Paperback 1150: The Hollow / Agatha Christie (Pocket Books 485)

Paperback 1150: Pocket Books 485 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Hollow

Author: Agatha Christie

Cover artist: Uncredited

Condition: 8/10

Value: $10

[Still more Agatha Christie from this summer, Autumn Leaves, Ithaca, NY, 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• She criticized his taste in statuary once too often!
• She criticized his Brylcrem obsession once too often!
• "Hold still, darling, while I smother you in THE HOLLOW of my neck"
• Man they are really doing battle for "worst hair."
• Huh. It doesn't look like he "inspires dangerous passion" so much as he "lavishes unwanted attention on women such that they are inspired to drive knitting needles into his neck."
• What are those things in her hand, anyway? I honestly have no guess. Part knitting needles part riding crop part busted umbrella. Whatever it is, I assume she's about to plant it right in his cherubic face.

Best things about this back cover: 

• Most accusations "for all to hear" are not "whispered," in my admittedly limited experience of guys dying near swimming pools.
• This is a pretty weak teaser. Also, a truly unnecessary explanation of what Hercule Poirot is going to do. "Oh, is he going to ask questions and gain insight into the character of suspects!? How novel!"
• I'm no legal scholar, but I'm pretty sure that a detective cannot "convict the guilty one."

Page 123~

"Oh, Gudgeon," said Lady Angkatell, "about those eggs. I meant to write the date in pencil on them as usual. Will you ask Mrs. Medway to see to it?"

This book is truly committed to insane names. Gerda and Gudgeon and Angkatell, and then of course there's Henrietta: "Henrietta Savernake [!] — a talented sculptress who sometimes cheats at cards" (per the "Cast of Characters"). As long as one of them writes the damn date on the damn eggs, I'm sure everything will be fine.

~RP

P.S. sorry for the two-week hiatus. Surgery + a cold + a threefold increase in teaching responsibilities really put me back on my heels. But I'm back at it now, 2-3x week for the foreseeable future.

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Paperback 1143: Six Times Death / William Irish (Popular Library 137)

Paperback 1143: Popular Library 137 (PBO 1948)

Title: Six Times Death

Author: William Irish (pseud. of Cornell Woolrich)

Cover artist: Uncredited [would guess H. Lawrence Hoffman, but that's a guess]

Condition: 7/10 

Value: $50

[The Book Den, Santa Barbara, CA, Aug. 2025]

Best things about this cover: 

• Such a weird cover. Looks more like an animation still than a typical paperback cover painting. I love the little firemen silhouettes. At least I think they're firemen. They're a little ominous. Kinda look like cops who've shown up to a house in the middle of the night to fill it full of lead (those hoses shoot awfully straight)
• Why does the fire look like a goddess who is about to snack on some hapless mortals?
• That blurb is the kind of blurb you write when you didn't read the book. "These are definitely [flips through book] short stories, which should please the kind of people who like that sort of thing"—NEW YORK TIMES
• Another great Cornell Woolrich paperback that I picked up for a (relative) song this summer. It contains the story "Marihuana," which, as a stand-alone paperback (Dell 10c), is one of the most iconic vintage paperbacks there is.

And today's back cover ...

Best things about this back cover: 

• Popular Library, again with the unindented paragraphs (see Paperback 1142). How did anyone tolerate this layout? It should've driven any copywriter or book designer crazy.
• "... the unbearable horror [that] can color a man's life, the sheer tragedy of fate's perversity, the macabre attraction of evil"—sounds like Being Alive in 2025!
• "... the futility of striving against a malevolent destiny" is pure noir stuff. The best laid plans go pffft. So much for heroism or any kind of meaningful human agency. Some things are just beyond you. It's Chinatown, as they say.

Page 123~ 

[from "Marihuana"]

    She only had one more dodge left. One more, and then the struggle for life was out of her. "Our song. Wait! I have it here—" She floundered across to a turntable, began shuffling through records with a furtive haste. One dropped, broke; another, a third; she didn't even stop to look at them. 

    She found one, fitted it on, set the needle arm. Then she turned to face him, at last gasp. Already more dead than alive. He had already killed her, all but her body. Life wasn't worth this price, anyway.

Turgid with melodrama, bordering on the comical there at the end, though I really like the bit with the records breaking. Propulsive prose. Vivid.

