Paperback 261: The Couch / Robert Bloch (Gold Medal s1192)

Paperback 261: Gold Medal s1192 (PBO, 1962)

Title: The Couch
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: movie still

Yours for: $18


Best things about this cover:

• He wanted to confess, but she wouldn't shut up about the mole between his eyebrows, so he opted to kill instead.
• Agent: "Well, kid, the good news is, you're on the cover of the paperback tie-in. The bad news is, there's a lady's hand where your face should be. But hey, your hair looks terrific."
• Robert Bloch wrote "Psycho," but by now you know that.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mmm, more stiff lying. What's the opposite of "chemistry?"
• This is the story of a copywriter who hated paragraphs longer than once sentence.
• Seriously, he hated them.
• The only name I recognize here (besides Bloch's) is Blake Edwards. He directed the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies. He is married to Julie Andrews. Also, he was born William Blake Crump! That makes Owen Crump here his ... I'm gonna guess brother ... nope. He's way older than Edwards. Why won't any site tell me how they're related. Not even imdb. Am I really supposed to believe they're not related, with a name like "Crump?" Come on.

Page 123~

"And that's the real reason you wanted to kill me. Because in your mind, I took the place of your father."

Bloch was sure into this "kill your parents" stuff.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 229: Demented / Donald Jorden Young (Gold Star Books IL7-19)

Paperback 229: Gold Star Books IL7-19 (PBO, 1964)

Title: Demented
Author: Donald Jorden Young
Cover artist: uncredited (though I credited it to "Robert Maguire" for some reason - looks at least as much like the work of Mitchell Hooks)

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• Instant Klassic - unread, near-perfect condition ... vibrant colors ... a stripping nurse (!?) ... a fifth-rate publishing house ... a text-book example of the Floating Head motif ... absolutely gorgeous, in all its sleazy marginality
• "My prescription: take two of ... these."
• "Anthony Perkins is ... Frankenstein's monster in ... 'Demented!'"
• I like that the blurb features all three people depicted on the cover: "nurse," "ex-GI" with "war-born neurosis," and "weak professor," who frankly looks quite hale and handsome, if a bit disturbed by the hovering, giant head of Captain Mind Control...

Best things about this back cover:

• This is basically a tepid, watered down version of the plot to "The Stars, My Destination" by Alfred Bester.
• Love the random extra space between "perverted" and "lusts." It's like the copywriter tried many different versions of the final word and forgot to adjust the spacing when he'd finally decided on the winner. "Ah, 'lusts' ... le mot juste!"
• As for the nurse ... Check her out here, in a primmer, more demure moment...

Page 123 ... is too boring, so here's something from the teaser page that opens the book:

Encouraged, he put an arm completely around her, so that one hand rested on her right breast. Encountering no objection he slid his hand into her blouse, which was low-cut with a natural inviting slit [?]. Feeling no bra against his hand, he was exhilarated holding her breast, so smooth and full, if a bit cool [!!?].

~RP

Paperback 214: Black Mail / Did She Fall Or Was She Pushed? - Doris Miles Disney (Ace G-506)

Paperback 214: Ace G-506 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, 1963)

Title: Black Mail / Did She Fall Or Was She Pushed?
Author: Doris Miles Disney
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• I believe the mail now prefers to be called "Negro"
• Sexy librarian look is basically ruined by the straitjacket
• "I got rejected from Haverford?! But that was my safety school! Noooo!"
• Awesome psionic powers - that horn-rimmed lady is packing the double whammy: Swirling Disorientation Vortex and Orange Implaing Lance of Death
• "Authentic background," HA ha. "The sky and fields look so real..."

Best things about this cover:

• That guy wins the award for Most Oddly Proportioned Detective. His feet are gigantic. And hazy.
• Experimental art - sometimes good, sometimes bad. Here ... thumbs down. No action? Is it cold or just desolate? What in the hell is on her head? Her vacant look does nothing for me. I'll take the freaked-out letter reader and even the freaky four-eyes on the flip side of this book over this lavender-hooded nobody.
• That title is laughably bad. The whole book should be just one word long: "Pushed."

Page 123~

Monday had figured so consistently in the pattern that this was the day on which he expected the watch to bear fruit.

That is, by far, the most exciting sentence on the page. Reading her prose is like watching paint dry. Beige paint.

~RP

P.S. where are my snarky, enthusiastic commenters? I've actually lost two "Followers" in the past week? Boo hoo. I know I have been *slightly* behind on my postings, but come on - help me out here a little. Give me a push. A little momentum. Somethin'. Thx.

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