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

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Paperback 884: Dagger of the Mind / Kenneth Fearing (Bantam 93)

Paperback 884: Bantam 93 (1st ptg, 1947)

Title: Dagger of the Mind
Author: Kenneth Fearing
Cover artist: "Galdone" (signature, lower right)

Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Weird. That dagger of the mind looks a lot like an actual dagger.
• The artist was right to stab this painting. It's terrible.
• Art colonies were a weird source of fascination for pulpy writers of the '40s-'50s. There was probably some presumption of casual nudity and free love, although Zombie Veronica here looks well and properly dressed.
• "Bye bye, painting. I'll miss you."

Best things about this back cover:

• OK, that's a pretty persuasive first sentence. I like the idea of her husband running at her with a dagger and her just ... stepping aside. Like some weird torero.
• "Need more be said?" Yes, it need. It need be more said.
• That little sketch of the woman is pretty pathetic, but these endpapers are pretty boss!:

Page 123~

I said, rubbing my head, "Don't ask me riddles. I want some borscht, shaslik, and about two quarts of iced coffee."

Hey, that's *my* hangover remedy. Wait, what's "shaslik"? Sounds like something Mork would say to Orson.

~RP

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Paperback 833: The Door Through Space / Marion Zimmer Bradley // Rendezvous on a Lost World / A. Bertram Chandler (Ace F-117)

Paperback 833: Ace Double F-117 (PBO / PBO 1961)

Titles: The Door Through Space / Rendezvous on a Lost World
Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley / A. Bertram Chandler
Cover artist: Ed Emshwiller / Ed Emshwiller

Estimated value: $10-15


Best things about this cover:

• "40 Demons!?" "No, 4-D Demons!" "…?"
• Even the giantest Fear Hand could not protect the galaxy's skinniest spaceship from the flamboyant-yet-savage robot birds!
• *That's* your "Door Through Space"? Looks more like "Archway To Pool Party."
• Emshwiller's covers are awesome to look at. He likes to include all this random ornate decoration and machinery. Here, I particularly admire the oil rig/water slide/clock tower gizmo in the lower right. The people in the party seem to dig it, too. Maybe it is their god.

Best things about this other cover:

• Damn Ikea ceiling fans! Come on!
• #LostWorldProblems
• Imaginary space suits are So Much Cooler than real ones. I think I found my next Halloween costume.
• I did not know the word "cybernetic" (or "cyber-" anything) went this far back.

Page 123~

It cannot possibly have produced the illusion of two figures, Captain and Captain's lady—and which Veronica was it?—walking, arm in arm, up the ramp to the yelllow-lit circle of the airlock. And the most impossible illusion of all, perhaps, was that of the man who stood there to greet them. I saw his face plainly as I approached, just before the odd scene winked out into nothingness.

It was my own.

End of story! Whoa, did not see that coming. P.S. spoiler alert. P.P.S. "Which Veronica Was It?" is a scifi Archie story waiting to happen.

~RP

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Paperback 791: Camera Club Model / James Harvey (Midwood F253)

Paperback 791: Midwood F253 (PBO, 1963)

Title: Camera Club Model
Author: James Harvey
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Armpit fetishists, you're in luck!
• Offscreen mystery hand preserves the modesty. I'm imagining the photographer of this picture directing the photographers *in* the picture: "Little to the right … down … perfect!"
• This is a great angle for the lower half of her body and a Terrible angle for everything else. It's all weird angles and lack of definition. Also, she looks like she's complaining about the fact that she's being arrested. Not sexy.
• Dude in background has mastered the perv-clutch hand position.
• I like how James Harvey is branching out in the kinds of models he is writing about.

Best things about this back cover:

• I prefer to take the big first word in isolation: SOMETHING! Such an intriguingly vague come-on.
• Needs to be a comma after "spotlight."
• I like how the first sentence tells us what we Just Saw On The Other Side Of This Book.
• "The odor of their combined lust" just killed mine.
• And the final bottom word, again, better in isolation. "Now let's try something really different. DIFFERENT!!!!!"

