Paperback 353: Blue City / Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald) (Dell 363)

Paperback 353: Dell 363 (1st, 1947)

Title: Blue City
Author: Kenneth Millar
Cover artist: Uncredited (a shame)

Yours for: $23


Best things about this cover:

• I'm not sure there is a cover out there that better expresses the idea of "noir." The grimy fatalism of the urban jungle perfectly expressed by that pollution/hand working all the lowlifes like marionettes. That woman's right boob is freaking me out a little, and the gangster's proportions are all wrong, but all the classic vices are on display, and that hand is going to give me nightmares. The skin on the knuckles, my god ...

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• Whoever designed that city Really liked right angles.
• Nice detail on the buildings [/sarcasm]
• This book is in a plastic slipcase. I would have taken it out, but I feared I might harm the book in doing so, so parts of the back remain obscured somewhat by the thick plastic strip down the middle. And the ID tag.

Page 123~

"You won't sing," Kerch said, "if what we do to you shuts you up for good. Come along, Floraine. You'll need a coat."

"You'll need a coat" makes me laugh. Cold-blooded hitman worries you might get chilly.

~RP

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Paperback 335: Deep Throat / D.M. Perkins (Dell 1857)

Paperback 335: Dell 1857 (PBO, 1973)

Title: Deep Throat
Author: D.M. Perkins
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: SOLD (7/19/10)


Best things about this cover:

• The font—the style, and the pink
• Hey, this book is right: I never did get the chance to see the movie. Then again, I was 3 when it came out.
• Wish there were more art on the cover. I kind of dig the 70s-era cartooning style in evidence here.
• This book is in amazing condition. A little scuffing here and there, but essentially square, w/ blue edges. Hardly appears to have been read at all.
  

Best things about this back cover:

• Her capital-P Problem is that her clitoris is in her throat, and her capital-S Solution is ... the title of the book. Oh, and also, SPOILER ALERT!

Page 123:

So here I am, she thought, ass up on a tall pole, waiting for two Tarzans to swing to me so that I can give them head.

~RP

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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 324: Keep Cool, Mr. Jones / Timothy Fuller (Dell 594)

Paperback 324: Dell 594 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Keep Cool, Mr. Jones
Author: Timothy Fuller
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• If the ridiculously low-cut blouse didn't get you looking at her boobs, the gun is there to point you in the right direction.
• "Get me a brisket, Mr. Jones."
• "What? We like to be surrounded by cold slabs of meat when we do it. Don't judge us."
• She has an interesting variation on Fear Hand™—like she's timidly waving at the gun-wielder ("uh ... hi honey") or about to sling her web à la Spidey.
• Jupiter Jones ... and ... January Jones ... in ... 'We Meat Again'!

Best things about this back cover:

• "For design inspiration, we're going to give you a hard-boiled egg and two dominoes."
• You'd expect the final tagline to be some kind of outrageous pun or exciting teaser, not a *literal description of what you can see on the cover.*

Page 123~

Bateman put a telephone on the bar. When Jupiter walked up to it Joe nodded quickly at Maney and whispered, "Drunk and ugly. Watch it." And then, normally, "All the comforts of home."

~RP

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Paperback 319: Seven Days Before Dying / Helen Nielsen (Dell 971)

Paperback 319: Dell 971 (1st ptg, 1958)

Title: Seven Days Before Dying
Author: Helen Nielsen
Cover artist: R. Del Rossi

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• The amazing detail on the shoes and socks. I would have thought this one of the more boring crime fiction covers, but I looked at the shoes and socks for a while and they're lovingly rendered, and kind of mesmerizing.
• That lady is either chasing a very clumsy thief or drunkenly stumbling through a public park, chucking her jewelry at schoolchildren for amusement.

Best things about this back cover:

• There's some blue splatters on it ... for some reason.
• You know a novel means business when it breaks out the Courier font.

Page 123~

Stu leaned forward and extended his right hand in a greeting that was never acknowledged, whereupon the blonde toppled forward into her drink again. By this time, she was beyond caring anyway, so Stu let her stay there.

Did I mention that Helen Nielsen's a pretty good writer. 'Cause she is.

~RP

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Paperback 318: A New Kind of Love / Henry Williams (Dell 6329)

Paperback 318: Dell 6329 (PBO, 1963)

Title: A New Kind of Love
Author: Henry Williams
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• This photo does not say "sizzling." It says "awkward last kiss before I plummet to my death."
• If you invert the book, Woodward's position makes sense. That is also the only way Newman's pose makes sense. Which raises the question — why is it upside-down? I'm sure it's a metaphor, but I can't see how making them look like acrobats/monkeys helped move any more books.
• Nice gams.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Samantha soon realized that something was missing. Like, for instance, a man." — sounds like "The Old Kind of Love" to me.
• If she was a career girl, then she was already a "new woman." She's Becoming Eye Candy, which I'm all for, but it's not new.
• Sadly, the photos are not, as advertised, "provocative." Although this one ... has potential. She looks like something out of a gay space-age western:

Page 123~

"Isn't it charming?" Felicienne said. "It's so large, it's gone beyond bad taste and come out on the other side, chic, elegant, bizarre."