~RP

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Paperback 1128: Walls of Gold / Kathleen Norris (Pocket Books 488)

Paperback 1128: Pocket Books 488 (1st ptg., 1948)

Title: Walls of Gold

Author: Kathleen Norris

Cover artist: Earl Cordrey

Condition: 5/10

Value: $4-5

Best things about this cover: 

• She liked to make every new lover smell the blood of his predecessor. "How did you get his bl-?" "Shut up and smell, Steve. Then help me scrape the words off these walls of gold."
• I thought there was a speck of dirt on her right shoulder but it won't come off so maybe it's a mole?
• She married for position. And that's how she became left tackle for the Chicago Bears.

Best things about this back cover: 

• "... an elderly widower who gave her all the good things of life"—well, apparently not all the good things
• Three hypothetical questions on one back cover. That's asking (literally) a lot of the reader
• Wait, the rich guy is named "Ritchie?" I can't wait to meet Jimmy's other love interests, architect Sam Houseman and butcher Steve Mietz

Page 123~

Jimmy, who had to write all the notes of thanks, observed that some day they would build a beautiful home somewhere and put their new things into it. But Gordon was a little dubious about that. 

Jimmy, who could brook no dubiousness, quickly slit her new husband's throat, cleaned up the blood with a handkerchief, and then descended the staircase to show Steve what she'd done.

~RP

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Paperback 1076: Professional Lover / Maysie Greig (Pocket Books 541)

Paperback 1076: Pocket Books 541 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Professional Lover

Author: Maysie Greig

Cover artist: "Front cover photograph by Halleck (!?) Finley"

Condition: 6/10

Value: $4-7

[Another book from the recently acquired Larry D Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• I know it's a weird place to start, but her top is *amazing*. Zebra stampede!
• The perfect horizontal line from the top her head to the tip ofer her elbow, also amazing.
• I know "Making love to women is his job" sounds saucy, but it's 1948 so ... not so much (it just means he's a heartthrob movie star, sorry to disappoint).
• Dude is a dead ringer for Rock Hudson. I mean, if you ignore the rubberized hair piece, what the hell...
• I wonder how long they had to hold this pose. So much close breathing. Plus, his (giant!) hand looks like it's really working.
• The couch / wall color combo is particularly unappetizing.

Best things about this back cover:

• Dang, his lips are really going to town, maybe this will be hotter than I thought
• Rex Brandon, I buy. Starr Thayle, I buy less.
• Cover copy writers still using clunky phrases like "had been accorded," that's how you know you're still in the '40s. Although "crashing climax" and "flaming tale" (!!) show promise.
• Halleck? That's a fish, not a name.

Page 123~

All afternoon they had been taking and retaking a couple of scenes on the yacht. Rex couldn't get them to Stephen's satisfaction. Almost as though Stephen derived a grim satisfaction in making the great Rex Brandon go over and over a certain take.

I would love to have a funny take here, but once again the editor in me is like "Why are there two 'satisfaction's in here? Do you not hear the repetition? Does it not jar your eardrums?" Copywriter: "Well, if my writing is not to your satisf-" Me: "Stop." Copywriter: "It's just that satisf-" Me: "Say 'Satisfaction' Again, M*****F*****! I dare you."

~RP

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Paperback 1074: The Amboy Dukes / Irving Shulman (Avon 169)

Paperback 1074: Avon 169 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Amboy Dukes

Author: Irving Shulman

Cover artist: Ann Cantor

Condition: 7/10

Value: $25-30

[Another book from the recently acquired Larry D Collection]

Best things about this cover:

• A Wayward Youth Grows in Brooklyn
• Ooh, I did not know there was a movie tie-in variant cover for this (very famous) JD novel. Oddly thrilling. I mean, not as thrilling as my man's gaudy and shockingly wide tie, but thrilling nonetheless.
• Her eyebrows and his spit curl are Just So. Mwah. Perfect. Great hats, great attitude, just great all around.
• Drew Pearson! Oh sure, I know him, he's a ... [squints] ... noted commentator. Wow. That's a job title right there [runs off to update business cards]

Best things about this back cover:

• "Oh Frankie" "Oh Betty" [swelling music, heaving bosoms, sloppy kissing noises]
• "Frankie and Betty / Were sick of spaghetti / By the summer of seventy-five // They were tired and cold / They were 50 years old / They were barely alive" (thank you for coming to my Billy Joel tribute concert)
• I do like how they give the whole damn cover, edge to edge, over to this dramatically lit picture. I guess this is to prove that the movie is real and not just some weird marketing ploy.

