Paperback 1097: Bantam 20968-X (28th ptg, 1980)

Best things about this cover: 

"Perhaps it is better to speak frankly.”

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:

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 853: Bantam 830 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: Anna Becker
Author: Max White
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $8-12

Donation to the collection from The Second Reader Bookshop (Buffalo, NY)


Best things about this cover:

• Who can forget Anna Becker's great novel, "Max White"? Or vice versa, I forget.
• This cover raises one (and only one) very important question: Where Can I Get That Lamp!?
• Anna had vowed to protect the Jesus Chair at all costs! ALL COSTS!
• Ew, what is he doing with his right thumb?
• Ew, "torn between fright and desire" is rapist talk, man. "She was shaking and resisting, but … ya know." Gross.

Best things about this back cover:

• So basically it's an exposé of the sexy librarian.
• A "FRANK" exposé! Hell yeah, "frank"!
• Sometimes I think paperbacks came to exist because hardback dust jacket cover art was just So Bad.

Page 123~

So when Harrison said he liked Anna better now, she was not prepared to see what he meant.

I understand, Anna. We all understand. P.S. run.

~RP

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Paperback 847: Bantam 736 (1st ptg, 1949)

Title: The Wine of Astonishment
Author: Martha Gellhorn
Cover artist: James Avati

Estimated value: $15-20


Best things about this cover:

• Spoiler: he's Jewish. That's "The Secret Within Him."
• "Wine? You served wine, Kathe? How could you? I'm astonished. [portentous 100-yard stare]"
• "Blue chairs … why must the chairs be blue? I'm tired of living my life with blue chairs! Why, when I was a boy, my mother…" "Steve! Oh, Steve, please. I'll paint the chairs. Just … no more stories about your mother, Steve. [sobs]" [end scene].
• Man, Avati drives me nuts. Staid, boring, straining after religiosity. The single most humorless cover artist. Also, sadly one of the most prolific. I associate him more with Signet. Unusual to see him on other imprints (at least in my collection).

Best things about this back cover:

• "Might" (?)
• Wow, that cover copy is straight out of romance novels / two movie promos I saw earlier today. Cheeseball-o-rama.
• Martha Gellhorn was an important war journalist. Also, an ex-Mrs. Hemingway.

Page 123~

"You're a sensible guy, aren't you, Johnny?"
"I'm a good sensible old man."
"Shall I fix you a drink?"
"Sure, let's polish off the bottle and go to bed."

Man. Johnny likes to get to the point.

~RP

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Paperback 840: Gold Medal k1529 (PBO, 1965)

Title: Not I, Said the Vixen
Author: Bill S. Ballinger
Cover artist: [Bill Johnson]

Estimated value: $8-12

Donation to the collection from Mr. John Q. Brooklyn (I don't want to use real names w/o permission). Guy asks me "Can I send you a book for your blog?" Twist my arm!


Best things about this cover:

• "Isn't it true that your favorite letter is "I", Miss Lorents? ANSWER THE QUESTION!"
• "Do you deny that you are overwhelmingly sensual? DO YOU!?"
• This is a "vixen"? This looks like someone who showed up to a table reading for her role as "Vixen" in an episode of "Perry Mason." She does have a pretty boss head-tilt, but my prescription for greater vixenitude is less clothes, more gun. And … yeah, sure, go ahead and put on the glasses. OK, now shoot the D.A. and then stand over his body like, "told ya."

Best things about this back cover:

• Way to bury the lede, Gold Medal. How is PROWLED THE WORLD OF TWILIGHT WOMEN not on the cover!?
• She "ruined her lovers with the hot breath of scandal" ("scandal" being a last-minute substitute for "chili cheese fries")
• "Please state your name for the record." "Ivy Lorents." "And how do you spell 'Ivy,' Miss Lorents? I presume it starts 'I', 'V'…" "Not I." "Objection! Permission to treat the vixen as sensual, your honor."

Page 123~

"You had her … falling all over herself," Ivy said, pleased with the memory of Pauline's discomfort.

Please invest that sentence with all the Sapphic innuendo you can muster.

~RP

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Paperback 824: Popular Library SP294 (1st ptg, 1964)

Title: Bullet Proof
Author: Amber Dean
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Wow, turns out you can do A Lot with a fairly monochromatic palette. This is fantastic.
• For a simple cover, it's amazingly suspenseful. Great use of light, especially on her face. Her face is the key—the craning around and the look of wide-eyed horror really sell the idea that something terrible is just on its way, just out of view.
• The creepiness of the bondage is amplified ten-fold by the simple, naked mattress. How can a cover be so elegant and so sleazy at the same time?

Best things about this back cover:

• I still hate this logo. It does not look like "CRIME." It looks a poorly executed fertility statue.
• "Virginia Kirkus calls it 'non-stop'"—that made me LOL: "Seriously, it wouldn't stop. I as like 'Stop! Why won't this story stop!?' But it just kept going!"
• "Readable!"—these just get better and better. "… in that it was made out of recognizable words, which were arranged in vaguely grammatical patterns…"

Page 123~

"It was their job, Hallie. Police have to learn how to destroy human dignity, or they'd never break through the really calloused, the hardened."

I'm just gonna leave that there.

