Paperbacks 1047, 1048, and 1049: A Doc Savage trio (Bantam, 1969 (2) and 1976 (1))

Paperbacks 1047-49: Doc Savage 35, 38, and 83 (1969, 1969, 1976)

Titles: The Squeaking Goblin, Red Snow, The Red Terrors
Author: Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent, Lester Dent, Harold A. Davis)
Cover artists: James Bama, James Bama, Boris Vallejo

Condition: 7/10
Estimated value: $20 for the lot

[Gift to the collection from a Western NY Reader]

Best things about this cover:

• "It ain't me what's squeakin', it's me musket!" squeaked Goblin Davy Crockett

Best thing about this cover:

• It's like if Hawkman and Hulk had a pin-headed monster baby

Best thing about this cover:

• Doc Savage tried to start his life over as a crossing guard at Mystical Orb High School for Avian Cosplay, but it didn't take

Page 123~

One of the hired men pointed. "Red was a-meanderin' over thot way, last I seed a' him."

These books are all of astonishingly uniform length (~130pp.) and not at all badly written (at least on a basic grammatical level). They were originally published in the Doc Savage pulp magazine (in the '30s) and then were reprinted by Bantam roughly 30-40 years later, which puts them just before and toward the tail end of / just after the main time frame of my paperback collection (1939-69). Lester Dent (how wrote a ton of the "Kenneth Robeson" Doc Savage stories) was an accomplished crime fiction writer from the heydey of hardboild crime fiction. I covered one of his books back at Paperback 741.

Anyway, thanks to the lovely human who sent me these books in the mail today—individually wrapped! So thoughtful.

~RP

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Paperback 927: Ashenden / W. Somerset Maugham (Avon PN240)

Paperback 927: Avon PN240 (13th ptg, 1969)

Title: Ashenden
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Cover artist: Uncredited (who does these awesome psychedelic late '60s Avon covers!?)

Estimated value: $15 (bit scuffed, but very tight, square, barely if ever read)

Best things about this cover:

• This is like "Being There" meets "Laugh-In" meets "Planes Trains and Automobiles" meets "Monty Python" meets "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor MURDER Coat"!
• This cover is Milton Glaser-esque.
• Purple? The spy wore ... purple? Really?

Best things about this back cover:

• It's like a dream catcher ... for breaths.
• There's a lot of "Cold" here. Nothing about the color scheme says "Cold." Earth tones never say "Cold."
• I prefer my dens ruddy.

Page 123~

R. was a soldier and regarded introspection as unhealthy, unEnglish and unpatriotic.

Great sentence, but one that cries out especially hard for an Oxford comma.

~RP

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Paperback 917: The Fall of the Dream Machine / Dean R. Koontz // The Star Venturers / Kenneth Bulmer (Ace Double 22600)

Paperback 917: Ace Double 22600 (PBO / PBO, 1969)

Title: The Fall of the Dream Machine / The Star Venturers
Author: Dean R. Koontz / Kenneth Bulmer
Cover artists: Jack Gaughan / John Schoenherr

Estimated value: $20

Best things about this cover:

• That water slide needs cleaning. Badly.
• I love the incongruous whimsy of the polka dots. It's like the ghoul faces are all angrily thinking "What Is This Silliness!?!?!"
• Q: What do you get when you cross Edgar Winter with a blow-up doll?

Best things about this other cover:

• When Car Grilles Attack.
• Tentacled floating beast ripping apart stupid flimsy human ... Now *that's* a scifi cover!
• Galactic Haystack had some minor psychedelic rock hits in the late '60s. Then they joined a cult. I hear the lead singer's a hedge fund manager now.

Page 123~ (from "The Fall of the Dream Machine")

The man's face disappeared in a spray of unmentionable things.

This conjures up either terrible carnage or a man being assaulted by lingerie.

