Paperback 1151: The Body in the Library / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 341)

Paperback 1151: Pocket Books 341 (3rd ptg, 1946)

Title: The Body in the Library

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 8.5/10

Value: $10

Best things about this cover: 

• People say she's crazy, she's got diamonds on the ... what is that, the lap of her dress?
• The sparkly bits are actually gorgeous, though this poor woman has fallen in a rather unbecoming way. More abstract shape than human form. The absolutely ridiculous wig-hair is not helping (if you look at the image upside-down, it looks even sillier, like her wig is sliding back off her scalp)
• Condition on this book is fantastic. Slight spine lean, and maybe a little spine fading, but otherwise the book is bright. Immaculate. The perma-gloss is intact and everything.

Best things about this back cover: 

• If the cover is making you a little seasick because everything's a little ... tilty, that's because of a printing anomaly. Sometimes with early paperbacks the printing, particularly on covers, is not perfectly square or centered. I find it charming. 
• "Hearthrug" is a weird-looking word. Like three words fighting to be the main word and all of them somehow losing.
• I don't know what color that "backless evening dress" is on the cover, but it ain't white.
• I love the idea that a dead body on a hearthrug looks merely "incongruous" in the Colonel's library. "Her corpse clashes with the escritoire. Oh, no, this won't do at all."

Page 123~

    Florence looked uneasily at Miss Marple. Her eyes looked rather like those of one of her father's calves.

    Miss Marple said, "Sit down, Florence."

~RP

Oh my god is Miss Marple gonna slaughter her. "We were supposed to have veal for dinner this evening, Florence, but your father has no more calves available. Which brings us to the question of why I've brought you here..."

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Paperback 1107: The Razor's Edge / W. Somerset Maugham (Pocket Books 418)

 Paperback 1107: Pocket Books 418 (2nd ptg, 1946)

Title: The Razor's Edge

Author: W. Somerset Maugham

Cover artist: [Uncredited]

Condition: 6/10

Value: $7

Best things about this cover: 

• He touched her face. It was just as he suspected—whiskers! Steve knew right then that before he could make Janie his bride, her face would need to experience ... The Razor's Edge!
• Tonight, Janie decided, she would end things. Steve had coochie-coochie-coo'd her chin for the last time!
• This cover is back from when Pocket Books was still trying to make their books look serious and literary, i.e. boring. I would've sent this back to the art director with a simple three-word note: "Too Much Sky!"
• I love the insane specificity of Pocket Books's numbering scheme from this era. Individually numbered books—what was the appeal supposed to be!? They coulda just gone with the "Millions and Millions Sold" thing like McDonald's and that would've probably done the trick. What was I supposed to feel upon purchasing the one hundred and fifty-eight million two hundred and twelve thousand three hundred and tenth Pocket Book? Elation? Ennui? I can't exactly collect all the ones I'm missing! Ridiculous.

Best things about this back cover: 

• The permagloss is gone, the book is grimy, and abrasions have left part of the back cover copy illegible. Yet the spine is tight and nearly square and the book opens and reads easily. This is a perfect reading copy, which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it's not.
• I think I read Maugham's Of Human Bondage once, around the time I was in college, because my friend claimed it was his favorite novel. I mean, I assume it actually was his favorite novel, why would he lie? Anyway, I don't remember the book. And I've never read any other Maugham. All I know about this book (The Razor's Edge) is that there was a movie version starring Bill Murray that came out some time in the '80s, and that (famously?) flopped. Apparently there's also a Tyrone Power / Gene Tierney version. That sounds hot.
• What also sounds hot? Frustrated widows, lusty beauties, and complete degradation. I might have to put this on my reading list (which is infinity books long already, but who knows!? I might get to it someday).

Page 123~

I couldn't help smiling. I could imagine what Larry had looked like then, in his patched shirt and shorts, his face and neck burnt brown by the hot sun of the Rhine valley, with his lithe slim body and his black eyes in their deep sockets. I could well believe that the sight of him set the matronly Frau Becker, so blond, so full-breasted, all of a flutter with desire.

