Paperback 360: The Big Bust / Ed Lacy (Pyramid X-2037)

Paperback 360: Pyramid X-2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Big Bust
Author: Ed Lacy
Cover artist: F. Pfeifer

Yours for: SOLD! (10/8/10)


Best things about this cover:

• [Insert joke about connection between title and woman's rack here]
• For a woman who's tied up, gagged, and carrying a tiny drowning man in her stomach, she's awfully concerned about those guys behind her. Lady, you've got your own problems.
• I have reluctantly tagged this post with "Redhead" label, though honestly I don't know what you call that color.

Best things about this back cover:

• Geek observation #227: "Supercharged" is just "surcharged" with "P.E." inside it. . .
• So the woman is like good pancakes. Well, who wouldn't want to tail that?
• If the boardwalk is "bikini-filled," does that mean the ocean is filled with naked women (who, presumably, all left their bikinis on the boardwalk)? I hope so.
• One of these paragraphs should immediately be countered with "That's what she said!"

Page 123~

Walter awoke me at one-fifteen and watching for snakes, back of a crumpling wall, I changed into the woolen underwear and rubber suit, Rhoda's $60,000 bra doubling as a jock strap.

[Speechless]

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 57

Title: Fightin' Fool (Pocket 2316, 5th ptg, 1956)
Author: Max Brand
Cover artist: Tom Ryan

Yours for: $7

• "Fightin' Fool!" — well, title, you're at least half right.
• Before the Tiger Woods fist pump, there was this.
• You gotta love this guy's enthusiasm. He hasn't even managed to get out of the manacles, and yet he's still super-psyched: "That's right, I got guns ... plural!"

• Best tag line in a long, long time. Jingo! It's like Jenga and Yahtzee rolled into one, and yet dangerous close to a racial slur at the same time. Edgy! I only wish it read, "Nobody plays Jingo, sucker!"
• This back cover copy is a random excerpt and tell us nothing about the story. Except that Jingo is kind of shooty.
  
• The last simile doesn't really work, in that getting your fingers into a glove can be awkward and would likely involve way more time than your enemy would need to drop you. You also need two hands to do it (unlike drawing and firing a sidearm ... assuming westerns haven't been lying to me all these years). I think the writer was thinking of the idiom of something's "fitting like a glove," and then just ... went off track.

Page 123~

Wheeler Bent was silent. He stared at the girl with half-closed eyes, for suddenly it came over him that Jingo was as like this girl as though he had been born her twin.

First, why are the girl's eyes half-closed? Second, "Wheeler Bent" indicates that Max Brand was awesome with names, and that Jingo was no fluke. Third, everything after "Jingo" in that second sentence is a stylistic disaster. We could start with the redundancy of "born" (how else can you be somebody's twin?) but by the time the sentence gets there, it's already an ungainly mess.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 300: The Winds of Fear / Hodding Carter (Popular Library 300)

Paperback 300: Popular Library 300 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Winds of Fear
Author: Hodding Carter
Cover artist: Rudolph "Creamy Skin" Belarski

Yours for: $23


Best things about this cover:

• "The Winds of Fear hurt my ears."
• That is the rackiest rack I've seen in a while. Those boobs look oddly fake for 50s boobs. Braless boobs of that magnitude should not do what those are doing, i.e. remaining perfectly taut and nearly perfectly spherical, defying gravity, etc.
• Not enough people are named "Hodding" these days. Damn shame.
• I can't tell if the sheriff is assaulting the poor black man with his heat vision, or if the black man shoots fire out his ears when he gets real angry.
• I usually avoid things that are both angry and probing...
• Complete and utter (and eerie) coincidence that "Paperback 300" is actually numbered 300.

Best things about this back cover:

• "KICKED OPEN," I say.
• "Cancy!" The absurd name train just won't stop runnin'.
• "A scheming honkytonk girl" — now we're talking.
• "Decent people protested ..." Why do I have a feeling I won't find them "decent"?

Page 123~

Colored boys from Carvell City and from near Carvell City were complaining of mistreatment and humiliation, or boasting from overseas of another world where white girls and sort of white girls in England and North Africa looked favorably on soldiers with dark skin.

