| Vintage Pulp | Sep 7 2019 |
Beware the Jabberwock, the jaws that bite, the claws that catch.
Night of the Jabberwock, first of all, is a great title for a book. And in Fredric Brown's hands you know it won't be a typical story. What you get is the tale of a mild-mannered newspaper editor in a nowhere town called Carmel City who wishes he could beat the big papers to a world shattering scoop just once. And of course he gets more than he asked for when he's sucked into a Carrollian nightmare that grows progressively crazier over the course of twelve hours. It would be best to go into reading this book knowing nothing about it at all, but the cover art by Robert Skemp, with its single line about the mob coming to town, gives too much information, simply because the main character's assumptions about what's happening start along completely—and we mean completely—different lines. Night of the Jabberwock is still great even slightly spoiled, but because you already know it has to do with organized crime, we'll tell you nothing more. It was originally published in 1950, and this Bantam edition came in 1952.
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 28 2016 |
What a letdown. I assumed captains going down with their ships meant they went down in general, but apparently not.
If you can't count on seamen for a good time, what can you count on? Sailor Town concerns a man who goes ashore in a South American two-mule town with a hundred and twenty-seven dollars and thirty-six hours to kill. To get an idea what the mood of this book is, consider that Paul Fox wrote it in isolation in the Mojave Desert after a friend dumped him there to rescue him from a year of hard drinking. With nothing more than a table, a chair, and a typewriter in the room Fox banged out this novel. Like the author the main character Sweeney has seen some things. He sees even more ashore, and finally returns to his ship flat broke, loved out, and generally exhausted, but wiser for the experience. It was Fox's first novel, originally published in 1935, but the Bantam edition above appeared in 1950 with the capable Robert Skemp on the cover chores.
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 3 2014 |
Geez, lady, you sure picked a hell of a time to start doing the alligator.
Above, a cover for W. R. Burnett’s drama Romelle, which has nothing to do with spontaneous inappropriate dancing, but rather with a nightclub singer who marries a mysterious man with a dark past. It was published in 1946, and this Bantam paperback appeared in 1951. The art is by Robert Skemp. We featured another Burnett cover a few days ago, which you can see here.