You'll be happy to know she's talking about a diamond.

~RP

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Paperback 316: The Man Who Disappeared / Edgar Bohle (Dell 1013)

Paperback 316: Dell 1013 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Man Who Disappeared
Author: Edgar Bohle
Cover artist: Bill Rose

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Did someone throw a bocce ball through her window, 'cause I'm not buying that as a bullet hole. It's massive.
• Not thrilled with how they've cropped her. What the hell is she doing? Dancing? Hanging laundry? How am I supposed to feel the, you know, suspense, when she looks like she's putting away groceries?
• The Man Who Alternated Font Color

Best things about this back cover:

• This better end with Dick and Steve getting married.
• I'm pretty sure the guy in the silhouette just snapped his left ankle. It hurts even to look at it.

Page 123~

"Miss Halsey and I are going out to get her gas tank filled," Rupple said to him.

Nice euphemism from the improbably named "Rupple!"

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 52

Title: The Swimming Pool
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Carl Bobertz

Yours for: $6

• Uh ... I don't think she's "swimming."
• Ross Macdonald had a novel called "The Drowning Pool" ... You should take titling lessons from him, Mary.
• "... as the rare yellow octopus sucked the last ounce of life from Judith's brain."

• Just one question: if she is safe "in the solitude of a padlocked bedroom," then how could "her private terror" spread "to all around her?" No One Is Around Her.

Page 123~

Only three of us went to the inquest the next day, Phil, Bill, and myself. For Judith was sick. She had worked herself into a fever, I suppose because she always hated the idea of death.

"I suppose." Well, thanks for the not-at-all medieval diagnosis, doc.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 51

Title: The Yellow Room (Dell D179, 1st thus, 1956)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: "Cover design by Push-Pin Studios"

Yours for: $6

• Who runs like that? She looks like she is either shouting "O lawdy lawdy" or preparing to throw a boomerang
• The world's only nonuplets furiously clean the walls of the "Hollywood Squares" set
• This book should have been called "Nine Yellow Rooms Which Are Actually Mostly Orange"

• I haven't laughed this hard at the tag line on a book's back cover in some time.
• After reading this back cover, it appears the tag line *should* have read "A Smell of Rancid Flesh"
• OK, at "... and something else," we know it's a dead body. I was holding out hope that the last word on the cover would be something like "squirrel," "gnome," or "Smurf," but no...

Page 123~

She protested almost wildly, but he did not listen.

What the hell does "almost wildly" look like? What am I supposed to be picturing, Mary? Ugh. Thank god there's just one more MRR book to go. Her writing is unbearable, even in tiny pieces.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 49

Title: The Frightened Wife (Dell D154, 1st ptg, 1955)
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: William Rose

Yours for: $6

• Little known fact: when frightened, wives produce mysterious jagged white auras.
• I think she's rather beautiful. I especially love her hair, even if it is that weird, champagne-pink color that could only come from a bottle. A bottle from the '50s.

• I get that she was kind of a big deal, but "acknowledged first lady of American fiction?" That's pushing it. Unless this "fact" was simply "acknowledged" by some drunk guy at a Dell Publishing New Year's Eve party.

Page 123~

The detective slid the bottle into his pocket and changed the subject abruptly.

Now that's a sentence.

~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 38

Title: Postmark Murder (Dell 955, 1st ptg, 1957)
Author: Mignon G. Eberhart
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $5

• Bigfoot finds draft of wife's letter to mystery man named "Conrad." Clad in his best suit and class ring, he sets out for revenge.

• Somebody forgot to adjust-left
• This is about the worst front/back cover work I've seen in one of my books. I know nothing about the book and have no desire to read it.

Page 123~

"Oh," Mrs. Grelly gasped. "Oh—" A fleshy, ringed hand came out from the enveloping folds of her coat. She clutched the policeman's arm and went away unsteadily. Lieutenant Peabody came back to Laura.

I assume the hand was her own. It's hard to tell.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 37

Title: Wolf in Man's Clothing (Dell 136 — 1st ptg, 1947)
Author: Mignon G. Eberhart
Cover artist: [Gerald Gregg]

Yours for: $20

• So ... it's about a nurse with giant bloody hands who sticks needles in her head. Interesting.
• Where the wolf?
• Love love love the little Dell mystery eye-in-the-keyhole logo.

