Paperback 1158: Easy to Kill / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 319)

Paperback 1158: Pocket Books 319 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Easy to Kill

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Hawes

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10

Best things about this cover: 

• Wow, he really is easy to kill. Just tickle his clavicle and there he goes. Done for.
• Some of the worst hand art I've ever seen. That reaching left hand ... it's kind of a Fear Hand, but it's also a ghost hand, as well as a "my thumb in a mini-croissant" hand. Is he reaching for a light switch? Making shadow puppets? Scratching a blackboard in hopes that the sound will drive the devil away? A truly bizarre monstrosity.
• And that other hand isn't much better. It's more like a tree branch, or a really bloody mop.
• Love a clear artist's signature. There's not an artist credit, and I don't have a single Hawes in my collection, so I don't know what the first name is.
• For an 80-year-old book, this one is in remarkably good condition. Very minor warping and surface wear, but otherwise apparently unread.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Oh, "It's very easy to kill." I see. Now.
• So the title is Easy to Kill and the back cover tagline is "It's Very Easy to Kill" and the last line of the back cover blurb is "It's very easy to kill." I've got just one question: is killing hard? I hear it's hard.
• If I could kill people with "a special look," the bodies ... my god the bodies ... 

Page 123~

"I'm pretty good at taking care of myself too. Hard-boiled, I should think you'd call me."

No, I won't be doing that. If you have to tell people you're hard-boiled, odds are that you're no such thing.

~RP

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Paperback 1052: Gold Comes in Bricks / A.A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) (Dell 84)

Paperback 1052: Dell 84 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Gold Comes in Bricks
Author: A.A. Fair (pseud. of Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Condition: 5/10
Estimated value: $15

Best things about this cover:

• Gold comes in testicles
• It looks like honey, and if you gotta go, I say asphyxiated by honey is the way!
• Really love the early Dell covers, which had no pretensions to realism. Much more interested in evoking feeling with shape and color than in getting the perspective or anatomy right
• Check out the jaunty cursive on the author's name. The early pb was the wild west, from a design perspective. Everyone still experimenting, going nuts.
• This is the Platonic ideal of the "Reading Copy." Beat to hell, but still tight and complete and unfragile. They don't make 'em like they used to!

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• Uh ... this could be more interesting. Two nondescript hotel rooms! Thrill to the architectural possibilities!
• LOL "Corridor," thanks, map

Page 123~

The machine shops had moved. The office stood deserted. There was an air of funereal despair about the town. Those who were left went dejectedly about their business, moving with the listless lassitude of persons who have lost their chance at winning big stakes and are plugging away simply because they can't figure out how to quit.

Ouch. I feel seen. And accused.

~RP

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Paperback 945: GI Jokes / Compiled by Lou Nielsen (Dell 77)

Paperback 945: Dell 77 (PBO, 1945)

Title: G.I. Jokes
Compiled by: Lou Nielsen
Cover art: [William Strohmer]

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• A catalogue of acceptable and unacceptable [Laugh syllables] in crossword puzzles. HEH! HAHA! HOHO! All fine, but once you get into the HAWs, things get dicey, and HEEEE! ... well, that's right out. And now all I want to do is put it in a puzzle grid...
• This dude seems So Happy to be a G.I.
• The cover design here is really nice. Clean and bright, with fantastic font action, and an explosion of brown chalk marks that looks simultaneously explosive and floral ... or like a barrel just fell apart and this dude's smiling mug was what was inside.

Best things about this back cover:

• Everything. Just ... all of it. I am in love with all of it.
• Speaking of crosswords: WAC.
• Love the surreal mass of female humanity in the background, contrasted with the strong, luminescent isolation of our discriminating main character and her frustrated antagonist.

Page 123~



~RP

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Paperback 849: Warrant for X / Philip MacDonald (Pocket Books 328)

Paperback 849: Pocket Books 328 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Warrant for X
Author: Philip MacDonald
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-15


Best things about this cover:

• "Light, damn you! Stupid modern, flame retardant bodies! I want s'mores now!"
• By far the fanciest lamppost you're likely to see on any of my covers.
• I genuinely love how the body spills out of frame. And the color scheme. And the "X".

Best things about this back cover:

• "Kidnapping!" is pretty anti-climactic. "Cannibalism!" was about what I was expecting with that build-up.
• They used to tell you how much it would cost to ship the book to a soldier overseas. Now it's just "Share it with anyone in a uniform, don't ask us what it costs, how should we know?" I hope people gave books to their diner waitresses.

Page 123~

He said: "I'm a busy man. Great matters hang upon my every word and action." He drank coffee. "I might justly be likened to the spider."

Though not lacking in confidence, Anthony was still working on his metaphor skills.

