowl on your belly out here on the beach?"
• This cover is the reason words like "camp," "queer," and "ambiguously gay duo" were invented.

Best things about this back cover:

• "SNAFuglugluglug..."
• SNAFU = Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. A most apt description of the front cover.
• How come nobody's named "Gordon" any more?
• The last two paragraphs are so ambiguous that they allow me to imagine that the people pictured end up addicted to heroin and turning tricks ... in Balboa.
• "It was the bending end" - that's what she said!

Page 123~

"Gordon, where are you going?" my foolish, fuzzy mother asked.

"I think I'll sleep on my boat," I said.

"You'll do nothing of the kind!" she said.

So there I was, stuck with Holloway for the night.

~RP

Paperback 64: Hill Girl / Charles Williams (Gold Medal s1138)

Paperback 64: Gold Medal s1138 (9th, 1961)
Title: Hill Girl
Author: Charles Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• Ponderosa pine!
• I didn't know creepy, hunched-over, wraith-like men could have such slick rockabilly haircuts.
• Is this woman:

a. doing hillbilly calisthenics?
b. looking for her hillbilly contact lens?
c. disappointed at her inability to make a sandcastle out of hillbilly dirt? OR
d. holding perfectly still in the hopes that the elderly zombie behind her will mistake her for a pig trough and walk on by?

This book is in near perfect condition. Tiniest crease on the back cover, but otherwise, unread and extremely well preserved (why else would I buy a 9th printing, for god's sake?). This novel is by a more- than- respectable writer, though it appears to be trying to bank on the strange vogue in hillbilly sex stories that Erskine Caldwell somehow set in motion. Caldwell's novels were about much more than sex, but you'd never know it by looking at most of his paperback covers (you'll see his work in future write-ups).


Best things about this back cover:

• I love how, out of nowhere, this guy's shirt attacks him.
• You gotta love a book that's so willing turn underwear-free poverty into something steamy.

RP

Paperback 62: Due or Die / Frank Kane (Dell First Edition B174)

Paperback 62: Dell First Edition B174 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Due or Die
Author: Frank Kane
Cover artist: Harry Bennett


Best things about this cover:

• It's got a lot going for it: redhead, cigarette, and alcohol all represented within about one square inch of the cover, plus fierce heels and a trench-coated dude looking on, wryly.
• I think she is a monster. Why can't we see her face? Why?
• Answer: she doesn't have one.
• Actually, I think her face is some kind of hologram projector, and Johnny Liddell standing in the doorway is the resulting image: "Help me, drunken redhead, you're my only hope."
• There is a Perma Books version of Hammett's The Glass Key that (if memory serves) looks Just like this cover. Frank Kane is no Dashiell Hammett, in case you're wondering.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Kill Joy" - good idea. You meant Joy Behar, right?
• I like Johnny Liddell's mug just peeping out of the wallet slot.
• I also really like the line about the fat man in the phone booth. Now that's good cover copy.

RP

Paperback 54: Nero / Frank Castle (Avon T-521)

Paperback 54: Avon T-521 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Nero
Author: Frank Castle
Cover artist: Uncredited (but possibly James Meese - see if you agree)


"Man, why does Nero get all the hot semi-naked chicks, while I gotta wear this silly pants-less uniform with 75-lb headgear? It's not fair. I'm telling mom."

Best things about this cover:

• Yet another example of the nipple-free female - the great unheralded malady of mid-20th-century America (and ancient Rome, I guess)
• Love the emperor's expression and pose: "That's right. I'm the emperor. Naked ladies love me, not you. Whaddya gonna do about it, Mr. Feather-headed No-Pants? Nothing. Peel me a grape, that's what you're gonna do."
• Spine reads: "A Historical by Frank Castle" - I love when I can comment on a book's spine. They really knew how to use the Whole Book back in the day...
• The cover is well and truly beautiful, actually. The colors, the composition ... I'm telling you, this cover isn't spectacular, but walk into any Barnes & Noble and check out the front table and you'll see how badly modern book design / cover art suffers by comparison. This painting is rich in color and detail. It's textured. It's fundamentally not cooked up in some advertising lab.
• Sword = drooping phallus = sad Centurion
• I don't require much of my novels ... as long as they are "throbbing."

RP

Paperback 38: Pyramid G-665

Paperback 38: Pyramid G-665 (PBO, 1961)

Title: The Ghoul Keepers
Editor: Leo Margulies
Cover artist: John Schoenherr

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• So red
• "I am the eye in the sky, / Looking at you -ou -ou, / I can read your mind..."
• What kind of title is The Ghoul Keepers? Is it supposed to be a pun on "Goal Keepers?" I hope there is at least one story in here about monsters who play soccer.
• There is nothing recognizable in this cover painting except the supremely miserable man (possibly bleeding from his eyeballs) who is about to impale himself on the spear-like branches.
• That man is clearly damned - he has been cursed with an obscenely long thumb on his right hand ... and an exoskeleton.
• "Seabury Quinn" is the most made-up-sounding name ever ever. Ever. Actually, it's just the "Seabury" part. Unless you are a racehorse, that is not an acceptable name.

This book is so beautiful. I wish you could see it in real life. Pristine. Unread. The kind of book collectors dream of. Several of the featured writers here are top-notch - the top three on the list, specifically. One of my students, whom I'll call Cindy Loo Hoo, is writing her Honors Thesis on short horror fiction. She will undoubtedly want to look at this book. But I am too neurotic a collector freak to let her actually read it.



Best things about this back cover:

• Here we see the man falling in the opposite direction. And in black-&-white. How interesting.
• I actually love the cheeky reference to "The Shadow" in the footnote.
• Answers to the quiz:

1. Mermen
2. Sasquatch
3. a vampire (trick question)
4. Caspar
5. that quiet guy next door
6. Betty & Veronica

RP