Title: Kill Now, Pay Later
Author: Robert Kyle (pen name of Robert Terrall)
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis
Yours for: $9
Best things about this cover:
- Nearly everything. It's quintessential. It expresses everything I love about this era - a sense of cool combined with a sense of something fading, something ending ... a kind of twilight. These two look like their best days are behind them, just behind them, and it is only beginning to dawn on them. Look, she's already forgotten how to hold a martini glass. And he seems bemused by his gun. Poor, poor, hot people.
- "Remember when we used to find wandering daughters, fight thugs, and have hot sex in my mid-century modern apartment? ... good times ..."
- Love the whimsical font - great contrast with the smoky, languid, gin-laden miasma of grief and nostalgia that pervades the bar scene
- Robert McGinnis could draw the hell out of a woman when he wanted to. He and Maguire are the kings of Great Girl Art. That bare foot ... I'm not a foot man, myself, but man that is cute bordering on adorable.
- Honey, I officially want a padded white semicircular wet bar for Christmas. I'll take up drinking and shooting, and you take up cigarettes, and we'll be in business. I'm not sure what we do about the kid ...
Best things about this back cover:
- Ben Gates is Looking At You
- "Dacron and worsted" - wtf? That sounds like a buddy cop show waiting to happen.
- "Contact was total" - HA ha. That kind of writing takes balls.
- So ... she tasted like a caterpillar soaked in champagne? I don't want to know how anyone would know what that tastes like.
- The back cover is ... continued on page 1!? That's a very interesting sales technique that I've seen only once before.
Page 123~
What she saw in her living room cured her of the giggles.
That is a great line - the opening line of a new chapter. How could you not read on?
~RP
PS Thanks to Duane Swierczynski for pointing out that McGinnis also painted the cover for the recent reprint of this title (published by Hard Case Crime). I prefer the original cover, but the new one definitely has its charms:
2 comments:
This is Ben's last case, if he can just make it through the next five minutes.
She's waiting for someone, Mr. Big, the man with all the answers, Ben thought as he forced his way into the hotel room. "I'll have that drink, now," he ordered. "Is that worry on your pretty face, kitten? It's aging you. Oh, I see. He's on his way over now, isn't he? Well, we'll both just wait and see." He slid the .38 from its holster. "I think the three of us will wait."
The man really looks like a Sean Connery when he was young.
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