Paperback 743: Pocket Books 342 (1st ptg, 1945)

Title: The High Window
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: E. McKnight Kuffer

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Well, they can't all be sexy. 
• As abstract/representational hybrid covers go, this one's pretty cool (is there a word for that style? pretty common on '40s paperbacks). There's a nice dramatic interplay between that angry red building, with its crazily barred windows, and the lonely falling silhouette.
• This guy's got a weird signature. Had to look it up. I think the letters read "E MCK K" (for E. McKnight Kuffer)
• For a more, let's say, realistic version of this cover, see Paperback 91.

Best things about this back cover:

• This description is just a mess of "things that might appear in a mystery novel." Not even much of an attempt to take it out of list form.
• Not sure what number incarnation of the pocket kangaroo we're up to here, but I like this one, with the joey holding the book for bespectacled mom.
• Other war-time books tell you exactly what postage you'll need to send the book to a soldier. Here, the plea is much vaguer. Can I "share" it with my diner waitress? She's in "uniform."

Page 123~

I felt myself getting pinched around the nose. My mouth felt dry. I needed air. I took another deep breath and another dive into the tub of blubber that was sitting across the room from me on the reed chaise-longue, looking as unperturbed as a bank president refusing a loan.

My new life's goal is to own a reed chaise-longue. Wait. Nope. On further research, it looks like a rickshaw for Victorian invalids, so I'm good.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 738: Pocket Books 389 (4th ptg, 1947)

Title: The Lady in the Lake
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: [Tom Dunn]

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Not my favorite cover, but I love the movie tie-in angle. Audrey Totter died just last month.
• It's a pretty, evocative cover—I like the way the bubbles and her hair float up in soft curves. I also like how her bright purple dress pops against the blue/yellow/green-ness of the rest of the cover.
• Ten years later, this cover would've been way more sexed-up, which I realize is a morbid thing to say about a cover featuring a corpse, but … you know I'm right.

Best things about this back cover:

• Gah. Nothing. 
• I like "susceptible blondes," but "moves with the speed and general effect of a well-aimed bullet to its suspected target" is noxious, for more reasons than I care to go into.
• If these scans look a little odd, it's just the permagloss, which is fraying (book still in excellent condition, though)

Page 123~

"Women are always leaving their handkerchiefs around. A fellow like Lavery would collect them and keep them in a drawer with a sandalwood sachet. Somebody would find the stock and take one out to use. Or he would lend them, enjoying the reactions to the other girls' initials. I'd say he was that kind of a heel. Goodby, Miss Fromsett, and thanks for talking to me."

So *that's* what he meant by "The Long Goodbye"—it had an "e" on the end, unlike all his other goodbys, which, apparently, didn't.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 625: Pocket Books 1020 (3rd ptg, 1959)

Title: Meet Me at the Morgue
Author: John Ross Macdonald
Cover artist: Victor Kalen (sic! — it's Victor Kalin)

Yours for: $13


Best things about this cover:

• Too much hiding.
• I'll give the font one thing—it's unusual. Not sexy. Not scary. Not pretty. But unusual.
• One of the redder books I own.
• I feel like Victor Kalin is cheating here: "I got this sketch ... it's kinda finished ... just throw some red over it."
• If the red weren't translucent, the gender of the person behind the curtain would be Way more ambiguous. 
• This is one of the many names Ross Macdonald had before he settled on Ross Macdonald. His real name was Kenneth Millar.
• This edition came out the year Chandler died (the 54th anniversary of Chandler's death was yesterday—his 125th birthday is later this year).

Best things about this back cover:

• Hey, more cursive—bit more grown-up this time.
• Red Carbuncle, the lovable drunken angry clown!

Page 123~

"Damn my eyes!" He struck himself sharply on the scalp with his clenched fist, but in such a way as not to disturb the part.

