Paperback 714: The Violent Hours / Frank Castle (Gold Medal 554)

Paperback 714: Gold Medal 554 (PBO, 1956)

Title: The Violent Hours
Author: Frank Castle
Cover artist: Lu Kimmel

Yours for: $14


Best things about this cover:

• "Hi, Murder? Hi! I was wondering, if you weren't too busy, maybe you'd like to come over for some love? .... You would!? Great! I'll put on something red and light a candle. See you soon!"
• There is a whole subgenre of cover art that involves Girls Spilling Over The Edges Of Beds. Here's one. I know I've seen Many, many more.
• This position offers Optimal Breast Viewing but does pretty terrible things to every other part of the body. Her hair looks like a wasp's nest.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Ooh, it's half past murder. Time to look in my pants again!"
• "Sheeted."
• "Webb Grayburn" is not a name that inspires confidence. Sounds like a guy who owns an above-ground pool dealership.
• OK, it's mostly text, but I still love the asymmetrical, crayon-like design with the whimsical, face-free clock hands. 
• The book comes pre-distressed, so the actual wear and tear around the edges of the book fits right in with the book's original aesthetic.

Page 123~

It became so quiet in the room that the distant clatter of a teletype became loud.

It's not the most elegant sentence, by a longshot, but I do like the aural experience it provides.

~RP

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Paperback 54: Nero / Frank Castle (Avon T-521)

Paperback 54: Avon T-521 (1st ptg, 1961)

Title: Nero
Author: Frank Castle
Cover artist: Uncredited (but possibly James Meese - see if you agree)


"Man, why does Nero get all the hot semi-naked chicks, while I gotta wear this silly pants-less uniform with 75-lb headgear? It's not fair. I'm telling mom."

Best things about this cover:

• Yet another example of the nipple-free female - the great unheralded malady of mid-20th-century America (and ancient Rome, I guess)
• Love the emperor's expression and pose: "That's right. I'm the emperor. Naked ladies love me, not you. Whaddya gonna do about it, Mr. Feather-headed No-Pants? Nothing. Peel me a grape, that's what you're gonna do."
• Spine reads: "A Historical by Frank Castle" - I love when I can comment on a book's spine. They really knew how to use the Whole Book back in the day...
• The cover is well and truly beautiful, actually. The colors, the composition ... I'm telling you, this cover isn't spectacular, but walk into any Barnes & Noble and check out the front table and you'll see how badly modern book design / cover art suffers by comparison. This painting is rich in color and detail. It's textured. It's fundamentally not cooked up in some advertising lab.
• Sword = drooping phallus = sad Centurion
• I don't require much of my novels ... as long as they are "throbbing."

RP

Paperback 15: Gold Medal 605

Paperback 15: Gold Medal 605 (PBO, 1956)

Title: Dead - and Kicking
Author: Frank Castle
Cover artist: Mitchell Hooks

Yours for: $12

Best things about this cover:

• My eyes! If that skirt's stripes were any color other than gray, I think I'd be having seizures right about now.
• Gray-striped skirt over gray-striped skirt against scribbly ochre background and scribbly gray background. This is one of the most deliberately ugly covers ever (and Mitchell Hooks is a fabulous cover artist, so I have no idea what happened here)
• "Francy" appears to be having a stroke (her right hand!). Wait, which one's "Francy?" The big woman or the small, dead one? Are those supposed to be the same woman? I'd ask that guy in the middle there with the gun and the guilty expression, but he seems anxious to get somewhere.
• Hmm, I'm not familiar with that use of the verb "bloomed" ...
• Red heels. No victim's outfit is complete without them.

Best things about this back cover:

• Correct use of "whom" in penultimate paragraph
• "Desperately enough to comb California for her" - wow, that is desperate
• Apparently in the 50's, plastic surgery had not yet been done on anything but the nose; that, or her body was magically resistant to physical manipulation of any kind: "nothing on earth could alter a single curve of that wonderful body of her..." Really, not even, I don't know, a chainsaw? A year's supply of french fries? Nothing?
• Did that dude shoot himself? His gun is smoking, but he's lurching backward like he's been hit.
• Beware the giant floating head of Francy!

RP