~RP

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Paperback 691: Beacon B731X (PBO, 1964)

Title: Tutor From Lesbos
Author: A.P. Williams
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $55


Best thing about this cover:

• OK, Lesson One: how to sit in a chair.
• In order of awesome: sunglasses, butterfly chair, wig, sweater set.
• I'm imagining the frugal parents who are excited about this ad. "'No charge'! What a deal!"

Best things about this back cover:

• The question we've all been asking all our lives.
• "Love" quote unquote hahaha. Oh, Ginny, Ginny, who can I turn to ...?
• "Consider the emotions of..." Well, that's a new angle.
• "Feel the despair of..." Ditto.
• So the dad *watches*? Gross/hot.
• LOL uncontrollably at the last four sentences on this back cover.

Page 123~

[Hamilton] [...] worked at his desk until lunchtime, when he walked into several downtown shops and finally purchased an ugly gray fedora and a pair of sunglasses. These would render him inconspicuous, he figured, and enable him to blend in with the other drinkers at the lesbian bar. He had heard that dark glasses were worn as a badge by the city's questionable element.

Finally I understand why lesbians are constantly hitting on me every time I put on a fedora and sunglasses. Thank you, "Tutor From Lesbos"—aptly, you have taught me so much. Also, I would join a gang / club / sleaze appreciation society called "The Questionable Element."

~RP

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Paperback 544: Lion Books 131 (1st thus, 1956)

Title: Nightfall
Author: David Goodis
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50

Best things about this cover:

• There are really too many things going on on this cover for it to make any kind of visual sense. It's like I"m watching a stage play about some woman who was hurt in a tragic accident and is now, through the love of one strong man, learning to walk ... but then the soul of the dead body represented by the chalk outline on the ground is so disgusted by the false pathos of the scene that he rises up in horror and flees ... and immediately has a heart attack. Nightfall!
• David Goodis was good at writing. His books are pretty collectible, and this one, despite some bumps and bruises, is clearly unread. Gorgeous. One of my earliest two-figure (i.e. it cost me more than $10) purchases, and probably the first that made me realize "holy shit, you are really collecting these things now."
• I do love the unusual, if creepy, color of this cover, and the bright, nutso font on the title.
• Movie tie-in! Collectible subgenre! Hey, is the ghost of the corpse ... is that ... fear hand?! Behind the "A" and the "L"!? Judges say .... ding ding ding!

Best things about this back cover:

• Bancroft! So early ...
• Aldo Ray sounds like a prog rock band.
• "Taut" ... "swift" ... "searing" ... nope, sorry, no "frank." 

Page 123~

The type he was dealing with was the most dangerous and clever of them all. On the surface a soft-voiced innocence, an unembroidered sincerity. Beneath the surface a chess player who could do amazing things without board and chessman.

"What are you doing?" "Playing chess in my mind." "Amazing."

~RP

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Paperback 526: Signet S1621(5th ptg, 1960)

Title: The Courting of Susie Brown
Author: Erskine Caldwell
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $5

Best things about this cover:

• The Delousing of Susie Brown.
• Is this it? I have to believe that something far more salacious than this was painted over in thick purple. That would explain how Wrong her elbow looks. 
• Also, how big is that chair seat? I see the chair, and it appears she is sitting on it, and yet those ... gowns? rags? ... she's sitting on don't appear to have anything to do with the chair. They're just ... hovering. 
• Maybe the comb in a girl's lap is some kind of sexy visual shorthand I just don't get.

Best things about this back cover:

• The Human Comedy ... is a novel by William Saroyan. And a series of novels by Honoré de Balzac. Like those classics, this book ... is also fiction.
• Here is mirth and disaster. There be dragons.

Page 123~

   Dessie gripped the phone.
   "Did you say Waldo has a big roll of money?" she shouted. "Greenbacks tied with a string around the middle?"
   "He surely has, Mrs. Murdock. It's the biggest roll of money I've seen on a man since the Democrats took over."
   Dessie, who had risen from the chair until she was almost erect, sat down, hard.

Dessie and Mrs. Murdock found that by substituting "roll of money" for "penis," they drew far fewer outraged stares.

~RP

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Paperback 509: Gold Medal s1110 (3rd ptg, 1961)

Title: So Wicked My Love
Author: Bruno Fischer
Cover artist: photo cover

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• I know there's a naked lady on the cover, and I do love naked ladies, but oh my god all I can think about is that awesome chair and how I want to have it right now.
• I don't normally like photo covers all that much—I started collecting these things for the *art*, after all—but I do like the design on this one. It's like an updated "keyhole" cover—so I can feel like a modern peeping tom, with my telescope / binoculars / James Bond spying device.
• She has double coy-hand. It's very weird. I hope those are throw pillows she's holding against her, because it kinda looks like she's clutching a dirty, gaudy bathmat.

Best things about this back cover:

• Ugh, nothing. Come on, Gold Medal!
• Ah ... Cherry. Now I get the red background thingie on the cover.
• She's pert, like a deadly cobra. You know, the rare Pert Cobra of Pensacola.
• This isn't even good bad prose. It's just bad. Bruno Fischer deserves better!

Page 123~

She turned her head to her husband, who was pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his pants. "Frankie, honey, would you mind leaving us alone?"  

He looked at her in that blue cotton robe clinging to her flesh. "Yeah," he said, "I mind."

~RP

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