'Cause that's how he rebooted his eyes when they froze up.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Used bookstores are seemingly more plentiful and generally quirkier in NZ than they are here in the states. I went into every one I could find (duh). I pulled a couple things out of Gone West Books (in Titirangi, a neighborhood in / close suburb of Auckland) that seemed of probably interest to readers of this blog. First, there was this hardbound book that practically leapt off the "NZ Fiction" shelf and into my hands. You ever have that experience, where a book seems to Shout at you from the shelves, even if it's not particularly flashy or specially displayed? Yeah, that's what happened here:


There's something so simple, elemental, and badass about this design. I found myself thinking "Why don't more books like this?" Slightly frantic font set off against the slightly frantic geometrical linear configuration. Hot and cool at the same time. Minimal but substantial. Colorful, but with a B&W feel. Love! I also love the back cover, where we get to learn a thing or two about our author:

Armed! Only other armed author I've seen on a paperback cover is Spillane! I'm so reading this.

The other book I pulled out of that shop is less surprising, but no less intriguing:



How am I supposed to resist this? The genius of Penguin design, the beat-upness of a good book well read, the Chandler of Chandler of Chandler. I didn't even ask 'how much?' (answer: more than it was worth, less than I would've gladly paid). If I had to design a book to read on a train, it would look like this. I think it would *be* this. HOWEVER, I completely forgot that, for reasons I now forget, Philip Marlowe was not called Philip Marlowe in the UK editions of Chandler's work (despite the fact that the playwright Marlowe was British, and the fact that Marlowe evolved out of the earlier Mallory—another important British writer (minus one "l")). Instead, the detective is called Johnny Dalmas. You would not think a simple name change would affect my reading pleasure. You would be dead wrong. I just couldn't get past it. Marlowe is so far from a "Johnny" that I found it hard to take the stories seriously. It's like if Yakkity Sax started playing over the climactic scene in "The Godfather." To my ears, all kinds of tonally wrong. Anyway, the book still looks cool, which is mostly what matters.

More from The Collection very soon—I'm gonna step up production to make up for the lengthy hiatus.

Later,
RP

Paperback 204: Ace G-512 (1st ptg / 1st ptg)

Title: The Girl Who Had to Die / The Blank Wall
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• There was this floating head that liked to eat sailboats, which made the tall, dark, mysterious man on the beach very sad. The end.
• What is it with the rainy day covers on all these Holding novels? Dreary and decidedly unhot. More skin, please.
• Actually, on third or fourth look, the streaks look less like rain than like the trim on some elaborate fur hat. Or a really, really bad haircut.

Best things about this other cover:

• This is one of my favorite pieces of crime fiction ever written. Ever. Seriously, it's that good. And unusual. Super suspenseful, with really complex and interesting characters. Women that aren't just femmes fatales. Just great. Provides a fascinating glimpse into domestic life during WWII (i.e. while the husband is away at war). Wish it would stay in @#$@ing print!
• More lazy art. Etch-a-sketch posing as op-art. And I think the guy from the other cover just walked through the book and ended up here. That lady is not a very good hider.

Page 123~ (from The Blank Wall)

"Here's something you might be glad of," he said, and held out three little capsules, bright yellow.

~RP

Paperback 176: Gold Medal D1976 (PBO?, 1966)

Title: The Irish Beauty Contract
Author: Philip Atlee
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Well, Joe Gall, obviously. Look at his tough-guy mug up there in the corner. "I Approve This Counterespionage Adventure"
• I was hoping and praying that the picture of Joe Gall in the corner meant that there was some TV show or something that featured his character ... but no. Not that I can see. Just some model ... ? Which is weird. I want to say "unprecedented." It's like they want you to think he's some kind of TV star, or that the book might be a TV tie-in. I guess that was a selling point in the 60s.
• The tagline for this non-existent TV show would be someone saying: "You've got some gall!" and then Joe would turn and smile knowingly into the camera. Magic!
• I'm guessing the dead girl is the "Irish Beauty." I say this because of her lush, cascading red hair. Something tells me those ruins are not in Ireland. Meanwhile, our hero is dressed oddly like Joan Crawford. Cross her with Norma Desmond descending the staircase at the end of "Sunset Boulevard." Now cross that with Frankenstein's monster. That's our hero.
• Love the blurb from Chandler. Legitimacy! The quote kind of trails off there. There's a longer one inside that continues: "... the hard economy of style, the characterizations ..." but that one trails off too. I'll be kind and assume that Chandler doesn't introduce a "but" in the next phrase.