~RP

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Paperback 893: Fallout for a Spy / Richard L. Hershatter (Ace 22680)

Paperback 893: Ace 22680 (PBO, 1969)

Title: Fallout for a Spy
Author: Richard L. Hershatter
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-15

Best things about this cover:

• This is an artist who just could Not get the woman's head right. Weird shapeless hair helmet + sun-baked skeleton face. Dude in the chair is not turned on. He's frightened.
• The rest of her, however, is nicely rendered. Cute underwear.
• "Richard L. Hershatter," as depicted here, is the most ludicrously serifed name of all time.
• "Shatter her … with Hershatter (Pour Homme)"
• Half-naked chairlessness was apparently a big trend with '60s ladies:

[Paperback 417]

And the back cover:

Best things about this back cover:

• Rand Stannard! I love tough-guy names that sound like erection euphemisms.
• "Airborne rape" … that sounds horrifying and yet is making me laugh. I was not aware that this was a valid rape subcategory.
• Wait, did Rand get raped? Or did he rape someone? Either way, I have follow-up questions.
• "Sex-scarred"? "Algerian Roulette?" Is this cover copy being generated by some remedial pulp algorithm?

Page 123~

Mitchell looked as though he'd swallowed something sour. "Ever been made to feel like a jackass by a computer?"

Stannard arched an eyebrow.

"Not Rand Stannard, old chum," chortled Rand Stannard. "Rand Stannard don't play the sap for no one."

~RP

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Paperback 765: 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft / Tuli Kupferberg & Robert Bashlow (Grove / Evergreen Black Cat BC-140)

Paperback 765: Grove Press / Evergreen Black Cat BC-140 (3rd ptg, 1969)

Title: 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft
Authors: Tuli Kupferberg & Robert Bashlow
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• Well, that's one way.
• This cover is simultaneously horrifying and hilarious (the latter by juxtaposition with the title). Contorted body is one of the most monstrous human figures I've ever seen. 
• Found this little book jammed in among a ton of other old paperbacks on a cart outside Falling Leaves in Ithaca last weekend.
• This book is literally a numbered list of 1001 ways to beat the draft. There are illustrations and documents interspersed throughout. It's a very, very serious joke, this book. 

Best things about this back cover:

• Kill for Peace
• If LBJ got drafted …
• Signature is a nice touch

Page 123~ (pages are unnumbered, so here is a sampling of Ways to Beat the Draft)

11. Start to menstruate (better red than dead)
479. Contemplate the horror of murder
480. Sleep late with your warm girlfriend
782. Be so ugly you fail even Army standards
4. Die 

~RP

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Paperback 640: Under Cover of Night / Manning Lee Stokes (MacFadden Books 60-431)

Paperback 640: MacFadden Books 60-431 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: Under Cover of Night
Author: Manning Lee Stokes
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $7


Best things about this cover:

• You must be this tall to ride Manning Lee Stokes.
• Cigarette holders—I don't really get them, but as visual affectations go, I like them a lot.
• I actually really love the arc of the title font.
• There is a reason the show was not called "Mission: Difficult."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Armed with a gut-searing greed"? Uh ... Clean-up on aisle Metaphor!
• The Iron Buddha would be a cool wrestling name.
• The Bloody Cache would not.

Page 123~

Yi Sun-Sin, of course, had Oo working in Seoul, and soon he had known about the American who was coming to find a million buried dollars. And they started making plans. The fact that Oo had been a former houseboy of mine made his chances good.

I'm trying to decide what my favorite part of this passage is: "Oo," "houseboy," or "of course."

~RP

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Paperback 532: Venus Examined / Robert Kyle (Fawcett Crest M1228)

Paperback 532: Fawcett Crest M1228 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: Venus Examined
Author: Robert Kyle
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $5


Best things about this cover:

• I think she's consoling him, or apologizing for having gotten him involved in this demeaning research. "I'm sorry, honey. They didn't say anything about probes or electrodes on the fliers. Just breathe."
• "first-rate story telling" looks lifted from a longer, not-so-complimentary sentence. Shouldn't "F" be capitalized? And shouldn't storytelling be one word? And isn't it remarkable that I'm fixated on matters of punctuation and spelling when there are naked people on my paperback cover. As a general rule, if your naked people fail to hold my fixed, rapt attention, then your cover is a Fail.
• Robert Kyle was the (pen) name of the author of this awesome-looking book. Wonder if it's the same guy. What a shame to go from having your books look so completely awesome to having them look like this. "Sex made Tom and Linda sad..."

Best things about this back cover:

• Oooh, *color* film! You don't say! Lah-di-dah...
• I sure hope the answers to these questions are yes, yes, and yes, or I'm going to be as sad as those people on the cover.
• "College students and prostitutes" made me laugh—Copywriting room conversation: "Hey, Dan, what's the opposite of 'college students?'" "I dunno ... whores?" "Perfect."