That's some pretty specific, pretty carnal imagining you're doing there, buddy. Are you sure it's Frau Becker who's "all of a flutter with desire"? 

~RP

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Paperback 1083: Death Wears a Green Hat / Will Creed (Five Star Mystery 42)

 Paperback 1083: Five Star Mystery 42 (PBO, 1946)

Title: Death Wears a Green Hat

Author: Will Creed

Cover artist: [Uncredited]

Condition: 7/10

Value: $20-25

[Autumn Leaves Bookstore, Ithaca, NY, May 2024]

Best things about this cover: 

• Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio—he was a ring-a-ding cat! Always quick with a smile. A little on the thin side...
• Another digest-sized paperback, another publisher I've never heard of. New-to-me publishers always hold huge appeal.
• There's a line in Elvis Costello's "Tokyo Storm Warning" that goes "Death wears a big hat / 'Cause he's a big bloke"; the ability to speak pulp fluently is something I've always admired in the guy.
• Skeletons are funny—scary (see the end of Psycho, for instance) but put a hat on one (or a scarf, or a feather boa), and instant silliness
• The background pattern here has me hungry for waffles (an everyday feeling, just a little moreso)

Best things about this back cover: 

• Y'all, this guy cannot write. Or the guy at the publishing house who does the back cover copy cannot write. Somebody cannot write. This prose is punishing. You have to ride that opening prepositional phrase forEver before you have any idea of what that sentence is doing grammatically. And the idea of Hal "watching" with "silent terror" as "suspicions" "reach out for him, closer and closer"... I mean, zombies reaching out for you, sure, I get it, but "suspicions"? 
• "Closer and closer they came, reaching out for him..." "OMG what's coming closer, what's reaching out for him!?" "Uh ... suspicions." "...Oh, come on!" "No, wait, where are you going? ...  they're really gruesome suspicions, I swear—big teeth and green hats and everything. Aw, come back and let me finish my terrifying story!"
• "Nerve-shredding enjoyment!" Because you're bored with mere "face-smashing whimsy!" and want something new in your keen-edged horror!

Page 123~

Dear Hal, I know that of all the people that knew Adrian, you must have known him best. He wasn't always admirable, but no man needs to die the way Adrian died, just because he cannot always live the way his heart means to act. I must talk to you. I walked over to talk to you after I had been to Inspector Day's tonight, and, well, you weren't there. I was lost, for I had to talk. In my mind has been growing for some time the most frightful suspicion. But we're old friends and I must see you. And the more I think of it, and think of the person involved under the circumstances in which Adrian died, I become more and more certain of my guess. I have to see you, Hal; we must talk this out together. No matter what time you get this, phone me at once. I'll be waiting for your call. I cannot imagine where you have gone at this time of night. Valerie.

Well thank god this isn't an epistolary novel because I'm not sure I could've taken one more sentence. I'd rather read all of Clarissa than one more of Valerie's "I must talk to you I walked over to talk to you I had to talk we must talk this out where are you you seem to be in a different place from where I am currently looking" ramble-fests.

~RP

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Paperback 921: Nine and Death Makes Ten / Carter Dickson (Pocket Books 335)

Paperback 921: Pocket Books 335 (2nd ptg, 1946)

Title: Nine and Death Makes Ten
Author: Carter Dickson
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $12-17 (condition: stunning, unread)

Best things about this cover:

• Amazing Moon-Skull almost makes up for terrible, awkward title that sounds like somebody counting change.
• Somehow, the cursive-script author name following the contours of the cranium reads Adorable. Rules of Pictorial Menace, #28—never make your death skull wear a cute word hat!
• This book is in near-perfect condition. Slight fraying of the perma-gloss is the only sign of wear. Bright and tight and shiny, like it wasn't anywhere close to 70 bleeping years old!

