Paperback 730: Doctor with a Gun / Richard Ferber (Dell First Edition A198)

Paperback 730: Dell FE A198 (PBO, 1960)

Title: Doctor with a Gun
Author: Richard Ferber
Cover artist: John Leone

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• I guess I can kind of make out a gun, there, in a holster near his knee. Still, with a title like that, you'd think you'd make the "gun" a little more prominent. "Doctor with a Horse!"
• What do you call those kinds of neck ties? Not bolos … 
• Few doctors had the guts to ride alone through the Land of Mustard.

Best things about this back cover:

• That's a damned stupid layout of KILL OR BE KILLED. It makes no sense. What are all the "Kills"? why would you wrote "Be" after "Kill" — "Kill Kill Kill OR Kill BE Killed ellipsis Kill Kill" WTF?
• Nothing more sheeplike then "the whole town" in a Western. 
• If Luke Short's word is so important, maybe give it slightly more prominence? Just a thought.

Page 123~

Nothing was as simple as it seemed. Nothing could stand isolated, without sooner or later infecting something else. There was no good in running away. 

Damn. Matt Kirby has gone full Greek Tragedy. Pray to Athena, Matt! I hear that works sometimes.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

Paperback 27: Bantam 1866

Paperback 27: Bantam 1866 (PBO, 1958)

Title: Summer of the Smoke
Author: Luke Short
Cover artist: Uncredited (but there appear to be initials under the rider's right foot)


Best things about this cover:

Well, they can't all be gems. Still...

• "Summer of the Smoke" sounds like the title of a movie about teenagers experimenting with marijuana in the 1970s.
• Is that the smoke, there, rising from just below the horse's nose. I'm supposed to believe that an entire summer was named for that paltry thread?
• The cover design is weirdly segmented, like it was designed by Piet Mondrian.
• This cover painting looks familiar ... where have I seen this scene before?
  

Yes, that's it. They've even got the same mustache!

Luke Short is one of the most popular western writers of the 20th century, and from what I can tell, he was pretty competent. This is a PBO (paperback original), which means that it came out originally in paperback (very rare these days, though reasonably common in the 50s). Look how excited the publishers are to tell you that this book is in print for the first time: they even brought out the whimsical excited handwriting font: "First time published anywhere!"

The fact that it's a Luke Short PBO is probably the only reason I bought this book, and I probably didn't pay more than a buck for it. The unusual segmented cover design made it desirable to me as well. Though I've featured many westerns so far from my collection, don't get the wrong idea: I don't really care for westerns, and westerns make up only a small fraction of the collection as a whole. We're simply in a particularly cowboy-ish patch right now.

RP