~RP

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Paperback 789: Having Wonderful Crime / Craig Rice (Pocket Books 289)

Paperback 789: Pocket Books 289 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Having Wonderful Crime
Author: Craig Rice
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• Bubbles! Wait, why are the martinis bubbling? Please don't say "that's champagne" because those are not champagne glasses.
• Also, stars! Because … because!
• I feel like Nick and Nora Charles are *just* out of frame.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wait, does that say "decapitated bride"? That's pretty gruesome for a 1940s crime comedy.
• Ha ha scare-quote *burn* on "free" verse.
• This book actually sounds kind of awesome.

Page 123~

"Yes, but the thing is," the medical examiner said again, "where is the other body, and where is the other head?"

My favorite part of that quotation is "again."

~RP

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Paperback 743: The High Window / Raymond Chandler (Pocket Books 320)

Paperback 743: Pocket Books 342 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The High Window
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: E. McKnight Kuffer

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Well, they can't all be sexy. 
• As abstract/representational hybrid covers go, this one's pretty cool (is there a word for that style? pretty common on '40s paperbacks). There's a nice dramatic interplay between that angry red building, with its crazily barred windows, and the lonely falling silhouette.
• This guy's got a weird signature. Had to look it up. I think the letters read "E MCK K" (for E. McKnight Kuffer)
• For a more, let's say, realistic version of this cover, see Paperback 91.

Best things about this back cover:

• This description is just a mess of "things that might appear in a mystery novel." Not even much of an attempt to take it out of list form.
• Not sure what number incarnation of the pocket kangaroo we're up to here, but I like this one, with the joey holding the book for bespectacled mom.
• Other war-time books tell you exactly what postage you'll need to send the book to a soldier. Here, the plea is much vaguer. Can I "share" it with my diner waitress? She's in "uniform."

Page 123~

I felt myself getting pinched around the nose. My mouth felt dry. I needed air. I took another deep breath and another dive into the tub of blubber that was sitting across the room from me on the reed chaise-longue, looking as unperturbed as a bank president refusing a loan.

My new life's goal is to own a reed chaise-longue. Wait. Nope. On further research, it looks like a rickshaw for Victorian invalids, so I'm good.

~RP

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Paperback 406: Dark Power / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Black Cat No. 14)

Paperback 406: Black Cat No. 14 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Dark Power
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: "F.W." (any idea? anyone?)

Yours for: $22


Best things about this cover:

• "I am the eye in the sky / Looking at you-u-u / I can read your mind..."
• LOVE how the tree is reaching out to pick up the lady.
• This reminds me of the opening of Henry James's "Turn of the Screw": "Oh boy, a new job, I can't wait! I hope the kids are interesting ... uh ... wait. This can't be right. Hello?"
• It also reminds me a Very late-career Bette Davis movie called ... hang on ... aha, "Burnt Offerings!" Look, the movie poster even features the creepy old house with the single attic window lit up! Bette Davis! It's good/bad, for sure.

• To be honest, I think the front cover of Dark Power is kind of beautiful. And that logo—so great they dedicated the whole back page to it.

["This is not the book you seek. Back away, slowly ..."]

Page 123~ (book only 120 pages long, so ... p. 23!)

Pale, unusually serious, she went down the stairs. And there in the lounge she saw a stranger, a tall, fair-haired young man, sitting stretched out in an armchair, and smoking a cigarette. When he caught sight of her, he rose.

Wow, that last sentence ... there's a lot in just those two final words. Sets the stage for one of his next lines: "I thought you were going to be repulsive [...] horn-rimmed spectacles — you know — one of these nice girls."

~RP

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Paperback 391: Confessions of a Part Time Bride / Hall Bennett (Love Novel 4)

Paperback 391: Love Novel 4 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: Confessions of a Part Time Bride
Author: Hall Bennett
Cover artist: "J.C."

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• When they say "hands are hard to draw," they aren't kidding. Yikes.
• What's most interesting to me are the *tiniest* suggestions of "bed": head is on a pillow, which I can tell is a pillow only by seeing the corner (which merges w/ the end of the word "Bride"); the small bit of ruffle on her shoulder, suggesting a frilly nightgown; the prominent ring emphasizing "it's marital!," raising questions about the suggestive "Part Time" part of the title ...
• Really like the font on "Part Time Bride." Really wish "Part Time" were properly punctuated.

Best things about this back cover:

Kind of a cool logo, actually. It's all very saucy for the mid-'40s, frankly.

Page 123~

"It's probably just another poor fish—customer to you, sugar. Those birds—the police, I mean—aren't likely to be so reticent."

Well, that's one way to handle slang in your stories.

~RP

Paperback 327: The Case of the Constant Suicides / John Dickson Carr (Dell 91)

Paperback 327: Dell 91 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Case of the Constant Suicides
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Gerald Gregg does great borderline-abstract covers. Bold shapes and colors. Simple, but I like it a lot.
• That is some thick, thick, possibly polyethylene blood.
• I'm trying to imagine what "constant suicides" could possibly mean. Are they literally occurring non-stop, around the clock? That's rough.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• I want to live in Angus Campbell's room.
• The only castle in all of Scotland made entirely of red Legos.
• I'm not buying "Courtyard." Looks more like "Sheep Pen."