Best things about this back cover:

• Again with the problematic naming. Good luck stopping me laughing with a ship name like "Edwardic!"
• "Douse that light!" sounds like the title of an Edwardian rap anthem.
• I shared this book with my UPS guy. I hope that was OK.

Page 123~

"I want you to stop actin' the fool," continued H.M., calmly sighting with another quoit ... 

Carter Dickson is not wasting all those hours of nautical terminology research, so suck it up, landlubbers.

~RP

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Paperback 899: Messer Marco Polo: a love story / Donn Byrne (Penguin 611)

Paperback 899: Penguin 611 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Messer Marco Polo
Author: Donn Byrne
Cover artist: jonas

Estimated value: $9-12

Best things about this cover:

• Honestly I have no idea what's happening here, on any level.
• The palette, the art, the word "Messer" (!?), it's all so ... uncharacteristic of my smutty collection.
• It looks like he's holding an asp in the crook of his left arm.
• This book represents that stage in Penguin's American publishing when it's about to morph into Penguin-Signet and then, finally, Signet.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Punched cows." That's pretty hardboiled.
• If you google, in quotation marks, ["gang of howling literary brigands"], this book, and only this book, shows up. Joyce Kilmer wrote "Trees." Don Marquis is (by total coincidence) my newest literary crush—he wrote light verse in the voice of a cockroach named Archy (who used no capitals or punctuation because cockroaches can't possibly use the Shift key). His books of Archy verse were often illustrated by the legendary George Herriman (of "Krazy Kat" fame).
• Wait, "Messer Marco Polo brought him fame and fortune"? Can that be right?!
• Car crash. Dang.

Page 23~ (book's only 116 pages long!)

And suddenly there's a headsman in a red cloak and a red mask, and the axe swings and falls. The head pops off and the body falls limp.

Somehow the word "pops" sucks all the seriousness out of the situation.

~RP

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Paperback 866: African Poison Murders / Elspeth Huxley (Popular Library 100)

Paperback 866: Popular Library 100 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: African Poison Murders
Author: Elspeth Huxley
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $12-17

Best things about this cover:

• "Here, African. Put this on. That's better." Hashtag racist.
• Actually, maybe the green guy is a sick European. He looks like a 17th-century actor who has eaten some bad mutton.
• If you stare too long at that foreshortened thumb, you will begin to get queasy. It's… not right. Kind of like the relationship between green head and blue body. Not right at all.

Best things about this back cover:

• Read that second sentence as "Feces were smashed." Was briefly intrigued.
• A "native boy" wrapped in "baling wire." Hmm. That's a bit on the nose, as Slave-Trade metaphors go.
• This book should've been called "Leopard Trap!" That, or "All's Veld That Ends Veld."

Page 123~

"It is the way of Europeans," the house-boy said philosophically.

"You gotta read a lot of Kant to deal with these motherfuckers," he added.

~RP

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Paperback 848: Appointment with Death / Agatha Christie (Dell 105)

Paperback 848: Dell 105 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Appointment with Death
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Estimated value: $15-25


Best things about this cover:

• "Where have you been? You're late. We had an appointment. [Sigh]. I guess we can get coffee and wait for the next tour to start, but … I really wish you'd called." #PassiveAggressiveDeath
• Killer Gerald Gregg cover. KILLER.
• "AN Hercule Poirot Mystery"—I like that the cover knows the "H" is silent.

Best things about this back cover:

• O, man, jackpot. First off, MAPBACK!
• Second off, check out the 1946 map! Predates existence of Israel by a scant two years.
• Third, check out the insert map from "Star Wars." You can see a Jawa camp and everything.

Page 123~

"None of the servants seemed to be about, but I found some soda water and drank it."

You'll thrill to the tale of the intrepid rich guy who risked all to survive in … A House Without Servants.

