Paperback 341: Crooked House / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 753)

Paperback 341: Pocket Books 753 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Crooked House
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: Paul Kresse

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

Best things about this cover:

• Extreme Close-Up!
• The needle—beautifully rendered, with fantastic detail. Has an apparent weightiness and heft, a solidity, that makes it really stand out. The indentation of needle on skin is a wicked little touch. Nice.
• The talons—nothing accentuates a hypo cover like sexy/sinister blood red nails.
• I guess "Crooked House" is a more mass-market-friendly title than "Granddad's Heroin Addiction"

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, there's one "Who?" for each of the listed suspects, but somehow piling them up in a line there at the end diminishes their rhetorical effect / makes the imagined narrator sound like a psychotic owl.
• Someone named her child "Clemency?" "And this is my brother, Parole, and my sister, NoloContendere."
• Most enigmatic description I've seen in a while: "Death meant something special to weak-looking Laurence." With that kind of set-up, Laurence better be a carrion-devouring zombie or I'm going to be Very disappointed.

Page 123~

"My dear Sophia, do you really think an old gentleman of over eighty is the best judge of a child's welfare?"

Judging by the cover, grampa's got bigger problems than being 80.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Books 8-11

A Mess of March ... I'm moving all the NGAIO MARSH titles to the front of the queue (literally, Roger Daltrey sang the word "queue" as I typed it just now ... freaky coincidence) because one of my readers seems to have a thing for her :)

Book 8: Singing in the Shrouds (Berkley, 1960)
Cover artist: photo?

• A book that takes on the collapsing telecommunications system, apparently
• Her miniskirt has its own miniarm.

• Finally, someone has tamed the wild, native, animalistic mystery novel and made it "civilized literature." Where's my houseboy with the tea!?

Book 9: Death of a Peer (Pocket 475, 1947)
Cover artist: Aargh, uncredited

• This lady's got Fear Hand (TM). In fact, she appears to have a double case of it.
• Ouch. Skeleton key to the eye. That's gotta hurt.

• Well if it's WEALTHY, of course we care...

Book 10: Death of a Fool (Avon T-254, late '50s)
Cover artist: Uncredited

• Fear Hand! (TM)
• Jenny recoils in horror as she sees that her gardener has failed to blow all the leaves off her front lawn. And squirrels on her bird-feeders!? Oh, the humanity.

• Inspector Alleyn arrives to cut through the heathen nonsense of the simple souls. Civilization! God save the Queen, wot!

Book 11: Swing, Brother, Swing (Pocket 762, 1951)
Cover artist: Lew Keller

• "Swing, Brother, Swing ... for Hepcats only, man!"
• Secret ingredient to all good mystery cover copy — just add "... with DEATH!"

• I'm sorry, I started laughing at "accordion" and haven't stopped yet

~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 147: Shock Treatment / Wright Williams (Beacon Books 143)

Paperback 147: Beacon Books 143 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Shock Treatment
Author: Wright Williams
Cover artist: Peeping Tom

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• I love how she looks - not terrified, but exasperated: "You again!?"
• Wait - I thought she was in her bathroom and the peeping tom was opening the window shade, but it seems just as likely she's in a hospital with mobile curtain dividers, in which case a. whose arm is that?, b. what's it yanking on?, and c. what is that red cloth? What am I looking at!?
• "AT LAST..." - HA ha. I was just asking myself, "Why is there no book that explores the borderland between love and perversity?" Now, at last, that void is filled.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Sure, big Eric was crazy. Crazy about women! And who can blame him? Am I right, guys!? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about ... [amused chuckles from drunk comedy club crowd] ... ah, chicks."
  
• Whimsical drawings of cruel medical experimentation. "It'll cure your pervertedness, but ... you're gonna experience some rubber-arm, I'm not gonna lie."
• Maybe those arms are supposed to represent the gyrations of patients at the "hospital dance" (!?)
• "Not since Snake Pit ..." - I can't stop laughing long enough to comment on that line
• "Frankly!"
• "Passion-wracked!"

Page 123~

Instead of thinking of Katrine as a lovely, attractive girl who had bravely come out of a harrowing experience, I was drawing mental pictures of her in bed with a man married to someone else. It was rotten of me, and I almost welcomed the self-loathing that I began to feel.

Well, we've all been there, right?

~RP