"Sort of white girls" is a new category to me.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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 240: The Sour Lemon Score / Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) (Gold Medal R2037)

Paperback 240: Gold Medal R2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Sour Lemon Score
Author: Richard Stark (pseud. of Donald Westlake)
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $39


Best things about this cover:

• I appear to have hit a super sweet pocket in my collection — an original Parker novel with a McGinnis bondage cover!? Wow... book's got some minor scuffing, but is otherwise in gorgeous, barely read condition.
• Is that look in her eyes fear? Or maybe the man with the gun is the good guy, and what she's really thinking is, "Uh ... little help, Captain Handsome-pose?"
• Actually, she's not tied up — she's a puppeteer who is operating her marionettes remotely via a (really) complicated system of pulleys and levers. You can tell she is backstage at an old theater, as she is clearly reclining on the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Best things about this back cover:

• Look, real blurbs from actual, marginally credible news sources!
• HA ha — love the "(back)" part of the second Boucher blurb. "Oh ... paperback ... I see. How modern."
• If you have never read Westlake, you could do worse than to start with the Parker novels. They were all recently reissued by Chicago Univ. Press (see here), and this summer, you can check out Darwyn Cooke's comic adaptation of the first Parker novel, "Hunter" (preview available here), a first edition of which is also in my paperback collection ... somewhere.
  
• See Man Booker-prize-winning author John Banville rhapsodize about the Parker novels here.

Page 123~

The thumb out there jabbed and jabbed at the bell. She couldn't ignore it, no matter what.

~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 167: The Private Life of Julius Caesar / William Marston (Universal Giant no. 6)

Paperback 167: Universal Giant no. 6 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The Private Life of Julius Caesar
Author: William Marston
Cover artist: George Geygan

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

OK, stop. Hammer time. This book was written by the creator of "Wonder Woman." I Am Not Kidding. And yet none of the booksellers at abebooks mention the connection between this book and "Wonder Woman." You'd think that fact would be one of the main selling points. As I looked at the book, I thought "William Marston" sounded familiar, and then I looked inside and saw the author's middle name (Moulton), which rang even more bells. Then I googled. Holy Krap. From Wikipedia:

Dr. William Moulton Marston (May 9, 1893 – May 2, 1947) was an American psychologist, feminist theorist, inventor, and comic book author who created the character Wonder Woman. Two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne, (who lived with the couple in a polyamorous relationship), served as exemplars for the character and greatly influenced her creation.^[1][2]

He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.

• "Polyamorous" pretty much describes this cover - I count five different sexual permutations on the front cover alone - and wait til you see the back cover (and the spine!)
• I love that a "feminist theorist" inspired this (awesome) cover. I guess she who reclines on the bed with the chalice of viscous mauve goo makes the rules. "OK, you kneel! Now you, you kneel more! Kneel wheel!"
• I love how the whipping scene is strategically placed for her (our) viewing pleasure.

Best things about this spine!!!!:

• I love how the kinkiest (albeit minutest) scene in the whole tableau is on the spine - no matter how it's shelved, You Will See Flesh.

Best things about this back cover:

• I know this is an odd thing to say, given the rampant nudity, but those are some well-drawn horses.
• "Your calves are so smooth..." "Oh, that's just the satyr urine. It works wonders. Here, let us pour some on your back..."
• Jeez, a crucifixion, too? It's like the painting's running out of ways to exploit the female form.

Page 123~

from a chapter titled, I swear to god, "Ladies' Night"

The pretty young neophyte walked straight to the golden gate, as she had been told to do, and gave her name and that of her sponsor to the door-slave who stood behind the golden bars.

And thus began the first recorded A.A. meeting.

P.S. "door-slave"?

~RP

Paperback 164: The Boomerang Clue / Agatha Christie (Dell D340)

Paperback 164: Dell D340 (1st ptg, 1960)
Title: The Boomerang Clue
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: William Teason

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Well, there's something you don't normally associate with Agatha Christie: BONDAGE.
• I love love love how her arms coupled with the back of the chair form a (very ironic) valentine! The red background only heightens the effect. Don't even get me started on how she kinda looks like a Catholic school girl who is at least mildly ashamed of the predicament she has gotten herself into... Or is that a look not of shame, or fear, but of coyness? Clearly, I have my own, private version of the story of how she came to be in that chair.
  
• Most of my Teason covers (lots of late 50s/60s Dells) don't have people on them. Clearly he should have done more people. The hands alone are gorgeous.

Best things about this cover:

• More broken windows!
• Random rope - did she escape!?
• I love how the copy on the back cover is typeset as if it were a poem

Page 123~

"To begin with," said Bobby, plunging [ed.: !?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!], "I'm not really a chauffeur although I do work in a garage in London. And my name isn't Hawkins - it's Jones - Bobby Jones. I come from Marchbolt in Wales."

The story of a golfing legend gone deep, deep undercover.

