Five Vintage, Appropriately Lurid, Mass Market Paperbacks (# 1.0)

Up first is a newer, appropriately lurid, vintage book cover favorite: BIBLIOBIMBO. I haven't researched it to be 100% positive that it's a loving parody — homage — to mass market pulp covers, but regardless, even if Bibliobimbo isn't a real dime store novel authored by a real bona fide author of the nom de guerre, "John Thomas," the cover blurbs and cover image itself are all clever and brilliant, and I wish I owned a copy whether it exists in reality or not. Surely it exists somewhere in the unreality of Jorge Luis Borges' "Library of Babel"!

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BLONDE ON THE ROCKS is an old favorite by a master of lurid detective noir, Carter Brown.  My sole complaint with the otherwise perfect cover artwork:  Where are the damn ice cubes? Is this vixen truly served on the rocks or is she served up?  If this book cover were a real ad for a real drink Carter Brown could be legitimately sued for illegitimate advertising!

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Bantam Giant's edition of Pulitzer Prize winning author's John P. Marquand's H.M. PULHAM, ESQ., proves lurid covers don't absolutely have to be limited to the leering glances of brazen women with robust, partially exposed bosoms, who've no doubt been up to indecency, to no recent good. . . .

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. . . but lurid, tantalizing, almost-bare-busted, voluptuous book covers, nevertheless, are always best! Wet your lips for KISS OR KILL by John B. Thompson.  Damn seaweed.

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Ooh-la-la!  . . .  Such unwholesome, such naughty ladies of perdition make the most swell, the most fabulous, the most devilishly delightful and appropriately lurid book covers, don't they?  Case in point: LADIES IN HADES by Frederic Arnold Kummer. Have one hell of a good time, Reader, with these "gay lovelies" confessing all among "the smart-set in Hell". . .