Paperback 682: Signet S1817 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Temptress
Author: Carter Brown
Cover artist: Barye Phillips

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• That is some spectacular cleavage. The "the" looks like it wants to go hide in there.
• This "standing woman / dead man" cover is a type. I feel the need to go back and tag all the others "SWDM"—it says everything about the ambivalent erotics of vintage paperback cover art.
• That font is sassy. It doesn't scare me, though. Looks like the opening credits of a '60s sitcom.

Best things about this back cover:

• I'm confused by "just." It assumes a baseline opinion that "murder" is a pretty word. It's a horrendously ugly word.
• So Chandler writes "Trouble Is My Business" and then for decades other writers / copyeditors copy, parody, and generally dead-horse the hell out of that phrase.
• LOVE that we can see here what important cultural touchstones "Peyton Place" and "Lolita" were for the late '50s/early '60s world. 
• "An August Signet Paper Edition"—"August" ... like, the adjective? That is unexpected. In fact, just plain weird. Also, likely, not true.

Page 123~

"Yeah," he nodded. "She had the pictures and we burned 'em. We didn't know there was more of them—figured they were the only ones he had!"

Incriminating photos / blackmail schemes are the topic of 59.8% of all hard-boiled stories. Give or take.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 681: Popular Library 443 (PBO, 1952)

Title: Sweet and Deadly
Author: Verne Chute
Cover artist: [A. Leslie Ross]

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• So Many Great Things that I'm kind of paralyzed. I saw this last weekend at a bookshop in Ithaca and snapped it up without even looking at the price. I think this is one of my 20 favorite covers of all time.
• So Much Action. The cover would be worth it for her alone—the baddest-looking Girl With a Gun in my collection—but we get Smashed Face McTireIron thrown into the bargain as well. How many ways were they planning on killing that poor blond guy?
• Suicide doors!
• Double Fear Hand! Or is he just dancing because she said so?
• The art here balances pure hard-boiled action with a soft, luminous delicacy. Love.

Best things about this back cover:

• That's what they all say.
• Wow, that's some pretty overt gropiness there at the beginning.
• "What did you say your name was? 'Methane?'" "It's MEL Thane, doll. Don't you forget it." "I already have."
• If that blond guy is Mel, I am *super* glad she shot him.

Page 123~

Mel's match lighting a cigarette made a harsh sound. "I've got a sort of client who's being blackmailed. He managed to steal a few things out of a blackmail mob's file . . ."

Ew, Mel is the *detective* in this story? Oh well, my desire that he get shot stands.

~RP

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Paperback 680: Dell 338 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: The Lady Regrets
Author: James M. Fox
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• Unexpected dog attack! I imagine these are actors on a movie set and the dog has *nothing* to do with the picture. Which would explain ... everything.
• The rarely seen Male Fear Hand!
• Her boobs are upset that they have been so dramatically upstaged.
• This cover has done the impossible, which is to offer me bondage and have me barely even notice said bondage. Angry dog trumps all.
• That dog is highly opposed to the copping of feels.
• "Black Room Murder" sounds made-up. If you google it (in quotes) you get several references to this book.

Best things about this back cover:

• Los Angeles!
• Possibly the most satellite-like Mapback I've ever seen. It's just ... lines. I (still) love it.
• "A Grim Game of Find-The-Girl" = awesome description of half of all hard-boiled crime stories.

Page 123~

"So now you know, Jackson," I said, stepping on the cigarette butt to kill it.

If I focus on just this sentence, I can persuasively argue that this book is exceedingly well written.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 679: Dell 323 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: Murder and the Married Virgin (a Michael Shayne Story)
Author: Brett Halliday
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• So ... I'm guessing he's "The Married Virgin"
• I like how she is wearing an snow leopard-fringed cape and how it magically adheres to her back in defiance of all the laws of physics.
• This is an oddly romantic / sweet / slicks-type illustration. Where is my Sleaze!?
• I would not willingly live in the '40s but people did dress awesomer.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• Barbie Dream House!
• That library is impressive.
• This illustration raises the question—does anything at all happen on the left side of the house?

Page 123~

"You're after something" Shane reasoned bitterly.

Wow, that is some unfortunate verb+adverb action.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 678: Gold Medal s937 (PBO, 1959)

Title: Four From Planet 5
Author: Murray Leinster
Cover artist: [Paul] Lehr

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Yes, if I were in Antarctica, these kids would indeed freak me the fuck out. I would make that exact trepidatious gesture with my left hand ("Fear Hand!"). But wait ... he has a camera on a tripod. Maybe they're a singing group and he's their manager and they're terribly lost and he's decided to use this free time to take some promotional photographs. Yes, that makes sense.
• I really, really wish I could see the guy's face. Seems crucial. I need to know how I'm supposed to feel about this Aryan Children's Brigade. My default position is "terrified." 
• The cover copy does imply that "unknown terror" is a given, and we're just waiting around to figure out what kind. 

Best things about this back cover:

• "Utterly invincible telepaths will broadcast your shabby sins to the world! Gird yourselves!"
• I assume this ends with the kids forming a band and singing their way into civilization's heart. Or with the revelation that one of the kids is really Jesus. 

Page 123~

"The kid got past three electric fences, and we don't know how. He must know plenty about electricity."

Brilliant. I'm now rooting for the kid.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 677: Bantam 920 (1st ptg, 1951)

Title: Scottsboro Boy
Author: Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad
Cover artist: Joseph Hirsch

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Tagline should probably be a bit more specific: "The Shocking Truth about Black Men in Prison on Charges of Raping White Girls in Ultra-Racist Alabama"
• In case you didn't know, this case is super-famous in the history of Civil Rights.
• I love how this is just a straight-up portrait, and all the drama is in the background details—white lawman with a club; "Alabama" and "South(ern?)" partially blocked by man's head; fittingly Black & White rail crossing guard sticking straight up; etc.
• I like his suspenders.

Best things about this back cover:

• I am unsure how I feel about the characterization "Jungle Conditions"—sounds sympathetic, but "jungle" is one of those words that hovers disparagingly around black people. All the time. I've been deep into 1923 newspapers this month, and I'm more familiar than I'd like to be with the vast and colorful language of racism.
• Interesting to have an Alabama paper blurb this book.
• Like the shadowed font on "Scottsboro Boy" here.

Merle had a funny sense of justice. He didn't want to see anybody injure anybody else. He'd kill the guy that injured the other one.

Paperback 676: Dell 262 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Rope
Author: Uncredited [Don Ward] ("from the famous play by Patrick Hamilton")
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• Hello, handsome.
• Fantastic early movie tie-in. Weird that there is No Writing Credit, anywhere. I do not think that Alfred Hitchcock "wrote" this, in any meaningful sense of that word. I thought "novelizations" got credit. But maybe not in this era (?).
• Gerald Gregg's cityscape is an understated but gorgeous detail.

Best things about this back cover:

• Hell yeah, mapback! 3D mapback!
• I've seen more interesting mapbacks, but I do like how much detail you can see in this house. The arc of the coffee table, the tile pattern in the bathroom. 
• That keyhole eyeball really is one of the great icons in paperback history. Up there with the damned kangaroo.

Page 123~

Something seemed to be slowly tearing in Phillip's mind, destroying the fabric of his slim residue of control.

Wow. "The fabric of his slim residue of control" has all the elegance of a rusted-out Ford Fiesta.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]