~RP

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Paperback 803: Love and the Countess to Boot / Jack Iams (Dell 139)

Paperback 803: Dell 139 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Love and the Countess to Boot 

Author: Jack Iams

Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Cupid does not mess around with rival gods. Just look what he did to Santa!
• Everyone should have a countess to boot.
• This cover is ultra-terrible. No countesses. No boots. Weird log-like clouds. Bah.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ah, that's more like it. Mapback!
• Caribbean mapback with St. Croix inset and even bigger Bland Seascape inset. Hot.
• Ooh, Charlotte AMALIE. I recall that place name from a crossword clue I Did Not Know.

Page 123~

He sipped the frothy swizzle, enjoying Walter's rising curiosity.

That line is either benign and dopey or super-homoerotic, depending on your mood.

~RP

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Paperback 769: God's Little Acre / Erskine Caldwell (Penguin 581)

Paperback 769: Penguin 581 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: God's Little Acre
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Do love the peephole covers. Though usually we get to peep at something sexy. Or at least living.
• It's an oddly tepid cover, given how strongly Caldwell's work was associated with sex. Future Caldwell covers will be … less discreet, to put it mildly.
• I believe that to be the smallest outhouse that has ever been painted.

Best things about this back cover:

• Stock photo, lifted from "Generic White Man" entry in Encyclopedia Americana. 
• "Graduating from neither," ha ha. "He sampled your so-called 'higher education' and decided 'fuck this—I'ma pick cotton!"
• That is weirdest way in which anyone's pro football career has ever been introduced. "He was truly fuckable, like a football player, which he was once. Probably. Somewhere."
• Damn, looks like a dog hair got on the scanner platen. Sorry about that.

Page 123~

"Saying he's going to vote for me and doing it when the time comes is as far apart as the land and the sky." 

It's like when Martin beat Bart for class president on "The Simpsons." Everyone said they supported Bart, but only two people voted: Martin and Martin's running mate Wendell.  So Martin won.

Amazing discovery of the day—this book reprints, at the very end, the ruling by the Magistrate's Court of the City of New York, clearing Viking Press (this book's original publisher) from charges of obscenity brought against it by the People of the State of New York at the instigation of The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Based on this information, the oddly sexless cover instantly becomes either more perplexing or more understandable, depending on how you look at it. I have only ever seen this legal opinion-reprinting in the backs of sleaze paperbacks, specifically those published by in the late '50s and early '60s by Sanford Aday, who has his own repeated run-ins with the law. As the opinion reprinted here makes clear, God's Little Acre was defended by many scholars and writers on its literary merits. Harder to argue for said merits when the title of your book is Sex Life of a Cop (as it was in Aday's own trial). Anyway, very cool to discover this much-more-mainstream precedent for self-justifying end matter.

~RP

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Paperback 728: Duel in the Sun / Niven Busch (Popular Library 102)

Paperback 728: Popular Library 102 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Duel in the Sun
Author: Niven Busch
Cover artist: photo cover (mostly)

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Jennifer Jones manages to make armpit-sniffing look pretty sexy.
• Joseph Cotten does not look "lusty." He looks "lank" and "weird." (Upon further review, that looks more like Peck than Cotten)
• This hybrid photo/graphic cover is strange, though it does convey "sun-drenched" pretty well.
• I believe this was a controversial film in terms of its tawdriness. Ah, here we go—per wikipedia: "The film received poor reviews, however, and was highly controversial due to its sexual content and to Selznick's real-life relationship with Jones, which broke up both of their marriages."

Best things about this back cover:

• Just … nothing. 
• Wait, I take that back. "Lewt McCanles" is a pretty great/awful name.
• Also, that's pretty high praise from Cain. 

Page 123~

They rode for a couple of hours after dark and when they camped Coz wouldn't let Lewt light a fire. They were uncomfortable that night—thirsty and sore, and Lewt felt sick and couldn't eat the jerky Coz had brought along. 

I'm sure there is some very thick sexual tension here — if only I could understand all this coded language.