Page 123~

His name was Woods McChesney, and unlike his furniture he himself was in pretty good shape, a neat little suit, neat tie, neat mustache.

I now want to name *everything* 'Woods McChesney.'

~RP

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Paperback 530: The Gay World / Martin Hoffman (Bantam Q4492)

Paperback 530: Bantam Q4492 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: The Gay World
Author: Martin Hoffman
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $7

Best things about this cover:

• Look! Tiny, tiny gays! So cute.
• That's how you contain the dangerous lure of the handsome gays—keep their pics thumbnail size.
• Also, this is how the "homosexual scene" stays so well hidden from the mainstream—strategic miniaturization!
• That looks like the wedding photograph from the first gay wedding, circa 1884. "Leopold and Jasper went on to run the most successful dry goods business in the greater Lansing area."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Occult!" That's a new one.
• I read "closest" as "closet."
• "Why do men become homosexual? Well, if you could actually *see* Leopold and Jasper there, you would *totally* understand. Trust me."

Page 123~

Since we know that as we ascend the mammalian scale, learning factors become more important the higher we go, we can postulate that if these factors are true for monkeys, it would seem they are true for humans.

Scienceish! I give this assertion a 7 out of 10 on the mammalian scale.

~RP

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Paperback 495: Bridge of Sand / Frank Gruber (Bantam S3926)

Paperback 495: Bantam S3926 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: Bridge of Sand
Author: Frank Gruber
Cover artist: Uncredited [Sanford Kossin]

Yours for: $12

Best things about this cover:

• Very late for my collection. I own it because a. it has a fully painted cover (in an era when these were giving way to the Tyranny of Text—branding/author's name inflation); and b. it's by Frank Gruber, writing here at the tail end of a loooooong career that began in the pulps (his "Pulp Jungle"—a memoir of his early writing career, is very much worth reading).
• That said, I don't love this painting, or, more specifically, this color scheme. It definitely conveys "oppressively hot and sandy," but I just end up wishing I had clearer views of all the interesting characters. Dude in the fez wants his time in the spotlight!
• World's tiniest minarets, stage left.
• Apparently this guy's gun holds hand lotion: "Damn dry Egyptian weather ... wreaks havoc on my soft skin."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Amazonian lesbian!" Top that. You can't. Game over.
• VENGEANCE! My penchant for tales of vengeance probably also had something to do with my buying this book.
• I call this painting "Someone Really Doesn't Like Brown Mustard."
• Violence should not come in "potpourri" form. Really hard to take seriously.
• "Fills the cauldron of suspense ... decants the wine of mystery ... warms the tea kettle of perversion ... etc.!"

Page 123~

It was in Ahmed Fosse's power to reveal that fame to Charles Holterman, to dangle the possibility of it before Holterman, and then ... to destroy it, just before he killed Holterman.

Ahmed knew a little bit about fame from his brother Bob. Also, this paragraph really needs one more "Holterman."

~RP

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Paperback 404: On Her Majesty's Secret Service / Ian Fleming (Signet P2732)

Paperback 404: Signet P 2732 (15th ptg, ca. 1969)

Title: On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Author: Ian Fleming
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Ladies Love Cool James
• Ladies also Love Quartered Lazenby
• These all seem like professional models, except for that one lady who is so rapt by Lazenby's prodigious hunk of man-scalp that she's raising her hand in astonishment while simultaneously setting out to scale his head.
• The fact that Diana Rigg is *not* on the cover of this novel is a crime against humanity.

Best things about this back cover:

• Aargh, stupid cheap books that can't be bothered to put different images on the back!
• How much do I want to have some business cards made that read "Ernest Stavro Blofeld — Master Artist of Cruelty / Licensed & Bonded / Walk-ins Welcome! [picture of kittens]"
• "...his horror-stained career" — oh, man, horror stains are the Hardest to get out. Trust me.

Page 123~

Bond pointed his skis down toward the tree-line, got down in his ugly crouch and shot, his skis screaming, into white space.

Wow. Nobody writes a sex scene quite like Fleming.