Page 123~

Betty went through her derriere poses. 

She took shadow puppetry to a whole new level.

~RP

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Paperback 669: Mambo to Love + I See Red / Dale Clark + Sterling Noel (Ace Double D-109)

Paperback 669: Ace Double D-109 (PBO / PBO)

Title: Mambo to Murder / I See Red
Author: Dale Clark / Sterling Noel
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: Not For Sale (donation to the collection from Laurie Gagne)


Best things about this cover:

• "Dammit, Lily, you said we were gonna Tango to Terror! I can't mambo—you know that! I haven't got the hips for it! Dammit, Lily!"
• I love old-timey tough guys with their high-waisted pants and short loose ties and rolled cuffs and adamant stances and aggressive cigarette-gripping. This guy looks sooo much like a noir actor I can't place ... I mean, I can see him, but can't remember name or even movie. Usually a detective, I think.
• Lily is reaching into her clutch because she is definitely going to shoot tough guy and then go drink at BAR across the street.
• This is a great painting, actually. Lots of great details, including her hair, expression, chest ... everything about her, really. Also the full ashtray on the sill. Nice.
• I believe the original, unstickered tagline read "She taught him the steps to a danse macabre!"

Best things about this other cover:

• Miranda wanted her boudoir photo shoot to be "terrorist-themed" for some reason.
• What's the opposite of "Fear Hand"? (*That's* the opposite of "Fear Hand").
• Most of the things I want to say involve profane word play linking the title "I See Red" and the word "snatched," but I'm too modest so I'll just make the banal observation that "I See Red" is an anagram of "Desiree."
• Also, I keep reading "snatched bigot." And, occasionally, "snatched bigfoot."

Page 123~ (of Mambo to Murder)

"Nobody asks me any questions," I grinned, "without buying the answers."

~RP

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Paperback 591: Cropper's Cabin / Jim Thompson (Black Lizard nn)

Paperback 591: Black Lizard nn (1st ptg, 1987)

Title: Cropper's Cabin
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Kirwan

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• "Look ma, Sissy done given birth to a gun!"
• I love these '80s Black Lizards. They have their own unique look, a kind of '80s/'50s hybrid, rather than just looking like imitations / parodies of the vintage style. Lurid, but stylized.
• Wow, someone's been practicing his action-hand drawing.
• That lady's hair and dress are both aptly nightmarish.
• I like when artists signatures are visible, and especially when they are worked into the art itself (Robert Schulz did this quite a bit)

Best things about this back cover:

• Sadism, incest, and castration are (for better or worse) three of the most common themes in Thompson's writing.
• Don't like the design here so much: too texty, and it's all a little too left-justified.
• Black Lizard (post-Vintage buyout) was my entree into the world of hardboiled crime fiction. Someday I'll tell you the story of the bookstore point-of-purchase display that changed my life (or maybe I've already told that story—blog long enough, and you forget what you have and haven't told...)

Page 123~

I stopped and whuffed my nose out good and dug out my eyes, and it helped a lot. And my hands didn't slip any more. Because ...

Now, this is more like it, I thought. Why didn't I think of this ...

Because I wasn't holding on to anything.

Despite what it apparently means, 'whuffed' is my new favorite word.

~RP

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Paperback 557: The Eight of Swords / John Dickson Carr (Berkley G-48)

Paperback 557: Berkley G-48 (1st ptg, 1957)

Title: The Eight of Swords
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $9

Best things about this cover:

• First things first: that dress is Hot. 
• Apparently he did *not* mean "Eight of Spades" and did *not* appreciate being interrupted. 
• The perspective here is weird, creepy, and visually arresting. I like this cover despite its being one of the more aggressive examples of the weapon-to-crotch motif. 
• Maybe he's just tickling her. Or maybe she's not real and we're witnessing some strange sword-painting technique. 
• Maguire is my favorite cover artist of all time. I love how he didn't even bother finishing this painting. "Uh, Mr. Maguire, sir, were you going to finish this painting, or ..." "YOU DON'T TELL BOB MAGUIRE WHEN HIS PAINTINGS ARE FINISHED. BOB MAGUIRE TELLS YOU!"

