Paperback 991: The Silencers / Donald Hamilton (Gold Medal k1392)

Paperback 991: Gold Medal k1392 (2nd ptg, 1964)

Title: The Silencers
Author: Donald Hamilton
Cover art: Uncredited

Condition: 9/10 (unread)
Estimated value: $13-15

Best things about this cover:

• Is that a belt? It looks like Satan's own spatula. Either way, that's *gotta* hurt.
• What kind of space-age roller-coaster are these people fighting over?
• I love the effusion of motion lines. Makes a mockery of the very idea of motion lines. Way more lines than there could be motions. Bonkers.
• I'm guessing the lady is supposed to be bound, but it looks like she was just napping.

Best things about this back cover:

• "... a long day's journey into ..." The next word in that sentence should be MURDER, not the painfully anticlimactic "the New Mexico mountains."
• "God help us all"—man, I didn't realize official file cards got that emotive.
• "Jimmy Bond!" "Fop!" Take that ... Britain!

Page 123~

"Then somebody heaved a knife and everything went to hell."

Thanksgiving's a rough holiday for everyone.

~RP

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Paperback 952: The American Gun Mystery / Ellery Queen (Avon 523)

Paperback 952: Avon 523 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The American Gun Mystery
Author: Ellery Queen
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 8/10

Best things about this cover:

• So much emotion and drama in this one little tableau. It's really quite beautiful, even though I have no idea why a gorgeous blonde in an evening gown and opera gloves would be at the rodeo.
• It's lit like a religious painting. Caravaggio or Rubens or someone. She's bathed in light, praying, pleading ... I mean, this is probably some generic shlock, but the cover makes it look complex and compelling.
• Also ... sweet chaps.

Best things about this back cover:

• This is far less compelling. What is the shape of those blocks supposed to represent? I see the belt and gun and lock, but the puzzle(ish) pieces ... aren't convincing. As puzzle pieces. I'm no jigsaw aficionado, but that top piece, for instance, seems impossible.
• I don't like being invited to "solve" the puzzle, and I've never ever read a mystery with the idea that I was supposed to solve it. I realize that makes me slightly weird, as "mystery" fans / collectors go.
• "Deadly Puzzle" is still bothering me. Who associates rodeo with jigsaw puzzles? What's more, in what universe is a jigsaw puzzle scary? Ooooh, deadly puzzle! I'm shaking.

Page 123~

He gulped down two raw eggs, a steaming pannikin of coffee, an excited regurgitation of the preceding evening's events issuing from Djuna's chattering mouth, and then dashed downtown to Times Square.

PANNIKIN SKYWALKER is my new user name.

~RP

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Paperback 595: My Reminiscences as a Cowboy / Frank Harris (Paper Books / Boni nn)

Paperback 595: Paper Books / Boni Books (nn) (1st thus, 1930)

Title: My Reminiscences as a Cowboy
Author: Frank Harris
Cover artist: Rockwell Kent
Interior illustrations: William Gropper

Yours for: $12


Best things about this wrap-around cover:

• Elegant. I like how the rider seems to be asleep while the horse is mid-violent-leap.
• Are those wool chaps? They're ... puffy.
• Charles Boni's Paper Books were an early experiment in softcover books. This book was published nearly a decade before the first mass-market paperbacks (Pocketbooks) began appearing. For more on Paper Books, see this nice blog entry.

Here are a couple of Gropper's interior illustrations:

• Fantastic woodcut look to these. Loving the bandolier and crooked saloon doors in this one. Oh, and the epic 'stache.

• That's a hell of a left. I love the victim's agony-hand.

Page 123~

Locker sent him after the younger boy to round up as many Texans as possible but before they could be collected, a bunch of Greasers, twenty or so, in number, rode up and demanded the return of the cattle. 

Well, at least "Greasers" was capitalized. That's *kind* of respectful. P.S. commas in this passage appear exactly as they do in the book, improbable as that may seem.

~RP

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