~RP

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Paperback 376: Dracutwig / Mallory T. Knight (Award Books A488S)

Paperback 376: Award A488S (PBO, 1969)

Title: Dracutwig
Author: Mallory T. Knight
Cover artist: photo???

Yours for: [NO LONGER AVAILABLE]


Best things about this cover:

• I don't know. I might have gone with "Twigula."
• Mallory T. Knight! I really hope King Arthur is somehow also involved in this story (even though it's already pretty crowded in there)
• Cover says "luscious little sexpot," photo ... doesn't.

Best things about this back cover:

• That is possibly the greatest (in the sense of "most absurd") opening back cover sentence ever.
• "Mod scene"—this book could only have come into being during something like a 3-hour period in the late '60s. Great cultural snapshot. Never cared for the Twiggy look, but I'd like to thank Twiggy nonetheless for spawning whatever this is.

Page 123~

Karl's superb artistry in the field of theatrical makeup enabled him to assume any number of appearances, and what with his specialized talents, in one guise or another he managed to keep himself in constant demand by the rich kookie cultists of the area.

Mmm, kookie cultists. That's me. I'm baking at least two kinds of kookies this afternoon.

~RP

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Paperback 360: The Big Bust / Ed Lacy (Pyramid X-2037)

Paperback 360: Pyramid X-2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Big Bust
Author: Ed Lacy
Cover artist: F. Pfeifer

Yours for: SOLD! (10/8/10)


Best things about this cover:

• [Insert joke about connection between title and woman's rack here]
• For a woman who's tied up, gagged, and carrying a tiny drowning man in her stomach, she's awfully concerned about those guys behind her. Lady, you've got your own problems.
• I have reluctantly tagged this post with "Redhead" label, though honestly I don't know what you call that color.

Best things about this back cover:

• Geek observation #227: "Supercharged" is just "surcharged" with "P.E." inside it. . .
• So the woman is like good pancakes. Well, who wouldn't want to tail that?
• If the boardwalk is "bikini-filled," does that mean the ocean is filled with naked women (who, presumably, all left their bikinis on the boardwalk)? I hope so.
• One of these paragraphs should immediately be countered with "That's what she said!"

Page 123~

Walter awoke me at one-fifteen and watching for snakes, back of a crumpling wall, I changed into the woolen underwear and rubber suit, Rhoda's $60,000 bra doubling as a jock strap.

[Speechless]

~RP

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Paperback 325: Honest Sex / Rustum & Della Roy (Signet Q3857)

Paperback 325: Signet Q3857 (PBO? 1969)

Title: Honest Sex
Authors: Rustum & Della Roy
Cover artist: no

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• "Honest Sex"— Honestly? No thanks.
• If "Rustum & Della Roy" aren't pseudonyms, I don't know what are.
• These folks better be swingers—otherwise this book is going to be a Major disappointment.
• I like how the punch line of the entire cover (besides the author names) is "Christians"; you're just reading along, figuring you're looking at any old sex book, and bam. Sexy Christians, eh? Hmmm, I'm intrigued ...

Best things about this back cover:

• Whoa whoa whoa! Which of these things is not like the other!? Dear lord. The fact that "Abortion" is even on this list gives me a pretty idea of what these authors think of kinky (or even ordinary) sex.
  
• The "Playboy" endorsement does, however, give me some hope ... I really, really can't wait for Page 123 on this one.

Page 123~

Reluctant wives (rarely, reluctant husbands) are sometimes involved after persuasion by their spouses. The reports on the experience are so favorable—including a great deal of unanimity on the improvement of the marriage as a result of such experience—that we have hypothesized that the cause may lie deeper than the simple fact of having coitus with two or more partners. Unfortunately, we have had no personal contact with anyone who has participated in any club or even minimally organized mate-sharing.

A little clinical, but awesome nonetheless. First, that parenthetical aside. Nice. Second, "coitus." Yuck. There's a word designed to make you Not want to have sex. Third, "Unfortunately..." HA ha. "Me and Rustum were just talking about how we wish we knew some swappers so we could, you know, do some, uh, first-hand research, as it were."