Page 123~

"I love you, Frankie," Betty was hoarse with passion. 

"Will you ever leave me?" whinnied Frankie. "Neigh," hoarsed Betty.

~RP

P.S. I am so happy to be writing this blog regularly again. I do not care at all if the blog ever has a lot of readers, but I would like it to find its audience. Its weirdo niche. So if you ever wanted to hype it, in any way, to your nerdy friends, that would be rad. Thanks. Oh, and comments welcome. I love hearing what you all think of the books. XO

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Paperback 951: Skin and Bones / Thorne Smith (Pocket Books 490)

Paperback 951: Pocket Books 490 (3rd ptg, 1948)

Title: Skin and Bones
Author: Thorne Smith
Cover artist (and illus.): [Herbert Roese]

Estimated value: $not a lot
Condition: 3/10

Best things about this cover:

• Dang. I'm sure there's an innocent enough explanation for whatever is happening here, but for a late '40s cover, this is pretty ... saucy. It's like she's looking over her shoulder going, "Well, get on with it, then..." and he's trying to figure out how one removes these bloody stocking contraptions.
• I love that when I was tagging this post, the category of "all fours" already existed.
• Thorne Smith was a very big deal in the mid-century "humor" game.

Best things about this back cover:

• Frankly, this sounds amazing.
• "Hoarse, gamy laughter" is what I just emitted upon reading that phrase.
• I never noticed that the kangaroo, in this incarnation of the Pocket Books logo, kinda looks like he (!?) has a giant book erection.

Page 123~

"Sure," said the drunken mortician, growing a little tired of the Rev. Watts.

~RP

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Paperback 940: The Problem of the Wire Cage / John Dickson Carr (Bantam 304)

Paperback 940: Bantam 304 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Problem of the Wire Cage
Author: John Dickson Carr
Cover artist: Gilbert Fullington

Estimated value: $10-15
Condition: 9/10

Best things about this cover:

• Game, set, MURDER!
• MURDER, anyone?!
• MURDER commits a foot fault!
• "Oh my, I think he's dead. I'll just check his pulse. Let's see, I ... I just push my hand against his left shoulder, right? Like this? Right, Steve? Steve, honey, is this right? Knuckles-to-shoulder?"
• So much Fear Hand in this picture. They are both double-Fear-Handing it, for the rare QuadraFearHand™.
• "She's trapped in there with a corpse! How will I ever ... oh wait this is just a chain link fence, I'll just walk around ha ha silly me."

Best things about this back cover:

• MURDER has a respectable two-hand backhand!
• *Someone* has never solved a jigsaw puzzle, or sucks at metaphors.
• Old Nick Young, winner of Most Oxymoronic Name three years running. Take that, Big Steve Small!

Page 123~

"I suppose you know you could get into a lot of trouble for what you've been doing here today?"
The words jerked Hugh upright.

No more jerking, Hugh! 

~RP

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Paperback 897: Love Is the Winner / Natalie Shipman (Bantam 451)

Paperback 897: Bantam 451 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Love Is the Winner
Author: Natalie Shipman
Cover artist: Nelson Davis

Estimated value: ~$15

Best things about this cover:

• And Joan is the loser.
• You can tell by Joan's face that she is *not* going to lose her man to some cut-rate Lauren Bacall. "First, watercress sandwiches. Then ... revenge!"
• That knob at fake-Bacall's crotch level is, to put it mildly, distracting.
• I'd say the paperback title is an upgrade. "Who Wins His Love" = the "Who's on First" of book titles.

Best things about this back cover:

• I am serious when I say I want the top third of this cover on a t-shirt. WHAT'S A GIRL TO DO indeed.
• "Or shall she turn to another man..." Wait, were there really no other options in there?
• Are the demanding lips forming words that are demanding, or are they just ... really muscular and squirmy on your face?