Page 123~

"No, my boy. The real meat of the thing is here." Dr. Fell made the pages riffle like a pack of cards. "In the body of the diary. In the account of this activities for the past year."

He frowned at the book and slipped it into his pocket. His expression of gargantuan distress had grown along with his fever of certainty.

"Hang it all!" he said, and smote his hand on his knee. "The thing is inescapable! Elspat steals the diary. She reads it. Being no fool, she guesses—"

"Smote!" I didn't know anyone but God ever did that. Cool.

~RP

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Paperback 165: Omnibook, August 1945 (incl. excerpt of "Black Boy" by Richard Wright)

Paperback 165: Omnibook, August 1945

• Includes: "Authorized abridgments of four best-selling books," including "Black Boy" by Richard Wright - plus a "Back of the Book" essay by Bennett Cerf
• Cover artist: Stefan Salter

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• He's cyanotic! Clear! Stat! Seven cc's of ... something (my 1990s "e.r." lingo has run out)
• This painting is eerie and gorgeous. That kid is scaring the hell out of me, though. He does not look happy. He looks like he wants his lunch money back.
• I don't know if Salter intended for the kid's collar (the open neck part) to sort of kind of look like an outline of Africa, but either way - awesome.
• I have a student who looks just like this kid. Well, he's just dark black, not blue, but that combination of menace and wonder in the eyes - the likeness is startling. Sadly, said student is currently in maximum security prison.

Best things about this back cover:

• Hey, Bennett Cerf - I may know him from such game shows as "What's My Line?"
• This article is actually really engaging - too bad it's "to be continued" inside the magazine (where you can't see it).
• The cartoons in the corners are fabulous.
• This article is reminding me that I have Terry Teachout's bio of Mencken still waiting for me, unread, on the bookshelf downstairs. I basically live my life surrounded by books that are staring at me, disgusted at my never having read them.

Page 123~

from "Coming Home," By Lester Cohen:

There was something about Stell, he thought, if she kissed you, if it was the real thing to her, the rest just came with it.

"The rest?" What? Her lungs? Her lunch?

~RP

Paperback 116: The Dain Curse / Dashiell Hammett (Pocket Books 295)

Paperback 116: Pocket Books 295 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Dain Curse
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: sadly, uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "Demons, I cast thee out!"
• Where did her pupils go?
• This is the rare "beheading" cover (I'm kidding - though her head does look like it was photo-shopped, badly, onto her torso)
• I think her head has snapped back in revulsion from her assailant's fetid odor. That may explain the disappearing pupils as well.
• I do like how he knocks her head so hard it goes out of frame.

Best things about this back cover:

• "... and you're cursed with your mother's blood on your hands in babyhood" - aside from being enigmatic and disturbing ... "Babyhood?" Is that a word? Sounds like a good title for a talking babies movie starring at least one of the Wayans Brothers and, oh, let's say Ice Cube. It'll be like "Baby Geniuses," only ... blacker.
• This may be the first book I've posted to feature the wartime exhortation to the reader to mail the book to a serviceman overseas. Very cool historical marking.

Page 123~

It was postmarked San Francisco, nine o'clock Saturday morning. Inside was a soiled and crookedly torn piece of brown wrapping paper, with one sentence - as poorly printed with pencil as the address - on it: "Any body that wants Mrs. Carter can have same by paying $10000-----" There was no date, no salutation, no signature.

~RP

Paperback 59: The Mighty Blockhead / Frank Gruber (Superior M655)

Paperback 59: Superior Reprint M655 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The Mighty Blockhead
Author: Frank Gruber
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• Boring art, but one of the better titles of its time. Memorable, at any rate.
• Frank Gruber was the poor man's ERLE Stanley Gardner. He could crank it out. He was a serious working writer, getting paid pennies a word to write in nearly every genre imaginable. He wrote a really informative book about working for the pulps called Pulp Jungle. Out of print, but possibly in your better libraries. I own a first edition, but I'm dorky that way.
• Superior Reprints were bought up by, I think, Bantam, sometime in the late 40's. Remaining Superior books were then issued in dust-jacketed versions, which are Very Hard to come by. I think I have about 5 dust-jacketed paperbacks in my entire 2000+ book collection. One of them is Frank Gruber's Navy Colt, which I bought, in near perfect condition, for $4. Just writing that makes me smile.

Best things about this back cover:

• Nobody could rock the pencil mustache quite like Frank Gruber. You don't see them much anymore, but they were a staple of character actors (and pulp writers, I guess) from the 30s well into the 50s.
• Here again, you see the convention of listing all the odd jobs that a writer did before he "hit it big." These jobs are at least within the plausibility ballpark.

RP