Best things about this back cover:

• The N.Y. Herald Tribune makes Mr. Carr sound like a mystery rapist.
• I like Dr. Gideon Fell because his name is a complete sentence.
• Strangely, the thing I like best about this cover is the font on the publisher's address.

Page 123~

Spinelli's lip lifted in a sardonic quirk. He sniggered. "Hey, are you a dick?" he asked.

If you like sardonic sniggering, this is your book.

~RP

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Paperback 555: The Saracen Blade / Frank Yerby (Cardinal C-124)

Paperback 555: Cardinal C-124 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: The Saracen Blade
Author: Frank Yerby
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• Steve was quick to anger when people insulted his empty-swimming-pool harem. "It's a spatial commentary on the ways the traffic in women occludes ... oh you did *not* just roll your eyes at me! En garde!" 
• Steve erupted in anger when the judge of the No T-shirt Contest gave him only a 5.
• MC Hammer closes in on the man who stole his pants. "Please, Hammer ... don't hurt me."
• There is a paperback cover phenomenon I call "black hand"—it's a subset of "mystery hand." The mysterious / exotic Other reaches in from the margins ... oh you did *not* just roll your eyes at me!
• This cover follows the old paperback cover art maxim: bondage must enhance boobage.

Best things about this back cover:

• It's slightly unusual to have to have the back cover relate the scene depicted on the cover. It's highly unusual to have the back cover *tell* you that's what it's doing (possibly because it seems insultingly redundant)
• "And even when he did think—which, admittedly, wasn't often—..."
• Compound adjectives can be things of beauty. Then there's "adventure-crammed."

Page 123~

"You're not a stranger," Gautiette said mildly, "and I shall need your aid. The truth of the matter, good Pietro, is that Toinette has disappeared..."

"It's a hairspray, it's a perfume, it's a home perm, it's ... Toinette!"

~RP

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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

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Paperback 439: The Dark Tunnel / Kenneth Millar (Lion Books 48)

Paperback 439: Lion Books 48 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Dark Tunnel
Author: Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald)
Cover artist: E. Walter

Yours for: $28


Best things about this cover:

• It's like we've caught her midway through morphing into a snake.
• Why is she looking at us? Her potential killer is ... there. Over there. To your left, lady. Stop looking at me, Serpentina!
• Of all the gay taglines I've seen, this one of the weakest. Tells me nothing about what happens. No sense of story. No sense of action. Tagline doesn't clearly go with picture. Yuck.
• "Dark Tunnel" is a not-very-subtle title for a novel pre-occupied with homosexuality.

Best things about this back cover:

• The dark tunnel is all of a sudden a bright doorway.
• Lion deals with male homosexuality on its covers more frequently and earlier than most other publishers. It's truly remarkable how obsessed the cover copy is with the gender/sexuality of this spy—which is not even an important issue in this book until the end, and even then seems more tacked-on than essential (if I'm remembering correctly—I could be conflating it with "I, the Jury").

Page 123~

I went into this inner room to look up 'taillour.' My throat was constricted with excitement. For the first and last time in my life, I knew how philologists must feel when they're on the track of an old word used in a new way.

And this immediately becomes the nerdiest thriller of all time. Sidenote: This scene takes place at the Middle English Dictionary, housed at University of Michigan, where both Kenneth Millar and I earned Ph.D.s in English (50+ years apart). The Dark Tunnel was his first novel (orig. pub'd 1944).

