Title: The Thursday Turkey Murders
Author: Craig Rice
Cover artist: William Wirtz
Yours for: $8
Best things about this cover:
- Would not have thought a cover featuring a half-naked woman could be this dull and ugly, but evidence is evidence.
- Seriously, terrible painting. I can't even glean context from this thing. Where is she? It's like she's in some creepy guy's ice-fishing shack, looking out in a Dali-esque winter landscape. After an earthquake that has left everything oddly atilt. Plus the painting is all smeary. Blargh.
- Craig Rice was a woman. See also Leigh Brackett. They both ghost-wrote novels for actor George Sanders in the 1940s.
Best things about this back cover:
- This book is part of Rice's "Bingo and Handsome" series, which is the title of a mediocre TNT comedy-crime drama waiting to happen.
- "Baby, your skin is the color of extra-thick whipping cream." Nope. You can say this in as many different voices as you like. Not sexy.
- I will say that "A figure that would have made Venus jump back into the ocean" is pretty damn good, as cover copy writing goes (admittedly low bar).
Page 123~
"Now a bullet from a high-powered rifle would go through a feller's head and come out the other side without making much of a hole, providing the feller had the right kind of bones in his skull and that the rifle was shot off from far enough way [sic]."
I have no idea what it means, but "The Right Kind of Bones" would make an excellent book title.
~RP
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