Paperback 982: Nothing More Than Murder / Jim Thompson (Dell 738)

Paperback 982: Dell 738 (1st ptg, 1953)

Title: Nothing More Than Murder
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: George Geygan

Estimated value: $60-75
Condition: 7/10

Best things about this cover:

• Seriously, what part of him is she stroking? It looks like a lion's paw is growing out of his stomach.
• I think the bed is supposed to be on fire, but all I see is his hair on fire. Like, "Oh my god, she's stroking my paw ....!!!" and then cartoon fire shoots out of his head.
• Her hair is nuts, but she is otherwise not hard to look at.

Best things about this back cover:

• Love love love the color blocks, and the terse, terse blurbs.
• More blurbs should be as succinct and enigmatic as "Strong meat"
• But then "both in style and story" shoulda been lopped. Adds nothing. Why am I editing this back cover copy 60+ years after the fact!?

Page 123~

A couple of bobby soxers stood up near the popcorn machine, giggling and talking to Harry, and watching me out of the corner of their eyes.

The period of pulp culture I'm most interested in can probably best be defined as "that period during which the term 'bobby soxer' had currency" (so, '40s-'60s, give or take)

~RP

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Paperback 744: Wild Town / Jim Thompson (Signet 1461)

Paperback 744: Signet 1461 (PBO, 1957)

Title: Wild Town
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Robert ***ing Maguire!

Yours for: $65


Best things about this cover:

• It's pretty much the quintessential cover. It's the first book I brought home (almost 20 years ago now) that made me feel like I had committed; I was really doing this; I was a collector. I got into paperback collecting because of Polito's Thompson biography, with its B&W repros of all Thompson's Lion paperback originals from the '50s. The idea that I actually owned a first edition J.T.—however mauled (and it is mauled)—was mind-blowing to me. I spent more than I should have, as I often did when buying books from my earliest dealer (what's up, Kaleidoscope?), but I Did Not (and Do Not) Care. 
• Robert Maguire is the greatest paperback cover artist of all time and I will fight anyone who says otherwise, despite my being highly averse to violence of all kinds. That is how much I care about this subject.
• I'm not even sure how you *get* a book to tear like that. It's like some drunk person decided to see if he could tear it in half, after failing to get anywhere with the phone book, and then got distracted immediately after starting. Gash runs from spine to dead center of the cover and appears to affect many of the first pages. The effect on readability, however, as well as overall book tightness, is nil.
• "Are you suffering from migraines brought on by stress, hormones, or the occasional dead guy in your oil field?! We've all been there, right ladies?"

Best things about this back cover:

• Put up or shut up, Job!
• Hey look—competent, genuinely engaging cover copy! Huzzah.
• It's your classic sheriff-meets-beautiful-tramp-of-a-wife story. I'm sure it all ends well.

Page 123~

Her head moved irritably against the pillows. She took a deep breath and held it; then, slowly let it out again in a quiet sigh of surrender.
"All right, Bugs," she said. "All right, darling. You don't trust me, but I'll still—"
"Out with it!"
"I want you to kill him. I want you to kill my husband!"

So, spoiler alert, I guess.

~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 587: The Nothing Man / Jim Thompson (Dell First Edition 22)

Paperback 587: Dell First Edition 22 (PBO, 1954)

Title: The Nothing Man
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Stanley Borack

Yours for: nuh uh


Best things about this cover:

• I wish I had a foreground me and background me.
• It's like a PSA against alcohol-induced psychosis: "Hi folks. You ever wake up with that 'not-so-fresh' feeling?"
• By "lost the power to love" they mean he has no penis (if I'm remembering this one right, which I think I am, but I could be confusing it with another Thompson title, as castration / genital mutilation is kind of a recurring theme)
• That guy looks like an actor, but I can't place him. Robert Stack?

Best things about this back cover:

• Yep, this is definitely the (or a) penis-loss story.
• Drink is a poor substitute for a penis, I find.
• Awesome psycho-face.

Page 123~

"That's awfully pretty, Brownie. Did you write that?"