~RP

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Paperback 423: Bondage Clubs U.S.A. / Robert Newton (Wee Hours 549)

Paperback 423: Wee Hours 549 (PBO, 1967)

Title: Bondage Clubs U.S.A.
Author: Robert Newton
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• I'm not worried about the ropes and chains. I'm worried about the werewolf that's holding them. That is one hirsute forearm.
• "Social Behavior Series For Adults" — "It's a textbook, honey. I'm just doing my, uh, sociology homework. See, 'documented' ... 'insight' ... it's educational!"
• Tyrannical yoga instructor: "I told you what would happen next time you gave me a sloppy Pigeon Pose!"
• Love the Wee Hours logo for how sad it is. The "W" is readily apparent, but the "H" has been tortured almost beyond recognition to form the sides of what I'm guessing is an hourglass ... measuring the Wee Hours of ... the days of our lives ... or something.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Blow-by-blow," HA ha.
• "Thereby," HA ha. "Heretofore, wherein, the party of the first part ties up the party of the second part ..."
• I know this Italian restaurant where they make an amazing vegan algolagnia.
• "Penetrating," come on!
• "Boldly illustrated!?" OK, I'm gonna have to open this baby up ... OK, I don't know what definition of "illustrated" they are using here, but there are precisely *no* illustrations in this book. There are, however, four of the Dullest Bargraphs You Will Ever See. Example:

Page 123~

This guy describes being raped by other guys, and I can't really do anything funny with that ... so ... p. 132!

When I climbed out of the shower, he was right there! He started rubbing me down with a towel, picked me up and carried me into the bedroom, put me on the bed and seduced me. He had a very big penis and was proud of it. He even showed me with a measure that it was eight inches long.

Yes, that *does* sound seductive ... If the sight and feel of it doesn't turn her on, measure it for her! Foolproof!

~RP

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Paperback 397: The Fighting Edge / William MacLeod Raine (Pocket Books 691)

Paperback 397: Pocket Books 391 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Fighting Edge
Author: William MacLeod Raine
Cover artist: Frank McCarthy

Yours for: Not for sale (gift to the collection from Doug Peterson)


Best things about this cover:

• If you stare at that giant furry meaty ginger club of a hand for any length of time, it will start to look obscene. You will have nightmares. There will be blood.
• Blood here looks fake and lipstickish, though—like the guy's fist was, just minutes earlier, engaged in a Señor Wences routine. "S'alright if I punch you in the face!? ... S'alright!"

Best things about this back cover:

• "You'll find a new rider in the bunkhouse!" — it unintentional gayness a requirement of all western cover copy? "I like 'em man-size" !? Come on!
• "I'm no dry nurse to fellows shy of sand" — nice syntax, Tex. I think this is what got that guy on the front cover punched in the face by Señor Gargantufist.

Page 123~

Dillon had taken off his high-heeled boots because they were hurting his feet. He observed that Walker, lying fully dressed on the blankets, was still wearing his.

A rare glimpse backstage at an Old West drag show. Catty banter to follow, I'm sure.

~RP

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Paperback 395: Hostess to Murder / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Mystery Novel Classic 58)

Paperback 395: Mystery Novel Classic No. 58 (1st ptg, 1943)

Title: Hostess to Murder
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $18


Best things about this cover:

• These early digests are kind of horrible, coverartwise.
• The hand is sort of unintentionally frightening, in a jointless, put-your-eye-out kind of way.

Back cover fail, once again (just a repeated pattern of the publisher's logo), so ... straight to ...

Page 123~

"Whither away?" called Cartaret, gaily.

No typos were made in the typing of that last sentence. I like how it all hovers between the nonsensical and ... well, the really nonsensical. It's like a lost line from "Jabberwocky."

