Paperback 1021: Horns for the Devil / Louis Malley (Pocket Books 894)

Paperback 1021: Pocket Books 894 (1st ptg, 1952)

Title: Horns for the Devil
Author: Louis Malley
Cover artist: George Erickson

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

Best things about this cover:

• "I Want You ... For U.S. Mafia"
• Not many covers break the fourth wall quite this breakingly. "Who are you? You got my sandwiches?! Well then whaddya want? Shut the fuckin' door! You lookin' at my girl!? Jerry, Lou, show this guy what for!"
• This is a fantastic cavalcade of mugs. Hall-of-Fame B-movie extras. Just hanging around, waiting for someone to call them up for another stint in Generic Mid-Century American Crime Story. "Our regular Girl At Bar No. 3 turned her ankle. You're in, kid!"
• It's not exactly like the work of director Louis Malle, but it is ... Malle-y.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Look here! Now I'm big and two-toned and my background is Rage Red! Where's my *&%^ing coffee?!"
• Severio Lebbrosa! That means "seriously like a leopard."
• No, no, no, it's "first you get the money, then you get the power, *THEN* you get the women." Come on, man. Did you not watch "Scarface?"

Page 123~

When they got out of the car Ralph squeezed her hand, but she wanted more than that. It had come so suddenly.

This was the very least boring sentence, which is wedged in between a conversation with an old lady and a scintillating drive to Westchester. I probably shoulda just let you think it was prelude to a steamy sex scene. Sorry.

~RP

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Paperback 960: Bedrooms Have Windows / A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner) (Dell 0511)

Paperback 960: Dell 0511 (1st New Dell ed., 1963)

Title: Bedrooms Have Windows
Author: A. A. Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)
Cover artist: Darryl Greene

Estimated value: $15-20
Condition: 10/10 (a time-travel kind of copy, like it's 1963 again; unread, square, shiny, bright blue page edges, ridiculous)

Best things about this cover:

• She looks worried. Maybe she needs Yet Another Cigarette.
• How big is her bed? The headboard appears to start in the far corner of the room. Is her room just one big bed? That's pretty cool.
• This cover is exquisitely balanced and demonstrates a nice attention to detail. I'm somehow transfixed by the latches, like miniature sentries at the bottom of the sill.
• Gauzy curtain, also lovely. And that tension between the tightly enclosed, highly segmented left half of the window and the dramatic, animated, border-bursting right half—love it.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ooh, close-up. Normally I don't like recycled back covers, but this one makes nice use of that window gridding, covering the horizontally-lined left pane with horizontal lines of text, while leaving the right half airy and open.
• God bless Dell for *clearly crediting* cover artists more than most other publishers.
• I've written about this book before, in an earlier (1952) edition. Here's the cover:

And the write-up (Paperback 211!)

Page 123~

The taffy-haired blonde who was standing in front of the mirror, surveying her partially clothed figure with quite evident approval, was the girl who had picked me up the night before as her escort, and had taken me to the motor court. 

Aw, how quaint. "Motor court." You can do all kinds of illicit things in a "motor court" and still feel pretty good about yourself. It's positively Arthurian. "Casual sex, m'lady?"

~RP

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Paperback 641: The Blue Kimono Kill / Walt Sheldon (Gold Medal k1546)

Paperback 641: Gold Medal k1546 (PBO, 1965)

Title: The Blue Kimono Kill
Author: Walt Sheldon
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best thing about this cover:

• "Honey, we need to talk. Don't be made but ... it's about your lipstick."
• Mmm, chick-flavored.
• And the winner of this cover is: The Lantern.

Best things about this back cover:

• God save me from a text-only back cover, ugh.
• "But Marlin's academic career didn't last long. For, you see, Marlin was a fish."
• Adjective of the Day: "Zen-spouting."

Page 123~

"You strike me as a man who could be brave, Marlin, in, let us say, the face of crude torture."

"Let us not say, and then say that we did," countered Marlin.

~RP

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