• This book's got a hypo cover, with all its original permagloss, *and* it's a mapback? Book sale jackpot!
• "You know what my favorite part of the book was? ... Fork."
• "Balifold" must be either a castle that has sunk into the earth or ... a minaret construction plant.

Page 123~

I put my finger on it and he looked at it, his face as inexpressive as a Red Indian's.

~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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57 books from the University Book Sale: Book 2

Title: Episode of the Wandering Knife
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Cover artist: Rafael de Soto

Yours for: best offer

• Cover copy as internal monologue! Never seen that before.
• So you're hiding the knife in the fishpool ... you know water is transparent, right?
• Jane continued to wage her secret, one-woman battle against kitschy statuary...

• Should I feel bad / worried that I can't interpret this map? "His Breakfast" (!?!?) is out back on the lawn? In some pink Phantom Zone? And "The Secret" is ... maybe under the hedge? In the downspout of the gutters? Meanwhile, "The Knife" wanders lazily up the road ...
• "Experience the thrills and chills and the infamous horrors that await you at ... Larry's House!?"

Page 123~

"Maud," said young Townsend succinctly, "is a cheap Chicago tart. He had no business bringing her here."

Mmmm, cheap Chicago tart ...

~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 237: Call for Michael Shayne / Brett Halliday (Dell D269)

Paperback 237: Dell D269 (1st thus, 1959)

Title: Call for Michael Shayne
Author: Brett Halliday
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "I'm holding for Mike Shayne, so you can just wait your damned turn for the phone. Here, stare at the side of my left boob while you wait."
• One of the oddest cover poses I've seen for a McGinnis girl — casual gun play + casual, inexplicable semi-nudity. Yet the net effect is still smoking hot.
• For my birthday, I would really love it if one of you could PhotoShop this baby and make it say "Call For Michael Sharp" (my "real" name)
• I love the floating head of Mike Shayne. Quintessential tough dick.

Best things about this back cover:

• The fact that I have left the store's ID tag tucked into the back cover all these years. I love when stores are fastidious about labeling their shit.
• "The night of June 8" is tomorrow, fyi.
• We didn't need the first set of parentheses, let alone the second. What, are you whipsering?

Page 123~

Knowing Masters's reputation as a domineering bully, it seemed reasonable to expect his secretary to be a weak-kneed yes-man, a sycophant.

~RP

P.S. just hours after I posted this write-up, reader "Tulse" gave me this:


I should ask for stuff more often. Now I want it on a T-shirt. You're the best, Tulse. I'm truly grateful.

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 211: Bedrooms Have Windows / A. A. Fair (Dell 603)

Paperback 211: Dell 603 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Bedrooms Have Windows
Author: A. A. Fair (pen name of Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Mike Ludlow

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Bedrooms Have Windows" - they sure do. And Blondes Have Mirrors and Peeping Toms Have Trenchcoats.
• That is the see-throughiest blouse I've ever seen anywhere.
• I've always loved that Dell keyhole eye logo.
• I also love the yellow cloth on her ... what do you call that piece of furniture? A vanity!
• Black bra = trouble. I saw "Psycho." I know.

Best things about this back cover:

• Arrows, Ha ha
• "They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alike ..."
• Boy, they sure know how to make an author look exciting.
• "Pocket-edition Venus" - that's hot.
• Lam and Cool mysteries are great, and ESG wrote them all (I think) under the A.A. Fair name. Lam and Cool are the Jack Sprat + wife of mystery stories (only they aren't married).

Page 123~

The taffy-haired blonde who was standing in front of the mirror, surveying her partially clothed figure with quite evident approval, was the girl who had picked me up the night before as her escort, and had taken me to the motor court.

~RP

Paperback 209: The Opening Door / Helen Reilly (Dell 917)

Paperback 209: Dell 917 (1st ptg, 1956)
Title: The Opening Door
Author: Helen Reilly
Cover artist: Victor Kalin

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• Given how it's cut and hung, I'm surprised the door opens at all
• That lady makes for a very nice-looking corpse. Normally, I go for women who are more than 3 ft. tall, but in her case, I'll make an exception.
• I change my vote. The expression on her face says not "dead" but "drunk and happy about it."

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa. What the ... see, I almost like this. Dramatic meltdown, in slo-motion. That, or she's doing her best Elvis/James Brown song-ending pose. The one big difference: I think both those guys had more than three fingers on their right hands.
• "Taint of murder" - oh, man, that's the worst kind of taint
• "The Knob Is Turning" - a. that should have been the title of this book, b. that's what she said.

Page 123~

Gerald was talking to Cicely Thwaight near a clump of palms. How he had - dwindled, Eve thought dispassionately.

But Thwaight! There's more!

~RP