"Yes," I said. "I did it under my pen name, Elizabeth Khayyam. I wrote it one eventide on a wind-swept hill while watching a father bird wing home to his wee ones. There was a long caterpillar in his beak and he had it swung over his shoulders, muffler fashion, as a shield against the wintery cold. I ... listen to me, Deborah! For God's sake, listen!"

"Heckuva job, Brownie," she sneered, right before he bludgeoned her to death with whatever blunt object was handy.

~RP

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Paperback 271: The Killer Inside Me / Jim Thompson (Gold Medal 1522)

Paperback 271: Gold Medal k1522 (1st thus, 1965)

Title: The Killer Inside Me
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• The most famous novel by the king of paperback originals. Book is tight and square as the day it came off the shelf. Very faint reading crease and horrible scuffing in bottom right corner are about the only defects.
• This cover is a good example of how paperbacks start to suck, design-wise, beginning in the 60s. Art gets minimized, text takes over. Further, the cover copy is no longer interesting, imaginative, lurid tag lines, but turgid quotes from highbrow folks telling you what great literature this book is. Well, they aren't lying. The book is fantastic. But this reaching after seriousness by crowding the cover with critical acclaim really chafes my aesthetic hide.
• Pink glasses? Really?
• I actually love the reflection of the screaming dame in the lenses, but she's too small to be very interesting. Ten years earlier, she'd have been five times bigger.
• Lou Ford Does Not Look Like This Guy. At least not in my head he doesn't.

Best things about this back cover:

• Booooooooo!
  
• How quaint: the real book critic goes slumming and finds a gem among the 'originals' (books so untouchable he can't even refer to them without first putting on scare quotes).
• If the French like it, it must be good.
• Among those on this comparison list, only McCoy is remotely comparable to Thompson. The other guys (both masters) write P.I. novels with P.I. heroes and an entirely different sensibility. If Sam Spade were a murdering sadist, then there'd be some basis for comparison.

Page 123~

Howard kept his seat. His face looked like a blob of reddish dough, but he shook his head at Jeff and kept his seat. Howard was really trying hard.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 50: Mysterious Press 40827-8

Paperback 50: Mysterious Press 40827-8 (1st ptg, 1989)

Title: Fireworks: The Lost Writings
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Stephen Peringer


Best things about this cover:

• Not a lot - I've included this in my collection only because it contains a bunch of otherwise unreprinted Jim Thompson stories. I also wanted to give you a sense of the deterioration of cover painting as an art form. This is done with computers, and it's pretty unimaginative and uncatchy. I do, however, love the work that Mysterious Press has done keeping old hardboiled writers alive and in print. One of the editors of this collection, Robert Polito, wrote the great Thompson biography, which I've mentioned before. You should read it.

I should add that I called this book a "first printing," even though it's unclear to me what to call it. It reads "First printing: August, 1989," but those numbers at the bottom of the publication page have the "1" missing, which makes me think this is a second printing of a first edition. Modern ways of determining first, second, etc., are overly complicated and bug the crap out of me.

RP

Paperback 11: Gold Medal k1502

Paperback 11: Gold Medal k1502 (PBO, 1964)

Title: Texas by the Tail
Author: Jim Thompson
Cover artist: Unknown

Yours for: $50

Best things about this cover:

• Are you kidding me? Look at it! There's a naked redhead toweling off in a giant cocktail glass! That's pretty much the paperback cover jackpot.
• I love how TAIL is right by her TAIL - saucy.
• This cover is too texty, with too many different font sizes and color changes, but I do like how the text sort of tumbles down the side of the girl and the glass.
• Is she supposed to be standing in champagne? Wine? Beer? I wish I knew. She seems to be enjoying it.

This is the first Jim Thompson original that I ever owned. You can see that it's in pretty sorry condition, mainly from grime and overall dinginess (plus someone drew some weird symbol just underneath the bowl of the glass). Still, it cost me almost $50, which I happily paid. At the time, I was just happy to have my hands (finally) on a real, honest-to-goodness Jim Thompson PBO. Now, I wouldn't spend that much money on something this beat up. But I still love the book, even if it is a late-career Thompson with less-than-stellar cover design. The naked-woman-in-giant-glass thing makes it so easy to overlook all the negatives.

RP