Georgie Winthrop by Sloan Wilson (Pan, 1965)

On the last afternoon of the Lifeline Bookfair they start selling off their stock by the bag.  Naturally I always take full advantage... and I gravitate towards the "vintage" table where I can fill my bag full of wonderful old paperbacks.  And the beauty of it is, at these bargain prices I can experiment with books I normally wouldn't be interested in - just because I like the looks of their covers.

'I'd love to be the Firebird in the Firebird Suite,' she said.  'She's sort of doomed, because she's feeding on herself, but she's also beautiful to see.  And anyone who touches her is doomed too, set afire, just the way she is.'

CHARLOTTE - at seventeen already a woman, grabbing at life, her passion for Georgie Winthrop all-consuming...

GEORGIE - forty-five, married with two children, a college vice-president - a man whose secure, complacent world trembles under the impact of Charlotte's uninhibited youth and beauty...

And this is a perfect example.

I'm becoming more and more enamored of Pan's output from the early fifties through to the mid-sixties.  They made a habit of commissioning good commercial artists to do their covers, and the best of them were very good indeed.   Later in the sixties Pan decided to cut costs by substituting photographs for the cover art, bringing their Golden Age to an end.  A shame, but it was fun while it lasted!

Meanwhile, I think I've started a collection...

Holiday for Inspector West by John Creasey (Hodder, 1959)

"Handsome" West of the Yard is enjoying a well-earned holiday at the seaside with his wife and young family when news breaks of the murder of an M.P.  In spite of Janet's protests, Roger hurries back to London "to take a look around", and contrives to be given official charge of the case.

Even a preliminary inquiry into Riddel's death opens up a vast number of complications to West.  The pursuit of a small package, for example, leads him into many dangers and strange places.  Slowly a pattern begins to emerge . . .

John Creasey gave his detective hero the nickname "Handsome", but in book after book also has him brawling and/or getting beaten up.  Maybe by this stage in the series he should be called "Cauliflower Ear" or "Broken Nose" West instead!

The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge (Pyramid, 1973)

The clouds of civil war hovered ominously over England in 1642, as Puritan and Royalist forces gathered for bitter battle.  Caught in the midst of tumultuous events, the characters in Miss Goudge's gripping novel act out a compelling drama of intrigue and timeless romance.

Awww, look at the groovy people on the cover of this book.  She is wearing Biba and blue eyeshadow.  He has carefully styled and blow-dried hair and looks like he bought his outfit in King's Road.  They're clearly a happening couple from the 1970s.

--Wait a minute.  You're telling me that the story takes place in 1642?

Now this is an example of egregiously generic cover art: it could have been slapped on any paperback romance (and probably was).  I can hazard a guess who the people on the cover are meant to be, but they don't really resemble any of the characters in the book.  It's a pity: the author is better than average, and certainly didn't write the standard kind of hack work usually published in paperbacks of this kind.

The Green Ribbon by Edgar Wallace (Arrow, 1957)

 

She inherited a fortune--& sinister misfortune...

Young, wealthy and beautiful Edna Gray suddenly found herself, like a fly, caught in a web of sinister intrigue.  New to the racing game, she found that one of her tenants, Elijah Goodie--the famous racing owner and trainer--was indulging in strange, nocturnal activities...

And alone in the dark Perrywig Caves--she awaited a horrible death.

Well might Our Heroine be afraid--she's being pursued by a floating man emerging out of what appears to be a pink radioactive cloud!

As Edgar Wallace thrillers go, this one isn't bad mainly because the plot is halfway believable.  Criminals have set up syndicates to cheat at the races.  However Edgar Wallace can't resist adding a few over-the-top flourishes to this basic story--his chief villain is slain by panthers!

The Case of the Fiery Fingers by Erle Stanley Gardner (Pan, 1959)

Another find from the Lifeline Bookfair!

 

ASPIRIN OR

ARSENIC?

Stake...

Half a million dollars 

Method...

Four pills in a phial

Result...

One dead wife

Proof...

The tell-tale effect of ultra-violet light!

The toughest, most complicated web of intrigue that PERRY MASON ever had to fight his way through!

A woman comes to Perry Mason to prevent a murder—naturally murder happens anyway.  If Perry Mason went around preventing murders, how would he get a chance to prove his client innocent in a dramatically contrived courtroom scene?

The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (Panther, 1958)

A gift from a friend who knows me far too well:

 

A CRIME THAT COULD INFLAME A GALAXY...

A Spaceman--a specialist in robotics--has been murdered.  Lije Baley, a plain-clothesman of his age, combs the huge cave of steel for a lone fanatic, for a murderer--for the solution to an almost perfect crime.

One of the two men on the cover is a robot—I'm not sure, but I think it is the one who is unconscious.  Don't quote me on that, though!

Isaac Asimov was one of the Big Three names of the "golden age" of science fiction (the others were Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein).  Asimov is most famous for inventing the Three (fictional) Laws of Robotics:
  

"A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law."

 In The Caves of Steel he combines a science fiction novel with a detective story, a combination of genres that for some reason seldom works.  And yet it works in this one.  I put it down to the fact Asimov creates an interesting futuristic setting for his story, then makes it integral to that story rather than using it as window-dressing.  His detectives move through an overcrowded urban world where people huddle under domes and hate and fear the outdoors—and robots.  It's an almost film noir-ish setup—except Asimov was far too prissy and logically-minded to indulge in the sort of sex and violence common in most hardboiled fiction!

Need I add that one of the detectives is a robot and the resolution of this mystery lies in the world outside the domes?

I have another copy of this—also a Panther Book—but alas, it was published in the 1970s, and the cover isn't nearly as interesting.

The Escape Orbit by James White (Ace, 1965)

One of my Lifeline Bookfair treasures!

 

STRANDED ON A PLANET OF MONSTERS

When the survivors of his starship were taken prisoner by the insect-creatures against whom Earth had fought a bitter war for nearly a century, Sector Marshal Warren expected to be impounded in a prison camp like those the Earthmen maintained.  But the "Bugs" had a simpler method of dealing with prisoners--they dumped them on an uninhabited planet, without weapons or tools, and left them to fend for themselves against the planet's environment and strange monsters.  A "Bug" spaceship orbited above, guarding them.

Escape was impossible, the "Bugs" told them--but it was absolutely necessary, for reasons Warren couldn't tell even his own men.

The creature on the cover is a "battler", which is.. well, let's go with the author's description:

If it looked like anything at all, Warren thought, it was an elephant—a large, low-slung elephant with six legs and two trunks which were much more than twenty feet long.  Below the point where the trunk joined the massive head a wide, loose mouth gaped open to display three concentric rows of shark-like teeth, and above the trunks its two tiny eyes were almost hidden by protective ridges of bone and muscle.  Between the eyes a flat, triangular horn, razor-edged fore and aft, came to a sharp point, and anything which had been caught by the trunks and was either too large or not quite dead was impaled on the horn while the trunks tore it to pieces of a more manageable size.  Because it had no natural enemies and was too big and awkward to profit from camouflage, its hide was a blotchy horror of black and green and livid yellow.

—Page 64.

Now how is a self-respecting artist supposed to depict that?