Sunday, October 4, 2009

Paperback 296: The Dreadful Night / Ben Ames Williams (Popular Library 155)

Paperback 296: Popular Library 155 (1st ptg, 1948)

Title: The Dreadful Night
Author: Ben Ames Williams
Cover artist: Rudolph Belarski

Yours for: $16


Best things about this cover:

  • "Hello, police, I'm being pursued by ... hello? ... damn, this isn't my phone!"
  • Rudolph Belarski: Master of DramaticHands (TM)
  • That look is not fear. It is sadistic glee. And the man with the hands is not coming after her. He's about to keel over backwards. See, she has just plucked his heart from his chest with one vicious, kungfu strike. "Ha, take that, you bastard! Hey, I can hear the ocean in this thing..."
  • "A Novel of Love, Hate and Death" — yep, that pretty much covers it.
  • That's some structured swimwear, that is.
  • Why is she at the seashore during a thunderstorm?

Best things about this back cover:

  • Text me!
  • "Adah Capello!" — no offense to all the ADAHs out there, but come on!
  • God, these Popular Library back cover write-ups are dreadful. It's like a 9-yr-old kind of sort of recounting what happens in a book he's just read.

Page 123~

Marco the dog was there [I want to stop the quote right there], swimming this way and that, barking incessantly in a frenzied and pitiful fashion; behind his head a wide ripple spread as he quested to and fro..."


Uh ... "quested?" Is he a knight-dog?

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

11 comments:

Alix said...

That swimsuit's got more rigging than a sailboat!

JamiSings said...

He's not about to kill her. He's about to TICKLE her! She's dressed right for a bit of tickle torture too.

lrf said...

Does the killer have chocolate sprinkles on the backs of his hands?

Eunice said...

The words may say "The Dreadful Night," but the font says "Arabian Nights."

When Molly pulled a whoopie cushion out of her ear she hoped to double the comedy. Little did she know Bob's father had been killed in a freak whoopie cushion accident!

The bottom of her suit reminds me of one of the "fancy women" in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. She has these cords that when she pulls on them her skirt raises like a curtain.

Poor man has arthritis.

Unless Paul is short for "Pauline," our killer is pretty stupid to terrorize Molly and Nell instead of just waiting for a man.

Ms Avery said...

These back covers are slowly killing me with their ugliness.

Tulse said...

The novel is about love, hate, and death, but the emerald has a history of love, hate, and revenge? I guess whatever's going to happen, we're definitely going to have love and hate (and lazy copywriters).

The Vicar of VHS said...

Not only ADAH Capello, but also "Molly Main." I'm surprised there wasn't as Steve SupportinKarakter and Ronald "Relly" de Villain. :P

Frank said...

Marco is one of the Knights Who Say "Woof."

Unknown said...

Why is the bottom half of her head slightly bigger than the top half?

If you pull on those cords on her swimsuit, do inflatable pontoons deploy?

Her Left Hand: Look ... I just can't do that "Live Long and Prosper" thing!

Her Right Hand: The deranged killer is about to get the towel-lashing of his life!

Elaine said...

What YEAR was this published? Because that suit has Fifties written all over it!...though this was one of the racier ones (two pieces, after all!)

No, it's not chocolate sprinkles, that's what left of his body hair after he got too close to the campfire. (See the soot on his thumb?)

P.S.
How does she keep the curl in her hair with the humidity so high?

Anonymous said...

the 'books of proven merit' on the back sealed the deal for me