Title: Terror in the Sun
Author: Richard Glendinning
Cover artist: Barye Phillips
Yours for: $15
Best things about this cover:
- Sexy swamp ninja.
- It's a weird cover—eerily still. Not tarted up. Not violent. Works by suggesting the threat of approaching menace. I admire her locks and curves, but the focal point of this painting is clearly her eyes. The sideways/backwards glance. Like someone's following her. Cool.
- Realistically, she's about three seconds from being blindsided and devoured by a crocodile.
Best things about this back cover:
- Leaving aside the nonsensical quality of the simile (original sin just *is*—it doesn't "sweep"), I love that first sentence. And the second. And the last.
- Having read this back cover, I know almost nothing about this novel, but this kind of skeletal, sparse, overdramatic cover copy is far more likely to hook me than a clear or thorough description of the plot might. I don't wanna know what happens. I wanna know what it's gonna *feel* like to read this thing.
Page 123~
"Oh, I'm tough enough, Johnny boy. I have to be hard because I want things the soft can't have. I know the way I've got to go to get them, and I won't mind squaring a few accounts along the way."
Wow. That is pure hard-boiled poetry. Quintessential tough dame talk. I think I love you, Swamp Girl.
~RP
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