Paperback 637: The Way the Cookie Crumbles / James Hadley Chase (Pocket Books 77922)

Paperback 637: Pocket Books 77922 (1st ptg, 1974)

Title: The Way the Cookie Crumbles
Author: James Hadley Chase
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Is the drug in the needle gonna make the mimes go away? If so, shoot me. Now.
• I'm sorry. I said "mimes." What I meant was "mimes hovering over my death bed."
• I don't know what corner-mime is miming, and I really don't want to know.
• Design team leader: "Well, the title refers to cookies, so I'm thinking... chicks, drugs and mimes. What do you think?"

Best things about this back cover:

• JAIL BAIT. Sure, sounds good. There's been no image continuity or discernible theme so far, so why start now?
• If her morals are ripe, shouldn't they be at their peak? Is she chaste? Is that what you're saying? I don't think that's what you're saying.
• Aaaaaand ... a murderous dwarf. Of course. Perfect. OK, I think we're done here. Unless there's a kitchen sink someone wants to shoehorn into this plot somehow.

Page 123~

"Oh, never mind. Why didn't you get yourself some clothes, Jess? I sent you enough money."
"What the hell do I want clothes for?"
"Paradise City isn't New York. You can get picked up by the cops for looking the way you do."
"Frig the cops!"

If you ever wondered where N.W.A. got their inspiration for "Fuck Da Police"—well, now you know.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 632: Tell It To the Birds / James Hadley Chase (Pocket Books 77764)

Paperback 632: Pocket Books 77764 (1st ptg, 1974)

Title: Tell It To the Birds
Author: James Hadley Chase
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• You've got a little spinach in your teeth  there ... on your right ... *your* right ... here, I'm a mirror ... that's it.
• The '70s brought us a lot of wacky mail-order products: Ginsu knives, Mr. Microphone, and, of course, SureShot, the all-in-one handgun/hairdryer: "SureShot: It'll Blow Your Hair Away!"
• Don't laugh at the "blood." It took a bunch of industrious 7th graders a long time to make that "blood."
• "We should superimpose the bloody hand onto her hair, because that would ... suggest ... ah fuck it, who cares *why*, just do it!"
• I don't have a lot of '70s paperbacks in my collection, but I'm thinking of moving in that direction—they have none of the beauty of the fully painted covers of the '40s-mid-'60s, but they have a Cheese Factor of a million, which I can also admire.

Best things about this back cover:

•  Is he wearing an orchid!? Because of his novel No Orchids For Miss Blandish??? Man, that is foppish in extremis.
• Meg Barlowe spoonerizes to Beg Marlowe, which is what Maddox should've done if he wanted to know how to be a real fucking detective.
• I have not read Chase. I do not hear good things. Hence, I have not read Chase.
• Center page of this book is a cigarette ad on stiff paper—Kent cigarettes on one side, Kent Menthol on the others. The cigarette ad insert is a not uncommon feature of cheap '70s thrillers.

Page 123~

"She kept the house like a pig sty. If a woman really loves her husband, she makes an effort to keep his home decent."

Well, now we know whom she shot and why.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]