Paperback 885: The Scarab Murder Case / S.S. Van Dine (Graphic 89)

Paperback 885: Graphic 89 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: The Scarab Murder Case
Author: S.S. Van Dine
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• I seem to have entered the "Mystery Hands With Daggers" portion of my collection (?!).
• "Uh, no thanks, I gave up stabbing. For Lent."
• "Thanks, but my letters have all been opened. My nightgown, on the other hand ..."
• If you wanna deflate her heaving bosom, you're gonna need more than a dagger, big boy.
• I can't tell what tore a hole in the cover—the dagger, her smoky gaze, or her potent thoracic thrust.

Best things about this back cover:

• Hmm, a tiki etui radio. Cool.
• "Penetrates twisted passions"—there's no way the book lives up to the image in my head.
• I've never been less convinced of something's best-ness.

Page 123~

"Why not try to cerebrate occasionally?"

Sadly, not a typo.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 480: The Indiscreet Confessions of a Nice Girl / Anonymous (Lion 30)

Paperback 480: Lion Books 30 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Indiscreet Confessions of a Nice Girl
Author: Anonymous
Cover artist: Michel

Yours for: $18



Best things about this cover:

• Please note the lamp. Please please note the lamp. It's bachelor-padtastic!
• She is getting her cigarette lit by the world's tiniest man, who happens to be hanging from the ceiling.
• Her dress is weird. It looks like her boobs have eyebrows.
• She's kicked off a shoe, so you know she's good to go.
• Either that entire room is on a slant or we are looking at her through a very weird tire swing.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Hand"writing!
  Everyone's attractive in black, lady. Get over yourself. 
• "—but I will come to that later." I love how she is titillating her Future Self. (assuming this is really a diary)
• "Oh Harold! Harold! Bring me up to date, Harold!"
  "... unless you read other people's diaries ... in which case, this will probably be pretty disappointing. Seriously, you should just put this book down and go back to being a snooping perv. You'll be happier."

Page 123~

I decided to put on my tea gown before Arthur arrived. It was really a negligee, only more so. You wear a negligee when you want to be modest and a tea gown when you don't. Cecil's tea gowns are very immodest. She practically guarantees one shoulder to fall off during the second cocktail and the other to fall during the fourth. Of course she can't do any better than that because no girl should take more than four cocktails and if she does she will throw the whole gown over a chair anyway.

I love how she's drunk and wild enough to just chuck off her gown, but tidy enough to make sure that it's neatly hung up on a chair. Also, though I'm pretty sure Cecil is a girl, I like to pretend that he is not.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 435: Pushover / Orrie Hitt (Beacon Books 139)

Paperback 435: Beacon Books 139 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Pushover
Author: Orrie Hitt
Cover artist: George Geygan

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• So is Easy Pickin the name of the guy mashing the blow-up doll with his face? Because that apostrophe-S is confusing me.
• Giant Keyhole!
• Can you really call her a "pushover" if tied her hands behind her back to force compliance?
• I'm guessing the tops of heads are really hard to draw because that guy's ... let's call it "hair" ... is a mess.
• I would call this "Great Girl Art" if she didn't look like a corpse from the neck up.

Best things about this back cover:

• I honest-to-god laughed when I first looked at this. "FELL, I say! FELLLLLLLLL!"
• Love how the final word stands out so strongly because a. it's in all-caps b. it's the only word set completely against a white background, and c. it's right on her tits—the tits of the girl who has apparently (happily) been Pushed Over. They even used three long dashes to make sure it showed up on her torso! Design work: A+.
• "Sweet Sucker Game" = a long-forgotten blaxploitation film.

Page 123~

"Peoples," he greeted us, waving at nobody in particular. He got out of his chair, stumbled over a rug and almost fell down. "Have a drink! Have a damn drink, why doncha?"

I'm considering making "Have a drink! Have a damn drink, why doncha?" the next tagline for the header of this blog. That's good dialogue! Damn good!

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 434: Doctor Prescott's Secret / Peggy Gaddis (Beacon B302)

Paperback 434: Beacon Books B302 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: Dr. Prescott's Secret
Author: Peggy Gaddis
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "A Novel That Had To Be Written ... seriously, Ms. Gaddis was contractually obligated to produce a third novel for us, and this is it."
• "Doctor Prescott's Secret" sounds like some kind of olde-timey elixir, or some product used in baking. A leavening agent, maybe. "Doctor Prescott's Secret: For All Your Vegan Baking Needs!
• One thing you need to know about the 50s and 60s is that keyholes were gigantic and ladies were often naked.

Best things about this back cover:

• "This isn't hard enough to read yet. Let's make the font tiny, faint, and ... ooh, I know, italicized. That'll be effective!"
• By "a racket which had become one of the most obnoxious social evils of our times," I assume they mean "Girl Scouts" (kidding!)
• Cancers grow. I don't think they "grow up." If your cancer gets surly, gets a drivers license, and eventually moves out of the house, consider yourself lucky.

Page 123~

But just the same, it had steel claws that tore at her until she was weak with the need for Nick's body possessing her own.

You'll be happy to know that "it" is lust — "sheer animal lust," to be exact — and not some sadistic robot.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 362: Bury Me Deep / Harold Q. Masur (Pocket Books 558)

Paperback 362: Pocket Books 558 (1st ptg, 1948)

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]