Page 123~

"Are you having lunch with Jim?" Mrs. Converse had asked before she left.
"I'm going to telephone him," Kathy said. "He may be tied up."

I have to imagine him literally tied up, because otherwise this ends up being the single most boring Page 123 I've ever read.

~RP

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Paperback 896: Ecstasy Girl / Jack Woodford (Novel Library 2)

Paperback 896: Novel Library 2 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Ecstasy Girl
Author: Jack Woodford
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: ~$25

Best things about this cover:

• My armpits bring all the boys to the yard!
• Is that a cut-out or some kind of avant-garde necktie?
• "I'm hung down to here, baby." "Oh, Brad..."
• His hands are alarmingly tiny.

Best things about this back cover:

• I have decided that Handsome Gail Tanner's first name is Handsome so please don't tell me different.
• "Dropped an anatomic bomb!" That sounds both fun and grotesque.
• Ladies: if your earl does not provoke swoons, keep walking.

Page 123~

"Now, please, Miss Carter, please, don't excite yourself further." The station manager backed hastily away.

It's hard to back away hastily. You so often smash into things. Miss Carter's autoerotic adventures must have been truly startling.

~RP

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Paperback 812: The Black Curtain / Cornell Woolrich (Dell 208)

Paperback 812: Dell 208 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Black Curtain
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Cover artist: George Frederiksen

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Me: "Why is the right side of the cover all blacked out? … oh, that's the black curtain. I see…"
• The Michelin Man stalks his next victim.
• The Michelin Man is ready for his midnight duel.
• The Michelin Man feels deep satisfaction at how thoroughly he has painted the town red.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• 3=trees; 4=trees; 5=darker trees; 6=shrubs…
• Architectural blueprints! 
• You have to go through the pantry to get from the kitchen to the dining room?
• "Don't go in that room." "Why, what's in there?" "Old man." "O dear god!"

Page 123~

"How is it that don't have the estate fenced in?" he asked. "Leave it open like this for anyone to trespass—"

Pretty sure that first question is missing a word. Also pretty sure "We'll have to feel out way through the rough" (on the same page) contains a typo. So … no more blaming the internet for shitty editing.

~RP

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Paperback 778: The Old Man / William Faulkner (Signet 692)

Paperback 778: Signet 692 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Old Man
Author: William Faulkner
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• I like how they're both posing and flexing but there's no audience. "Don't I look like the Lancôme girl…?" "I went to GNC and then the gym so …" The ocean gave no reply.
• I was certain this was "The Old Man and the Sea." This book proves that Faulkner was (exactly) half the writer Hemingway was.
• I'm not feeling either violence or terror. I'm feeling people working on their tans.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Psst, I'm down here. Bottom left corner. Fuckers nearly cropped me out of my own author photo."
• "Desultorily" is a great word. Pretty sure I just read it in John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor, also in relation to a character's university education. 
• Faulkner's "stint in Hollywood" famously included co-writing the screenplay for "The Big Sleep" (with Leigh Brackett and that other guy whose name I always forget). 

Page 123~

When he saw the River again, he knew it at once.

Sorry. It was that, or a sentence that's about 90 miles long. No thanks.

~RP

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Paperback 777: The Thursday Turkey Murders / Craig Rice (Pocket Books 461)

Paperback 777: Pocket Books 461 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Thursday Turkey Murders
Author: Craig Rice
Cover artist: William Wirtz

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Would not have thought a cover featuring a half-naked woman could be this dull and ugly, but evidence is evidence.
• Seriously, terrible painting. I can't even glean context from this thing. Where is she? It's like she's in some creepy guy's ice-fishing shack, looking out in a Dali-esque winter landscape. After an earthquake that has left everything oddly atilt. Plus the painting is all smeary. Blargh.
• Craig Rice was a woman. See also Leigh Brackett. They both ghost-wrote novels for actor George Sanders in the 1940s.

Best things about this back cover:

• This book is part of Rice's "Bingo and Handsome" series, which is the title of a mediocre TNT comedy-crime drama waiting to happen.
• "Baby, your skin is the color of extra-thick whipping cream." Nope. You can say this in as many different voices as you like. Not sexy.
• I will say that "A figure that would have made Venus jump back into the ocean" is pretty damn good, as cover copy writing goes (admittedly low bar).

