One thing that’s truly awful about this cover is, there was a way the designer could have put the excerpt from the protagonist’s pulp novel on the cover and done it right. I’ve seen just such a cover which did the “story-within-the-story script” a whole lot better… on a comic book. The article’s a lot longer and a lot more fragmentary due to the artwork overlaid on top of it, but it’s also a whole lot more fun to read as you work out what’s in the parts you can’t see from the parts you can.
With this cover, the excerpt’s words have obviously been shoved aside to make room for the protagonist’s head. It would have been a lot more entertaining if his head were similarly blocking us from reading all of it, and the fragments we could see said intriguing things like “…of all the bird seed and horse dung he’d…” “…kidneys suspended in aspic…” and “…paid our respects to him one flush at a time.” That would give it more of a The Secret Life of Walter Mitty feel.
Looks like “Crime Writer” needs an editor. The usage example of filmy in the dictionary refers to plastic wrap. For sexy the word shudda been sheer; “sheer” matches lingerie ads far more frequently than “filmy”. On second thought, he could be writing for Lurid Detective Stories magazine and the dame was kinky with Saran Wrap.
![cover[1]](https://lousybookcovers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cover113.jpg)
“The red-hot true story of a writer which races along?” Ambiguous relative clause is ambiguous.
It’s not often that I can say “TL;DR” about a book cover.
What creepy text.
My immediate thought.
One thing that’s truly awful about this cover is, there was a way the designer could have put the excerpt from the protagonist’s pulp novel on the cover and done it right. I’ve seen just such a cover which did the “story-within-the-story script” a whole lot better… on a comic book. The article’s a lot longer and a lot more fragmentary due to the artwork overlaid on top of it, but it’s also a whole lot more fun to read as you work out what’s in the parts you can’t see from the parts you can.
With this cover, the excerpt’s words have obviously been shoved aside to make room for the protagonist’s head. It would have been a lot more entertaining if his head were similarly blocking us from reading all of it, and the fragments we could see said intriguing things like “…of all the bird seed and horse dung he’d…” “…kidneys suspended in aspic…” and “…paid our respects to him one flush at a time.” That would give it more of a The Secret Life of Walter Mitty feel.
Was the cover artist paid by the word?
Uhrrr….”filmy pants and bra?” Filmy? So, what, made out of cellulose?
I forget who it is here who says this, but Sweet Baby Jesus.
Looks like “Crime Writer” needs an editor. The usage example of filmy in the dictionary refers to plastic wrap. For sexy the word shudda been sheer; “sheer” matches lingerie ads far more frequently than “filmy”. On second thought, he could be writing for Lurid Detective Stories magazine and the dame was kinky with Saran Wrap.