NB: A version of this post also appears at The Violent World of Parker.
Time to pull another Parker from the pile of eleven pristine Coronet paperback editions of Donald "Richard Stark" Westlake's crime novels colloquially known as the Parker Mega Score. And this next one might be of particular interest to Violent World of Parker proprietor Trent, seeing as he doesn't currently have it in his cover gallery:
Time to pull another Parker from the pile of eleven pristine Coronet paperback editions of Donald "Richard Stark" Westlake's crime novels colloquially known as the Parker Mega Score. And this next one might be of particular interest to Violent World of Parker proprietor Trent, seeing as he doesn't currently have it in his cover gallery:
The Outfit, first published in the UK by Coronet/Hodder Fawcett in 1971 (originally published in the States in 1963). Another Raymond Hawkey-designed "bullet hole" double-cover, the only major difference from the Coronet edition of The Steel Hit (alias Parker #2, The Man with the Getaway Face) I showcased last week, cover copy aside, is the colour scheme; the text on the inner cover is orange rather than pale yellow:
Other than that, the back cover carries the same Anthony Boucher New York Times quote:
And the inner back cover sports the same bio and photo of Westlake:
That uniformity across most – but not all – of the bullet hole Coronets means that they can be an acquired taste. Doubtless some Parker enthusiasts find them a tad boring, but the bullet hole Parkers do have a following, and are fondly remembered by British Parker fans especially, for obvious reasons. Consequently many of the Coronet editions have become quite uncommon – at present there are just five copies of the Coronet The Outfit on AbeBooks, for example – but for collectors there are additional wrinkles besides mere scarcity. For one thing, as commenters on both Existential Ennui and TVWoP (including Trent) have pointed out, they're highly susceptible to damage: that die-cut bullet hole is prone to tearing, and the outer covers have been known to come loose altogether. And then there's the fact that many of the bullet hole Coronets went into second printings: over half of those five copies of The Outfit currently listed on AbeBooks are second impressions (and those that aren't don't look to be in terribly good shape). Tot all that up, and the Parker Mega Score starts to look really quite remarkable.
I think I'm going to jump ahead a year for the next Parker from the Mega Score stack, to 1972, in order to demonstrate how the Parkers were sometimes retitled by us Brits – and those new titles were often subsequently adopted by the Americans...
That book's in enviable condition. I'm green.
ReplyDeleteI won't say I dislike the bullet hole covers, but they're so very far from Hawkey's best work. They really pale in comparison to his work on Len Deighton's books, for example.
ReplyDeleteHow familiar were "cutout" dust jackets when the Coronet Parkers appear? They've become relatively common of late, so perhaps I'm not giving Hawkey enough credit for innovation.
Die-cut dust jackets have been around since at least the early 20th century, but die-cut paperback covers are a more recent innovation. I believe it was Hawkey himself who first attempted a die-cut paperback cover, on the 1963 Pan edition of Ian Fleming's Thunderball; and then again in 1967 for the Pan edition of Len Deighton's London Dossier. So the Parkers were a relatively early entry in the die-cut paperback cover pantheon, and perhaps the first time a paperback's title had been viewed through a die-cut.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I know a lot more about the history of cover design!
ReplyDeleteCollecting Hawkey-designed books could be an expensive, if satisfying, hobby. I've always lusted after the first edition of Kingsley Amis' Book of Bond. The cover design actually declares "Designed by Raymond Hawkey" near its center, but that's only fair, because the dust jacket is perhaps the neatest part of the book. It's completely reversible; the "back" (verso?) jacket is a plain wrapper for "The Bible Revised to Be Read as Literature" so you can read about 007 while looking like a serious scholar.
Of course dust-jacketed copies cost upwards of $100, so I am unlikely to acquire one anytime soon.
I'm familiar with the Book of Bond and its DJ – I scored a first back in 2009:
ReplyDeleteBooks of Bond
But your comment makes me realise I've never done a proper post on it, or on Amis's The James Bond Dossier. I must rectify that.
Looking forward to reading that post! And it's a good time to do a Bond post, what with William Boyd's new book coming out in a few weeks.
ReplyDeleteI have read The James Bond Dossier; Amis maintains a perfect balance between cheek and serious consideration. I especially love the discussions of some of Fleming's tics, like Bond's fixation on a "firm, dry handshake" and his almost metrosexual interest in brands and grooming. Amis quotes a passage about Bond's shampoo preference ([whatever the brand is], "that prince of shampoos") and points out that this does not sound like the manly secret agent of popular imagination.
I suspect John Gardner read the Dossier before he wrote his Bond novels, or else he read Fleming as closely as Amis did. There's a passage in one of the Gardner novels (the first?) about how Bond finds "a firm, handshake" to be a good test of character! A nice little in-joke, however it originates.