~RP

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Paperback 594: Pal Joey / John O'Hara (Penguin 580)

Paperback 594: Penguin 580 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Pal Joey
Author: John O'Hara
Cover artist: Uncredited (jonas???)

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• I love the early Penguin covers because of their interesting, abstract quality. Even when they're representational (as here) there seems to be this attention primarily to form and shape and color. The gorgeous, stylized (and floating?) ashtray and cigarette, the ovate spotlight, the wackadoodle yellow font, the lopped-off parallelogram of the microphone. It's not as beautiful as this later cover by Barye Phillips (a movie tie-in featuring Sinatra), but it's pretty sweet nonetheless.
• Even the wee, all lower-case type of the author's name is making me happy. 
• The one thing that bothers me here is the part of his lapel / sleeve that looks like a cow's udder. Thankfully, that's in the shadows, but still...

Best things about this back cover:

• Book's got all its original permagloss, but it's a bit dirty. Sorry. 
• Not much to say about this. O'Hara is a deeply underrated writer. His short stories are particularly captivating. And, of course, Appointment in Samarra rules. Highly recommended.

Page 123~

I give with the vocals and wolf around in a nite club and see the best and it is not good enough if I can call up the highest paid bag in Chi and get it for 1/2. Mostly at that time of the nite I want it for free and with love too at that.

~RP

REX-OMMENDATIONS! (things I've read or watched recently that are pulp/noir-related and good): Gun Machine by Warren Ellis (2013); Detour (d. Ulmer, 1945); Tomorrow Is Another Day (d. Feist, 1951) [had a lot of fun spontaneously live-tweeting this last one with a few other noir aficionados when it showed on TCM the other night—thinking about setting up some future TCM/noir live-tweeting event; stay tuned. Email or tweet me if interested...]

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Paperback 584: The Delicate Ape / Dorothy B. Hughes (Pocket Books 422)

Paperback 584: Pocket Books 422 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: The Delicate Ape
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $17


Best things about this cover:

• I have not read this book, but I dearly hope that this cover is some kind of surreal metaphor and not an actual scene from the book. 
• Who would pick this book up based on its cover? "Hmmm, I've always been curious about apes who are also sexual sadists and aesthetes ... I guess I'll give this a try."
• Love the flag motif against the camouflage background. It's like some horribly ill-conceived army recruitment poster. (Upon closer inspection, it's actually a camo-colored map of the world)

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, if you want to know what this book is about, that first paragraph really isn't going to help you much.
• I think the cover is a depiction of "a seductive force in evil hands." 
• I assume the information he has, the information everyone wants, is data on the disastrous consequences of a flower diet in the ape population.

Page 123~

"He's an old man. Something could happen."

"These opportune events do not often occur." Watkins scooped a spoon of ice cream. 

Spy's gotta eat.

~RP

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Paperback 573: Net of Cobwebs / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Bantam 26) (w / dust jacket)

Paperback 573: Bantam 26 (1st ptg, 1946) (dust jacket, undated)

Title: Net of Cobwebs
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited (original) / [signature appears to read "Gillen" ?!] (dust jacket)

Yours for: $75

Best things about this cover:

• I vote "Sucker!"
• This is what happens when you park your car in the living room.
• Peeping Toms get off on the strangest things...
• This is the cover of the dust jacket. As I have said before, dust-jacketed paperbacks are quite rare in any condition. This one is remarkably tight. Dust jacket and all its permagloss are completely intact and uncreased.

Best things about this back cover:

• I do like a "floating lady heads" cover.
• Wow, that red ink really bleeds. 
• One of those rare instances where it looks like the cover to the original hardback edition was better.

Here are the front and back covers of the original, un-dustjacketed edition:



Page 123~

He got out of bed, naked as a worm, and went to the window; there was a gray mist outside, but it was day. He could see the garage. And that made him remember all of it. Murder, blackmail, grief. Who wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea?