Best things about this back cover:

• Joe Gall montage! See the many sides of Joe Gall! Wry look, followed by slightly less wry look, followed by the same look at a slightly different angle, followed by the cool pleasures of Chesterfield, followed by exhale. Joe Gall!
• "The Nullifier," HA ha. Best name ever. It's very non-terrifying.
• Joe is not afraid of "hairy ones." I've heard of guys like that. I think they are called "bears." Or "cubs," I forget.

Page 123~

Screw that, here's page 1, line 1:

"You're most depressing," the Irish Beauty said. She was nude except for a solar topi and a riding crop.

Topi (n.): A pith helmet worn for protection against sun and heat.

At least I assume he means the pith helmet. The other "topi" is an antelope.

~RP

Paperback 91: Pocket Books 50118 (5th ptg, 1965)

Title: The High Window
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: SOLD (sometime in early May 2008)



Best things about this cover:

• That dude's face - absolute comedy gold
• That dude's shadow
• The fact that that dude is upside-down (rarely seen position for anyone to be in on a paperback cover). If you turn the book upside-down, that guy looks like your dad pretending to be a monster after he's had a hard day at work / a little too much to drink.
• The prissy font of the title - contrasts nicely with the imminent death of the screaming man in the grey flannel suit

This book is not officially in my collection (it sits on my ordinary bookshelf with my meant-to-be-read books), but this cover is just screaming to be in the collection. So here it is.

PAGE 123~

The room had that remote, heartless, not quite dirty, not quite clean, not quite human smell that such rooms always have. Give a police department a brand new building and in three months all its rooms will smell like that. There must be something symbolic in it. A New York police reporter wrote once that when you pass in beyond the green lights of a precinct station you pass clear out of this world, into a place beyond the law.

~RP

Paperback 86: Avon 219 (1st ptg*, 1950)

*Originally published as Avon Mystery Monthly 43, 1946

Title: Finger Man
Author: Raymond Chandler
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $50


Best things about this cover:

• The lady is hot and all, but it's Joey Green Visor who really sells this cover. He's either trying to commiserate with Captain Handsome about how stunning the lady is, or else he is starstruck because he thinks Captain Handsome is Clark Gable.
• This woman is in Desperate need of a new hairdo. Her hair has all the textural allure of sculpted rubber. Plus, that left nipple ... it's like I'm staring down the barrel of a gun.
• "Oh, excuse me, I seem to have dropped my bulging wallet ..."
• I see the "roulette wheel," but ... where's the "redhead?"
• In case you didn't know, Raymond Chandler rules. Best Crime Fiction Writer Ever.

Best things about this back cover:

• The fact that all the adjectives in the line "Fast Action, Hard Women, and Ruthless Crime" are interchangeable.
• Shakespeare Head!
• "Blood-and-sex" is a category of writer?
• Please notice all the hyphens. I'm telling you, it's a rule: Toughness is proportional to hyphen density.

I have this theory that if you take the best line out of any crime novel of your choosing, and then take the best line on a random page of any Chandler novel, the Chandler line will win hands down. I will now test this theory on ... Page 123!

"Shut up, snow-bird!" Mallory snapped. "Nobody's getting anybody. This is just a talk between friends. Get up on your feet and stop throwin' curves!"

"Mallory" was the name of Chandler's detective in the early days, before he settled into my personal hero, Philip Marlowe.

RP

PS thanks to Todd Robbins at The Modern Con Man for naming this site his "Site of the Week." His book is beautiful and you should buy it.