Page 123~

"Now a bullet from a high-powered rifle would go through a feller's head and come out the other side without making much of a hole, providing the feller had the right kind of bones in his skull and that the rifle was shot off from far enough way [sic]."

I have no idea what it means, but "The Right Kind of Bones" would make an excellent book title.

~RP

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Paperback 773: The Sea of Grass / Conrad Richter (Pocket Book 413)

Paperback 773: Pocket Book 413 (4th ptg, 1948)

Title: The Sea of Grass
Author: Conrad Richter
Cover artist: "Troop" (?)

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Pretty dour, tepid stuff. Two screen legends just looking at each other against a (literal?) sea of grass.
• I prefer a photo cover, or something more dynamic, for my movie tie-ins.
• The book's in startlingly good condition. That's about the only good thing I can say about it.

Best things about this back cover:

• It's not really fair if you fight only the *old* Indians.
• I see your problem, buddy. You got one of them there imported wives. You really gotta buy domestic.
• The "lowest possible price" is zero, Pocket Books, you liars.

Page 23~ (book's only 118 pp. long)

[A] spray of pink loco weed had been pinned freshly across her basque and she still moved with undiminished sparkle and aliveness.

I liked "loco weed" better before I looked it up and realized that it does not, in fact, make you "loco."

~RP

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Paperback 757: Hammett Homicides / Dashiell Hammett (Dell 223)

Paperback 757: Dell 223 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Hammett Homicides
Author: Dashiell Hammett
Cover artist: Gerald Gregg

Yours for: $30


Best things about this cover:

• Taste the (lead) rainbow!
• Uh, guys? I think it's probably dead now.
• I see a pretty butterfly.
• Gerald Gregg is my favorite early, semi-abstract, non-sleazy cover artist.

Best things about this back cover:

• [ahem] … MAPBACK!
• So iconic—Hammett's S.F.!
• Sausaleto? What the?! … aw, I can't stay mad at you, mapback! Come here!

Page 123~ (opening paragraph of "The Main Death")

The captain told me Hacken and Begg were handling the job. I caught them leaving the detectives' assembly room. Begg was a freckled heavyweight, as friendly as a Saint Bernard puppy, but less intelligent. Lanky Detective-Sergeant Hacken, not so playful, carried the team's brains behind his worried hatchet face.

~RP

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Paperback 676: Rope / Alfred Hitchcock [No Author Credit] [Don Ward] (Dell 262)

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

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Paperback 507: Guilty Bystander / Wade Miller (Penguin Signet 677)

Paperback 507: Penguin Signet 677 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Guilty Bystander
Author: Wade Miller
Cover artist: jonas

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• It's like someone threw a vase painted with a decorative seascape right into this dude's eye. That, or his right eye is a kind of dream projector. And he dreams of ... a boat.
• Was Jesus crucified on that boat? There are three crosses. And blood.
• I love jonas's work. More surreal and abstract than the representational style that would come to predominate in the '50s (James Avati covers would come to define the Signet aesthetic once Signet was no longer in this weird hybrid phase with Penguin)

Best things about this back cover:

• Wacky photo!
• Ugh, early pb designers really did flounder—picture should be at least three times its current size and the absurdly long bio + extensive summary of critical history should be cut to ... virtually nothing. This was back when publishers imagined that paperback consumers cared about things like "critics." I mean, can you imagine someone using the word "encomiums" on a crime fiction (or romance or thriller or western) cover today?
• When did people start using the phrase "Hammett-Chandler school" and can we go back in time and unstart using it?
• Boucher was essentially the only critic taking all this crime stuff seriously, so you see him quoted A Lot. He was a big fan of "unexaggerated hardness." But who isn't!?

Page 123~

Ham and eggs and two cups of coffee cost sixty-two cents. Max Thursday put them away at an all-night joint on Market Street and strode in to the Bridgway, jingling three pennies in his pocket. Despite the beating, he felt fairly good. 

~RP

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Paperback 498: Ride the Pink Horse / Dorothy B. Hughes (Dell 210)

Paperback 498: Dell 210 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Ride the Pink Horse
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Cover artist: [Gerald Gregg]

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• That zombie is going to Town on that horse flank!
• "Riding the Pink Horse" would make a great slang phrase / euphemism. Maybe for ... when you are consuming lots of Pepto Bismol. Ask me about my two other suggestions! (warning: they involve sexuality and menstrual flow, respectively)
• I know some carnival rides give people motion sickness, but I had no idea a carousel could wreck a guy that bad. Down to his hair.

