Paperback 43: Priory 1127 (undated)

Title: The Squeeze
Author: Gil Brewer
Cover artist: photo cover


Best things about this cover:

• In one of what must have been numerous cost-cutting moves, Priory apparently opted to use still photos from the first few minutes of 70s porn flicks for their covers
• Is she supposed to be hot? She looks disheveled and drug-addled. That wig! (at least I hope that's a wig)
• If a paperback has ever featured a less sexy couple than this, I haven't seen it

Priory books were "Produced in Israel" (!?) for a largely Commonwealth market (back cover features prices for NZ, AUS, UK, S.Afr., Canada, as well as U.S.). They are reprints of Ace Books (of which I have already featured many in my collection) and they appear to have been produced primarily in the early 70's. This book is terribly trashy and dirty and horrible. It reeks of cheap motel - the sticker only adds to the tacky ambiance. I tried to remove it, but that would have resulted in a horrible sticker pull, so I opted to leave it. Gil Brewer is actually a very accomplished crime fiction writer, and it would horribly unfair to judge this book by its cover. And yet I can't help myself.

RP

Paperback 42: Bantam A2096 (1st ptg, 1960)

Title: The Three Roads
Author: Ross Macdonald
Cover artist: Uncredited


Best things about this cover:

• The story of one woman's feverish nightmares about her missing pink pump with matching pom pon ("Rosebud...")
• Is this a picture of the "stolen passion" or the "brutal murder?"
• Why does her left leg disappear in a smoky mist? Did she forget to take something off the stove?
• Ross Macdonald was a writing star in the mystery world until he was caught using steroids. Now his name is forever haunted by the dreaded asterisk.
• I love the magical sheets, which defy physics in order to give her ass the barest of cover and thus prevent us from enjoying an unbroken line of head-to-toe nudity. Cursed sheets!

Best things about this back cover:

• If you liked this book, you'll love the sequel: MEMORY MURDERED ABSORBING!
• This is what a book looks like when it's designed by someone with a punctuation fetish. For god's sake, it's not Spanish - why are there punctuation marks before the word "MEMORY?"

Here we find out the real reason for the asterisk on the front cover. Kenneth Millar (his real name) wrote under his own name, then John Ross Macdonald, until John D. MacDonald started to make a splash, and then people got confused. This book was published at the height of that confusion, clearly. Eventually, he'd stick with Ross Macdonald (the first "d" is not capitalized). I have written about this guy. Spent days working through his correspondence and other papers at UC Irvine. The best time I ever had being an academic. It was like being ... well, a detective. Hot.

RP