~RP

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Paperback 324: Keep Cool, Mr. Jones / Timothy Fuller (Dell 594)

Paperback 324: Dell 594 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Keep Cool, Mr. Jones
Author: Timothy Fuller
Cover artist: Robert Stanley

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• If the ridiculously low-cut blouse didn't get you looking at her boobs, the gun is there to point you in the right direction.
• "Get me a brisket, Mr. Jones."
• "What? We like to be surrounded by cold slabs of meat when we do it. Don't judge us."
• She has an interesting variation on Fear Hand™—like she's timidly waving at the gun-wielder ("uh ... hi honey") or about to sling her web à la Spidey.
• Jupiter Jones ... and ... January Jones ... in ... 'We Meat Again'!

Best things about this back cover:

• "For design inspiration, we're going to give you a hard-boiled egg and two dominoes."
• You'd expect the final tagline to be some kind of outrageous pun or exciting teaser, not a *literal description of what you can see on the cover.*

Page 123~

Bateman put a telephone on the bar. When Jupiter walked up to it Joe nodded quickly at Maney and whispered, "Drunk and ugly. Watch it." And then, normally, "All the comforts of home."

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 43

Sorry for the lag between new books ... stupid job with its stupid starting up again ...

Title: Ill Met By Moonlight
Author: Leslie Ford
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $6

• Ill Met by Moths!
• Love *everything* about this picture, from the sickly green tint, to the lady's expression (looking at me for help! Sorry lady, you're on your own!), to that hand — remarkably still, creepily calm for being attached to someone who just unleashed serious moth fury.
• Is this how our "lovely vixen" (uh, a stretch) toys with (one too many) men? "Here, this way, just come into my boudoir ... I know it's dark, just wait, let me get the light and BOOM! Moths moths moths! Ha ha ha, you should see the look on your face... you still wanna do it?"

• Wait, is this the same "she?" Because it's going to be hard for her to be "found dead" *and* to be toying with men. Unless ... she comes back from the dead as a specter doomed to haunt her former lovers with an unshakable retinue of moths ... yes, that sounds good.

Page 123~

"However, we may be a bit forrarder."

forrarder, adv. chiefly British : further ahead

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 39

Title: The Deadly Climate — Pocket Books 1077 (1st ptg, 1955)
Author: Ursula Curtiss
Cover artist: James Meese

Yours for: $5

• "Dear god, no! That pillow's not hypoallergmmphrrrmmmph!"
• This is some damn great cover art and design. Great action, great use of white space, and possibly the biggest eyeballs I've ever seen on a cover girl. Amazing.

• "Two steps less?" Not "fewer?"
• "Unbelieving eyes stared back at her. No one wanted to believe..." Yeah, that's generally what UNBELIEVING means, Shakespeare.
• What the hell is "Shock — exposure" supposed to mean? Is that like "Stop! ... Hammertime!"?

Page 123~

Trunz took a sharp curve and inquired elaborately, "Want the siren?"

Does "elaborate" have a definition I'm not aware of? One that means The Exact Opposite of "elaborate," maybe?

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 38

Title: Postmark Murder (Dell 955, 1st ptg, 1957)
Author: Mignon G. Eberhart
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $5

• Bigfoot finds draft of wife's letter to mystery man named "Conrad." Clad in his best suit and class ring, he sets out for revenge.

• Somebody forgot to adjust-left
• This is about the worst front/back cover work I've seen in one of my books. I know nothing about the book and have no desire to read it.

Page 123~

"Oh," Mrs. Grelly gasped. "Oh—" A fleshy, ringed hand came out from the enveloping folds of her coat. She clutched the policeman's arm and went away unsteadily. Lieutenant Peabody came back to Laura.

I assume the hand was her own. It's hard to tell.

~RP

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Donations to the Collection: Lust Lodge

Title: Lust Lodge (Nightstand Books NB1621, 1962)
Author: Don Holliday
Cover artist: that guy who did so many of their covers ... whatsisname!

Happy Halloween! You're welcome.

• The Hand!! "Nice to meet you Mrs. ... I ... uh ..."
• X marks the spot, dang!
• Did they even plan to draw a guy into this shot originally? His sliver of head and Random Hand look like total (awesome) afterthoughts.
• I like her underwears. I choose to ignore the fact that she has Ronald McDonald hair.