Best things about this back cover:

• Mapback!
• Visually, this not that interesting. Just a cluster of dots on a lined white back ground. Like someone used it for target practice. Nice cluster.
• I love the expressive lines coming off the Cross of the Martyrs. Nice comic booky touch.
• But what is that thing projecting out from beneath it? Sconces Gone Wild!

Page 123~

"I'd take a drink. This Sunday law is a hindrance. To a working man."

"... and that's the last thing I remember saying. Three days later I came to, draped over a carousel horse, my mouth tasting of cigarettes, vomit, and whore."

~RP

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Paperback 460: American Sexual Behavior and the Kinsey Report (Bantam 227)

Paperback 460: Bantam 227 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: American Sexual Behavior and the Kinsey Report
Authors: Morris L. Ernst and David Loth
Cover artist: N/a

Yours for: $11

Best things about this cover:

• Just consider this a sucky cover interlude—if I'm gonna put up all my books, then I'm gonna put up all my books.

Best things about this back cover:

• The authors have done a service to the "lay public." That sounds about right.
• Now that I see the cover of the original hardbound edition, I realize I own this book in both editions. Weird.

Page 123~

The Kinsey Report may save a good many homes

For instance, if you get enough of them together, you can fashion a levee.

~RP 

P.S. please enjoy this forgotten bookmark, which I just pulled from the book while looking for p. 123




The back of this clipping is actually much more entertaining:


Highlights: McCarthy vs. the "Slot Machine King"! Hitler maps! "Jilted Lover Slays Blonde!" and, of course, advice from AUNT HET: "Men shouldn't go visitin' too often. They say about what they said the last time, but it sounds fresh if you haven't heard it for six months." 

Paperback 436: Midsummer Passion / Erskine Caldwell (Avon 177)

Paperback 436: Avon 177 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Midsummer Passion
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: Ann Cantor

Yours for: $19


Best things about this cover:

• "With your permission, my lady ... May I sniff these?"
• He is appropriately grubby. She is impossibly clean.
• All I can think is "Really? Right on a bed of lettuce? Isn't there a nice flat patch of lawn nearby where you can have your furtive rustic tumble?"

Best things about this back cover:

• Once again, Shakespeare approves!

Page 123~

"I ain't going to let that good-for-nothing Canuck get his hands on the best farm in the whole gol-darned country. Come on to the village and get it settled right away."

For some Boston Bruins fans, winning the Stanley Cup was not enough. Canucks must be made to suffer year-round!

~RP

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Paperback 362: Bury Me Deep / Harold Q. Masur (Pocket Books 558)

Paperback 362: Pocket Books 558 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: Bury Me Deep
Author: Harold Q. Masur
Cover artist: William Wirts

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• A quintessential keyhole cover (yes, it's a thing) — and an early one. Turns reader into an implied voyeur / peeping tom.
• 1948 (or thereabouts) seems to be a turning point in cover art — covers start to become more sensational, more sexual, more lurid ... If you click on "1947" or earlier in the tags for this site (sidebar), you'll see what I mean. Not sure why 1948 should be that year [the year of the first Kinsey Report!] ... but by the '50s, lurid and sensational will be the norm.
• I wish I could hear her undoubtedly learned disquisition on the merits of half-naked whisky-drinking.
• That underwear looks painted on, like she was drawn naked but then repurposed for this cover.
• Something about her face is off-kilter and strange, and her thumbless whisky-claw is mega-disturbing.

Best things about this back cover:

• Even the tagline is sensational. Sweet.
• "The lawyer in him" has the better cliché—hey, "inner man," who looks at a sexy woman in her underwear and thinks "gift horse!?"
• "Newest detective sensation," HA ha. How did that turn out, Scott Jordan?

Page 123~

Another shot exploded. I saw a spurt of flame from the muzzle spit luridly into the darkness beside a tree not fifty yards away. I arched my back, screamed like a frightened horse, threw out my arms and tumbled drunkenly to the ground.

Mmm, manly.

~RP

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