This was taken from her earlier short story, "The Worm Who Sold His Farm and Went to Sea."

~RP

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Paperback 554: The Secret Adversary / Agatha Christie (Avon 100)

Paperback 554: Avon 100 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: The Secret Adversary
Author: Agatha Christie
Cover artist: Bower (I don't know how I know this, or who this is—I'm just reading the ID tag I made years ago)

Yours for: SOLD! (9/3/12)
Best things about this cover:

• Mmm, the fine art gilded frame look is Classy.
• The quote is kind of enigmatic, esp. if you stop before the ellipsis. But even after the ellipsis, it sounds like they're saying "if you absolutely must read a crappy, preposterous novel, read this one."
• That man's fall bears no plausible relation to the blow he appears to have just taken. Maybe the guy in the hat just snatched his cane. Or maybe that thing on his face is a bat which has just flown into his nose.

Best things about this back cover:

• We've seen this before. This is what back covers looked like when paperback publishers felt they still had to justify the whole format to their readership.

Page 123~

Tuppence caught herself nervously looking over her shoulder. The big wardrobe loomed up in a sinister fashion before her eyes. Plenty of room for a man to hide in that ...

Silly Tuppence. Relax. Everyone knows wardrobes lead only to Narnia. Go see Mr. Tumnus! Then you'll be Tuppence & Tumnus (sitcom-ready relationship).

~RP

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Paperback 499: The Bamboo Blonde / Dorothy B. Hughes (Pocket Books 394)

Paperback 499: Pocket Books 394 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: The Bamboo Blonde
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $8

Best things about this cover:

• Fear Hand! (a damned good example of the form)
• "No! No! Not a wart! Not now! Leonard will think I'm hideous! I'll be the pariah of the cotillion."
• She's got Norma Desmond eyes.
• Those curls are so perfectly circular and evenly set. Looks like her hair was made from some kind of mold or forge.
• People liked knowing *exactly* which book they were getting from Pocket Book. Just like McDonald's customers liked knowing exactly how many had been "served" before them.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Beautiful, but Dead, so ... I'll give you a 50% discount. Whaddya say?"
  CON SATTERLEE—good luck ever topping that name.
• "The debonair Kew! The strapping Ar! The feckless Ess! And the toothsome Tee!" 

Page 123~

But he couldn't, not in a billion light-years, be guilty of murder.

I don't know. A billion light-years is a stupidly long time (especially insofar as it's not a time at all).

~RP

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The P. Morrison Donations #2: Lady Ann / Donald Henderson Clarke (Avon 105)

Title: Lady Ann (1st ptg, 1946)
Author: Donald Henderson Clarke
Cover artist: Uncredited

Best things about this cover:

• Pencil Mustache is trying to change TV channels with his mind. Veronica Lake thinks maybe it's time to give it a rest.
• Hmm. A dress made of fondant. How avant-garde.
• This author sure likes to give his book's women's names.
• I *love* the little calling card stuck in the "frame" of this "painting." The "frame," however, is a hideous piece of ornate crap.

Best things about this back cover:

• Opaque paper!? That's my favorite kind of paper! Oh, boy!
• Resistant to "rough usage." So go ahead, smack your kids around with 'em. See if they don't retain their readability. And if a little blood gets on there, no matter, as they "can easily be washed clean."

Page 123~

"Aw, for Hell's sake!" Noodles Noonan exclaimed. "Shut up. You dirty, weazened little no-good leavings. Why would a fellow like me that can have any dame he wants be peeking through keyholes and roosting on roofs? You're nuts, fella. You don't know it, but you're coo-coo."

Noodles Noonan is a name to be reckoned with. And "leavings" is an amazing piece of bowdlerization. Coo-coo.