~RP

Paperback 90: The Hot Diary (Howard J. Olmsted) / Ring Around a Rogue (J. M. Flynn) (Ace Double D-459)

Paperback 90: Ace Double D-459 (PBO 1960 / PBO 1960)

Title: The Hot Diary / Ring Around a Rogue
Author: Howard J. Olmsted / J.M. Flynn
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited

Yours for: SOLD (early May 2008)


Best things about this cover:

• Don't make Robert Stack angry. You wouldn't like Robert Stack when he's angry
• This cover is great - quintessential hard-boiled with a mod style (again, love pink in my hard-boiled covers). They are both dressed impeccably. Her dress is fierce (love the black accents, especially the band and bow toward the hemline), and he carries off a trench-coat way better than most dopey goons.
• Does this count as "bondage?" I'm counting it. I imagine that her hands are tied. That, or she lost her right arm in the war or a freak fishing accident.
• "Never Write About Murder" - uh ... you just did.

PAGE 23~

I wouldn't have minded if she'd slapped me or swore at me. But her calm, unmoved acceptance of the kiss frosted me. It hit me where I lived, in my pride.

Best things about this cover:

• These two covers make a nice pair: "Things To Do With a Girl When You're Armed": "You can grab her like this ... or kiss her like this ... it's up to you."
• Here's a sexless sex scene if I've ever seen one. He looks ... wooden. "Let's see, I put my gun ... here, and my left hand reaches around like ... so. OK. What do I do with my lips again?" Etc.
• The painting here does nothing to up the eros. The paint looks hastily daubed on. She has that horrid bottle-blond rubbery head look (see the "Finger Man" cover), and rarely have I been so unmoved by so much female skin.
• "A Car, A Girl and A Gun" - or "Copywriter Gives Up, Decides Life's Meaningless" - that's him there, plummeting over that cliff in the car.

PAGE 123~

Deal grabbed him by the shirt front, yanked him from the sofa, and backhanded the expressionless face. Blood trickled from the corner of the flat lips but Chiong did not cry out.

~RP

Paperback 89: Bloodline for Murder (Emmett McDowell) / In at the Kill (Emmett McDowell) (Ace Double D-445)

Paperback 89: Ace Double D-445 (PBO, 1960 / PBO, 1960)

Titles: Bloodline to Murder / In at the Kill
Authors: Emmett McDowell / Emmett McDowell [who!?]
Cover artists: uncredited / uncredited :(

Yours for: SOLD 5/22/08


Best thing about this cover:

• I am in love with this woman. Absolutely, stone cold in love. Never mind that I can't see her face - I would run away with this woman. Anyone who can pull off the combination of that dress with those shoes, who has gams like that, wears thigh-highs, and packs heat. Oh ... yeah. I hope she plugs that trench-coated ghoul in the doorway and hits the road with me (note to wife: I'm mostly kidding)
• This book has been man-handled, but the great thing about vintage paperbacks is that manhandling often adds to the coolness of their look. The diagonal creases on this cover somehow work seamlessly into the whole overall design, which is already pretty angular - directing attention to the west and south west of the cover, where the action is.
• "An Axe For The Family Tree" - I have got to start collecting tag lines, writing them down, and ranking them according to all-time greatness. This one is good, not great - to be great, she would have to be hiding an axe in her hosiery.
• I like that she is painted in a completely different, more detailed/naturalistic style than anything else on the cover. Dude in the background looks like he's in an early 80s, Tron-esque video game.

PAGE 123~

Helm put down his bottle of beer. He was no longer smiling and his face was a shade redder.
"Knox, how would you like to get thrown in jail?"
"I hope that's a rhetorical question," said Jonathan.
"Rhetorical, hell! This is murder..."

Best things about this back cover:

• It's a front cover!
• I believe that this woman is a. blind (where is she looking?), b. wearing a wig, c. about to break into song, and d. tied up in the most ornate and inefficient way I've ever seen.
• I love our shooter - paranoid and shooting at imaginary enemies.
• This cover looks like experimental theater. Really, really bad experimental theater. Possibly about lesbians (No? OK, you tell me what that giant pink/lavender "L" is doing there?).
• I Love girly colors on my hard-boiled crime novels. God bless the boldness and unconventionality of mid-century cover art designers.
• Her shoes match the giant "L" and font color
• "Anyone for Murder?" - HA ha. How in the world does tennis terminology relate here? Furthermore, WTF is this?

PAGE 123~

Sorry, this book ends on page 108 (!?!?!). Well ... OK, here's PAGE 23~

"Could I see your credentials?"
"Of course," said Jonathan, and he took out his wallet and showed him a ten dollar bill.

-RP