Paperback 190: Deadlock / Ruth Fenisong (Dell 808)

Paperback 190: Dell 808 (1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Deadlock
Author: Ruth Fenisong
Cover artist: John McDermott

Yours for: SOLD! (1/23/09)


Best things about this cover:

• This guy doesn't look dead. He looks tuckered out after an evening of sloppy hamburger-eating. He's got that silly, sated grin on his face. He does have dead-hand, though, I'll give him that. That, or he's amusing his house guest by making shadow puppets on the ground
• This man, and thus the couch, is apparently 8 feet long. Seriously, if the dead guy stood up, his head would clearly no longer be in picture.
• This is the day that Dr. Carlotta Fiore decided, "No more housecalls!" - another day, another gigantic, drunk, ketchup-stained man.

Best things about this back cover:

• Torn from today's headlines! ... seriously, TORN. See the tears. We tore it. Torn!
• "Gridley Nelson" is officially my new crossword-solving moniker / alter ego. I might even have to keep the "Lieut." title.
• "Basement sordidness"!!! Man, I really need to know what that is.

Page 123~

"No." Gaudio turned his wobbly head from side to side to implement the weak denial. The effect was grotesque.

Though surely no more grotesque than the use of "implement" as a verb in that first sentence. Yikes.

~RP

Paperback 118: The Ravagers / Donald Hamilton (Gold Medal k1452)

Paperback 118: Gold Medal k1452 (PBO, 1964)
Title: The Ravagers
Author: Donald Hamilton
Cover artist: John McDermott (thanks to George Freeman for the artist credit)

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Finally, the untold story of how the Scooby-Doo gang broke up - here, Velma tries to protect and console Daphne while Fred fends off a drug-addled Shaggy, who is despondent and irate about the fact that Fred had Scooby put down.
• The Matt Helm series was very popular, and Dean Martin played Helm on screen. I've never read Hamilton, but I'm starting to think it might be worth the effort. I always associate him with John D. MacDonald, largely because the Travis McGee and Matt Helm series were both published by Gold Medal throughout the 60s.

Best things about this back cover:

• That's the egg-headiest author pic ever.
• Code Name: Eric - exotic!
• "... lying dead in a Canadian motel room" - about the most undignified place you could possibly die. Bad enough to have your face eaten away by acid, but in a Canadian motel? That's just over-the-top.

Page 123~

She smiled up at me approvingly. "What a suspicious tall man it is! Don't worry, darling. We're going to have a swell time together. We'll have a million kicks, a million laughs. Hand me that shirt, will you?"

~RP