~RP

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Paperback 459: Spill the Jackpot / A.A. Fair (Dell 109)

Paperback 459: Dell 109 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: Spill the Jackpot
Author: A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: George A. Frederiksen

Yours for: $21

Best things about this cover:

• When slot machines get drunk (Xs for eyes, dead giveaway), they barf blood and skulls. True fact.
• This is a fantastic example of the bright, vivid, more abstract covers that Dell tended to feature in its early years. You don't really get the saucy, realistic, Great Girl Art covers until about 1948.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, no wonder people gamble. You can practically feel the monotony coming off the page.
• Is Hotel Sal Sagev a real place? 'Cause that's some painfully unimaginative naming. Diputs!
• "Boulder? Sure ... just go down Fremont here past Eighth and then it's just another 775 miles. You can't miss it."

Page 123~

Abruptly he turned and smiled at Bertha. "So sorry, Mrs. Cool, I interfered with you so early in the morning. Try and overlook it. If you people can learn to accept these interruptions philosophically, it's going to be a lot easier on you."

If you are a chronic interrupter, I suggest you memorize that last line. The key to being a dick effectively is: you must go all in.

~RP

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Paperback 361: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers (Penguin 596)

Paperback 361: Penguin 596 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Author: Carson McCullers
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• This looks like scraps from the picture file for a Monty Python animation sketch
• A rebus! I love these. OK, I'm going to say ... "Your heart cannot soar if your hands are chained ... and a kid sells fruit." Powerful stuff.
• Good example of the more abstract cover style of the '40s (jonas is legendary, and prolific)

Best things about this back cover:

• It's just a bio, so ... not much to say.
• Interesting how much focus is on her apparently surprising ability to treat "Negro" characters as if they were (news flash!) human beings. I guess that's all just in the Wright quote, but it stands out.
• This is my third "Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" cover. See also here and here.

Page 123~

Portia took up the Bible from the table in the center of the room. "What part you want to hear now, Grandpapa?"

"It all the book of the Holy Lord. Just any place your eye fall on will do."

~RP

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Paperback 356: The Cask / Freeman Willis Crofts (Penguin 575)

Paperback 356: Penguin 575 (1st ptg, 1946)

Title: The Cask
Author: Freeman Willis Crofts
Cover artist: Uncredited (jonas?)

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• It's a mystery. A mystery about ... a cask, I'm guessing. Hey, they can't all be Strip-Tease Girl.
• I like how there's a picture of a cask on the cover. In case I'd forgotten the title. I also like the wee mustachioed man.
• I do like the color scheme. And the soft tones and surreal shapes of the buildings and street.

Best things about this back cover:

• Freeman Willis [zzzzzzzzzz....]. This is *literally* more than you'd ever want to know about Freeman Willis Crofts.
  
• This is from when paperbacks were still trying to be highbrow and were taking themselves way too seriously. In just a few years things would get sexed up and pulped up and generally get interesting.

Page 123~

"It is with the utmost regret I have to tell you, M. Boirac, that your wife was undoubtedly murdered by strangulation. Further, you must know that she had been dead several days when that photograph was taken."

Wow. Blunt.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 26

Title: The Lost God & Other Adventure Stories
Author: John Russell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $5

• A book about black people with bones in their noses worshiping the mysterious aquanautical god of the sea ... this is sure to be inoffensive!
• It took me so long to see what was going on in that lower right corner. I thought there was some weird dude in a white mask and owl poncho following the lead dancer. But the owl poncho is a shield and the white mask is the aquanaut's shin and what I thought was some odd hair/helmet is the head of a man who is looking for the contact lens he just lost.

• "Doubloons!" — this word is inherently amusing.
• "... have been favorably compared to ..." HA ha. Way to skirt the specifics. "These stories are reminiscent of Kipling and O. Henry, in that they are printed on paper and in English."

Page 123~

Ah, they were striking at each other's naked breasts, these two. With naked weapons. And neither of them shirked it. Not the girl, who sent back as good as she got—not Bibi-Ri, who took even that last terrible thrust.

Oh, Henry!

~RP

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