• Yet another classic from the Absurd Two-Word Intro .../... Outro school of back cover writing.
• To say this is bad writing is really to give bad writing a worse name than it already has.
• Three "wantons" (counting front and back)! Plural, adjectival, possessive. That's gotta be a record.

Page 123~ (brace yourselves ...)

"Don't be melodramatic," she said, blowing smoke once more. It hung in a grey cloud above her, as though prognosticating a storm at the cloud. How symbolic I've become, Beverly thought, looking at the cloud.

As though doing a what at the where now?

~RP

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Paperback 298: Call Me Deadly / Hal Braham (Graphic 152)

Paperback 298: Graphic 152 (PBO, 1957)
Title: Call Me Deadly
Author: Hal Braham
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Nearly everything — this is late 50s paperback gold. Love the weird cropping provided by the ornate frame, and then again by the beaded curtain! Then there's Fabulous Girl Art (killer dress), jazz guitar, mystery hand w/ gun, Broderick Crawford lookalike with fat cigar ... all in a tight, barely read paperback.
• The title is awesome in inverse proportion to the cover painting's awesomeness, i.e. the title is a sad, unimaginative rip-off of a Mickey Spillane title (movie version of which came out just a couple years before this novel). Paint brush font on "Deadly" is kind of cool, though.
• Love Graphic Novels for their (frequent) crediting of the cover artist on the publishing info page, though here you can actually see the artist's signature (right under "25c").
• Gun/vagina proximity here is oddly common. Here's a variation. There will be more. Maybe I should make "guncrotch" a label... oh, wait, it already is.

Best things about this back cover:

• See that red dot separating the paragraphs? It's like it was drilled into the cover with a bore. Deeply embossed. Weird as it sounds, it's the first thing about this cover that caught my eye.
• Love their dockside dancing! Put any energetic music on your iTunes and then look at this painting. They are totally dancing. Nothing else can explain what she's doing with her left hand (mysterious hand gestures ... seems like a recurrent theme).
• I love how the cover copy starts out campy and ends up in nearly incoherent lunacy.
• "... between them, an unholy shadow murmured: 'There's no way you can tightrope walk in that dress, Gini ... Go on, I dare you ...'"

Page 123~

She said finally, "So this is the lion's den. What do you do with your spare time, Dillon?"

I shrugged. "I have the television for sport, there are books and records. It depends."

"Gets a bit monotonous, doesn't it?"

"It does," I admitted.

This is like the "Don't" column from a 1950's "How To Pick Up Hot Chicks" manual.

~RP

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Paperback 296: The Dreadful Night / Ben Ames Williams (Popular Library 155)

Paperback 296: Popular Library 155 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Dreadful Night
Author: Ben Ames Williams
Cover artist: Rudolph Belarski

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

• "Hello, police, I'm being pursued by ... hello? ... damn, this isn't my phone!"
• Rudolph Belarski: Master of DramaticHands (TM)
• That look is not fear. It is sadistic glee. And the man with the hands is not coming after her. He's about to keel over backwards. See, she has just plucked his heart from his chest with one vicious, kungfu strike. "Ha, take that, you bastard! Hey, I can hear the ocean in this thing..."
• "A Novel of Love, Hate and Death" — yep, that pretty much covers it.
• That's some structured swimwear, that is.
• Why is she at the seashore during a thunderstorm?

Best things about this back cover:

• Text me!
• "Adah Capello!" — no offense to all the ADAHs out there, but come on!
• God, these Popular Library back cover write-ups are dreadful. It's like a 9-yr-old kind of sort of recounting what happens in a book he's just read.

Page 123~

Marco the dog was there [I want to stop the quote right there], swimming this way and that, barking incessantly in a frenzied and pitiful fashion; behind his head a wide ripple spread as he quested to and fro..."

Uh ... "quested?" Is he a knight-dog?

~RP

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