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 25

Title: What Happened to Amy? (SBS T 579, 1969)
Author: Jane Edwards
"Cover design by" [???]: Julio Freire

Yours for: I think I have to give this to my sister

• Guess 1: her chin grew a hand-like appendage
• Guess 2: she bought a hideous shade of lipstick at Woolworth's
• Guess 3: she was drowned in a flood of Depression-colored paint
• Guess 4: an alien life form (part fox, part scorpion) attached itself to her cranium
• Guess 5: she caught sight of herself in the mirror after one of her evil sisters abused her hair in the middle of the night while she was sleeping: "Oh ... boo hoo ... I used to look like Crystal Gale ... sob."

• "Leave her clothes behind"?? — I may have to revise my list of Guesses

Page 123~

"This affair gets more mysterious all the time. The more we find out, the less we know."

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

PS Thanks to Dan at "The Casual Optimist" for including this site in his list of "10 Websites for Vintage Books, Covers, and Inspiration"

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 22

Title: You'll Like My Mother (Fawcett T1418, 1969)
Author: Naomi A. Hintze
Cover artist: Harry Bennett

Yours for: $5

• "I think I *will* like your mother. She sounds ho- ... whoa! Is that her? Oh ... man. I, uh, I have this thing I have to go to now. Band practice, I think."
• MILF! (Mom I'd Like to Flee)
• "Maybe if I hide under this giant Fabio wig, mom won't see me..."

• Dear Best Sellers, "THEY" has no antecedent. Thank you.
• We need to revive the word "CHILLER-DILLER"
• Book-of-the-Month Club News is creeping me out with its metaphors. "It's like watching a demonic baby emerge from the birth canal. You'll love it."

Page 123~

In my mind's eye I fixed a firm picture of that fawn-and-brown cat catching that one gray rat. One rat; there were no more.

This is, by far, the most interesting thing happening on this page.

~RP

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57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 15

Title: Lipika (Jaico, 1969)
Author: Rabindranath Tragore (trans. Indu Dutt)
Cover artist: I doubt it

Yours for: the taking

• I have no idea what this is. I got it mainly because I have no other pocket books from India.

• What in the world do they do at "InterCulture Associates?" Really hoping it doesn't involve mail-order brides.
• "India's Own Pocket Editions" — take that, you Penguin-pushing UK bastards!

Page 123~

Indra: —Whether it is progress or retrogress, the fact remains that whatever brings disruption it produces frustration. When the Great moves away from the sphere of the small, the greatness becomes meaningless like a burdensome load.

Talk about a "burdensome load" ...

~RP

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Paperback 240: The Sour Lemon Score / Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) (Gold Medal R2037)

Paperback 240: Gold Medal R2037 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Sour Lemon Score
Author: Richard Stark (pseud. of Donald Westlake)
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $39


Best things about this cover:

• I appear to have hit a super sweet pocket in my collection — an original Parker novel with a McGinnis bondage cover!? Wow... book's got some minor scuffing, but is otherwise in gorgeous, barely read condition.
• Is that look in her eyes fear? Or maybe the man with the gun is the good guy, and what she's really thinking is, "Uh ... little help, Captain Handsome-pose?"
• Actually, she's not tied up — she's a puppeteer who is operating her marionettes remotely via a (really) complicated system of pulleys and levers. You can tell she is backstage at an old theater, as she is clearly reclining on the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Best things about this back cover:

• Look, real blurbs from actual, marginally credible news sources!
• HA ha — love the "(back)" part of the second Boucher blurb. "Oh ... paperback ... I see. How modern."
• If you have never read Westlake, you could do worse than to start with the Parker novels. They were all recently reissued by Chicago Univ. Press (see here), and this summer, you can check out Darwyn Cooke's comic adaptation of the first Parker novel, "Hunter" (preview available here), a first edition of which is also in my paperback collection ... somewhere.
  
• See Man Booker-prize-winning author John Banville rhapsodize about the Parker novels here.

Page 123~

The thumb out there jabbed and jabbed at the bell. She couldn't ignore it, no matter what.

~RP

Paperback 177: The Sex Education Racket / Phoebe Courtney (Free Men Speak, Inc, unnumbered)

Paperback 177: Free Men Speak, Inc, n.n. (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Sex Education Racket - An Exposé
Author: Phoebe Courtney
Cover artist: a purveyor of nightmares

Yours for: SOLD (Feb. 09)


Best things about this cover:

• Oh, god, who are these kids and what are they doing on this cover? Are they all hopped up on sex ed?
• "After receiving sex education in school, Peter looked at his stepsisters Marcia and Cindy in a whole new light..."
• These kids are so much more horrifying than Anything you'll find inside this book (which is mostly specious anti-communist and anti-"Negro" nutjobbery - don't ask me what either has to do with sex education, because I just can't tell you)
• "Phoebe Courtney" went on to inspire the sitcom "Friends."
• This book is in amazing condition. Appears never to have been read. Shocking.
  
