Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Two Great Old Covers (Hat tip to Anthony Ambrogio)


Here is what Anthony said about these books.

I am eagerly awaiting in the mail the arrival of two 1950s-era paperbacks that I ordered through biblio.com. MARK OF THE MOON and THE WITCHING NIGHT. I'm including images of the covers of both books. These two novels were in my dad's paperback library, and I "appropriated" them when I was 12 or 13. I no longer remember anything about them -- except that one of them (THE WITCHING NIGHT, I think) features a knock-knock joke, told (I think) by the hero's secretary to the hero:

"Knock-knock."
"Who's there?"
"Formaldehyde."
"Formaldehyde who?"
"Formaldehyde-ing places came de Indians, whoo-whoo-whoo."

I only hope the rest of the books are that good! (But -- if that's all I remember about either -- what does it say about the books themselves?)

4 comments:

J F Norris said...

I've read both of these! THE WITCHING NIGHT is the only book I've ever read that uses Indiana Dunes State Park as one of the key locations. It's also one of the best contemporary stories about witchcraft in a genre novel. Very creepy, never laughable. The other book is a Dennis Wheatley knock-off of Devil worship in French Riviera. I thought it pretty boring for a thriller. Cody's book is by far the better of the two and I highly recommend it.

J F Norris said...

I see that that reprint uses a different name on THE WITCHING NIGHT. The author on my copy is C.S. Cody, but I just learned it's a pseudonym and Leslie Waller was the guy's real name. He died in 2007. Never knew this book was reprinted.

Unknown said...

Hard Case is publishing great books with fantastic retro-art covers. Check 'em out.

Anonymous said...

Those are great classic covers!