Title: Bury Me Deep
Author: Harold Q. Masur
Cover artist: William Wirts
Yours for: $20
Best things about this cover:
- A quintessential keyhole cover (yes, it's a thing) — and an early one. Turns reader into an implied voyeur / peeping tom.
- 1948 (or thereabouts) seems to be a turning point in cover art — covers start to become more sensational, more sexual, more lurid ... If you click on "1947" or earlier in the tags for this site (sidebar), you'll see what I mean. Not sure why 1948 should be that year [the year of the first Kinsey Report!] ... but by the '50s, lurid and sensational will be the norm.
- I wish I could hear her undoubtedly learned disquisition on the merits of half-naked whisky-drinking.
- That underwear looks painted on, like she was drawn naked but then repurposed for this cover.
- Something about her face is off-kilter and strange, and her thumbless whisky-claw is mega-disturbing.
Best things about this back cover:
- Even the tagline is sensational. Sweet.
- "The lawyer in him" has the better cliché—hey, "inner man," who looks at a sexy woman in her underwear and thinks "gift horse!?"
- "Newest detective sensation," HA ha. How did that turn out, Scott Jordan?
Page 123~
Another shot exploded. I saw a spurt of flame from the muzzle spit luridly into the darkness beside a tree not fifty yards away. I arched my back, screamed like a frightened horse, threw out my arms and tumbled drunkenly to the ground.
Mmm, manly.
~RP
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