• I love the idea that sex ed is a "racket." All those sex ed fat cats, rolling in all that sex ed money. Say no to Big Sex Ed! (Hey, I knew a guy named "Big Sex Ed" once ... so that's what his name meant)
  

Best things about this back cover:

[late addendum - this woman is famousish in the history of radical right politics in America: see here. Why oh Why is there no mention of her husband on this book cover!? Thanks for the reference, Steve]

• Oh ... my. Hello, Misssssss Courtney. Don't you look ... happy.
• What is her hair doing!? Maybe Miss Courtney is a perfectly reasonable human being whose mind is being controlled by some kind of parasitic mock-hair creature.
  
• I love that she wrote a "series of pamphlets" (who is she, Thomas Paine?) called "TAX FAX," many years before "FAX" was a household term.
• Like any good, husbandless, sexually repressed woman with hair pulled so tight on her head that her face is contorted into a permanent smile, she likes to keep a "massive German Shepherd dog" around the house.
• How much would you like to bet that Phoebe Courtney was into some seriously kinky shit.
• There is a section of blank pages at the back of the book marked "Your Notes"

Page 123~

If you oppose sex education in the schools, then you will want to do something about it.

There's a "handling the media" guide and everything. This book is awesome in that it represents early evidence of the albatross that now hangs around the neck of the Republican party: it's anti-science, anti-black, anti-public education, anti-union, anti-masturbation (seriously). It's also very much pro-ugly/scary book covers. Further, it's apparently responsible for ushering in the 70s' lamentable obsession with earth tones.

~RP

Paperback 127: The Up-Tight Blonde / Carter Brown (Signet P3955)

Paperback 127: Signet P3955 (PBO, 1969)

Title: The Up-Tight Blonde
Author: Carter Brown
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• The phrase "naked chicks"
• The McGinnis girl in the painting; the one holding the painting, on the other hand, is a hot mess and / or a transsexual.
• What has she got in her left hand? Some kind of orb or yo-yo? Is she trying to hypnotize me? That orb, coupled with the expression on her face, is freaking me out.
• I don't know what you call the "color" of this book, but it's Hideous. I think I'm going to name it "cheap luggage" or "walrus"

Best things about this back cover:

• Oh yes, the girl from the painting looks much better in stark isolation like this.
• The back cover copy goes from making every naked reference and pun in the book until finally devolving into a ... Monopoly metaphor?
• "A new kind of flesh game" - remind me - What was the old kind?
• Is that what they call "negative space?" All that ... emptiness in the top half of this cover? Bold aesthetic choice. Or else the printer just wasn't centered. Who knows?

Page 123:

Her eyes rolled listlessly as she turned away. I backhanded her against the nearest side of her face, and her head jerked upright again.

Thus answering the question: What do you do with a blonde who's UP-TIGHT? (A: You smack her in the face so that her head jerks UPRIGHT). Read all about it in "Al Wheeler's Man's Man's Guide to Manhandling Naked Chicks."

~RP

Paperback 80: Kiss and Kill / Ellery Queen (Dell 4567)

Paperback 80: Dell 4567 (PBO, 1969)

Title: Kiss and Kill
Author: Ellery Queen
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

YOURS FOR: SOLD! (mid-August, 2008)


Best things about this cover:

• "That's right, Skipper. You got me. I killed Mary Ann. I wanted all you luscious men for myself. Is that so wrong?"
• She has peach talons.
• McGinnis women are often quite sexy, but this one - yikes. Icy, bored, mannish, and clownishly bewigged.
• The saddest thing about this cover is that McGinnis's particular specialty was the, er, lower half of women; alas, that part remains hidden here behind some kind of bedsheet drapery.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, same picture. Come on! Although here, she appears to be saying "... you talkin' to me?"
• "Barney Burgess" - that's up there in the "Hilarious Detective Names" pantheon.

RP