"Harling College!"

I'm on vacation, where I just received THIS book as a gift.


Discuss.

New posts when I return to NY.

~RP

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Paperback 140: Carnival of Death / Day Keene (MacFadden Books 50-239)

Paperback 140: MacFadden Books 50-239 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Carnival of Death
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "Shhhhh. Keep quiet, or it's curtains for you, pillow!"
• Title sounds like it belongs to a "Kojak" episode.
• My favorite Carnival of Death can be seen in "The Killing Joke"
• Yet another girl who prefers to pet her gun rather than hold it properly. Where is her thumb? Her finger is behind the trigger!
• This cover is like one of those perception-skewing pictures: depending on how you look at her, she is looking either at the pillow or toward the noise coming from the next room. If you stare at her long enough, you can actually make her eyes head in opposite directions.
• This cover turns sleazy into SLEE-ZAY'. Something about the photo just looks low-rent and tawdry. The roughly-handled book doesn't help (or helps a lot, depending on your affection for SLEE-ZAY')

Best things about this back cover:

• OK that balloon is flat-out awesome. I can't hate on that.
• Anywhere a clown is throwing things at you ... that's somewhere you don't want to be. Trust me.
• Sadly, "gay scene" meant something different in '65.

Page 123~

A moment later the light in the living room came on and, peering through one of the leaded glass panes in the front door, Daly could see a tall, attractive, bare-legged, black-haired girl wearing a baby doll nightdress trying to slip her arms into the sleeves of a matching negligee while she held a crying infant in one arm. It made a pleasant, homey picture.

O man, I was with you until the crying infant. Worst peeping tom letdown ever. The fact that the infant pleases this guy makes him far creepier than your average peeping tom, in my book. "That's it ... burp the baby ..."

~RP