NB: A version of this post also appears on Existential Ennui.
Last week I posted a Westlake Score—a 1969 Hodder Fawcett/Coronet paperback of Donald “Richard Stark” Westlake’s Parker novel The Sour Lemon Score—which, for me, completed a run of British first editions of the Parkers—i.e. those editions Coronet published in the UK in the late-1960s before switching to the “bullet hole” style of cover design. And since I now have all of those—plus a couple of reprints—I reckon it’s time for a Parker/Coronet cover gallery.
I’m arranging the covers in order of original publication (a publication order which did, in fact, follow Coronet’s American counterpart company Fawcett/Gold Medal’s order), even though that means The Split breaks up the nice run of illustrated covers. Hey—don’t blame me: blame Coronet; you can always grab the images and rearrange them to your heart’s content. And by the way, a few of these covers haven’t yet made it into the Violent World of Parker cover galleries, so this may be the first time some VWoP regulars have set eyes on them. Enjoy.
Point Blank, Coronet, 1967; original US publication 1962 (as The Hunter)
The Rare Coin Score, Coronet, 1968; original US publication 1967
The Green Eagle Score, Coronet, 1968; original US publication 1967
The Split, Coronet, 1969; original US publication 1966
The Black Ice Score, Coronet, 1969; original US publication 1968
The Sour Lemon Score, Coronet, 1969; original US publication 1969
Point Blank (second impression), Coronet, 1970
The Rare Coin Score (second impression), Coronet, 1970
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Much as I hate editions that tie in to movie releases, the cover with Lee Marvin is the best of this bunch, and one of the best Parker covers I’ve seen. But were Lee Marvin’s eyes really ‘sea-green’, let alone Parker’s?
That Point Blank cover is much-loved among British Parker fans, Chris. The strapline may not be entirely accurate, but I do like those Coronet straps overall – “The pinch looked safe, but the hitch was human”, etc. And I really like the illustrated covers (Rare/Green etc); they’re among my favourite Parker covers of any edition.
Marvin just has an air of mystery that nobody else can touch. There’s a calmness there, a quiet danger that I suppose some people just aren’t capable of appreciating, because they think toughness and macho are the same thing, when the latter is just an attempt to feign the former. :)
The artist’s conception of Parker on those illustrated covers is interesting, but not really developed very well. It seems a bit too–schematic.
Also, I notice they rewrote the Gold Medal edition blurb for “The Rare Coin Score”–Claire is ‘a bit too cool, a bit too attractive, a bit too sexy.” A bit too redundant. ;)
Hahaha, that’s true: the Claire line is cheesy;-) lol I wonder how well these people who write these–I guess blurbs, or synopsi, whatever–on the back of these books actually read the whole novel they’re blurbing.
I actually find Marvin the most accessible when he does stuff like Cat Ballou and Pocket Money, or the one where he and Clint Eastwood sing;-) lol Pocket Money in particular is a great, underrated Marvin performance. He totally plays against type in that.
Don’t get me wrong, I know he’s no wimp. I found it funny that on his two appearances on Route 66 he get’s his butt whipped, one episode by George Maharis, the other by Marty Milner. Marvin looks like he could beat them booth with one hand tied behind his back.;-) lol
I like The Rare Coin Score and The Green Eagle Score the best. The guys on those covers look more to me how I imagine Parker looks than Lee Marvin. Somehow I don’t find Marvin that “hard” looking. Harder-looking than Coyote, but not as hard as Duvall and not even in the same universe as Constantin.
I like Marvin as an actor, though. I just saw him in a film called Pocket Money where he plays Paul Newman’s wacky sidekick and I really liked his performance.
These definitely put my Allison Busbys to shame
I’m with you on Rare Coin and Green Eagle, Dave. For my money, Robert McGinnis’ Parker on the cover of the Gold Medal edition of The Rare Coin Score is tough to beat (something I expounded on at length in this post), but Parker on those two Coronet covers, especially Green Eagle, is pretty damn good.
Dan, I have a lot of love for the A&B editions: it was my feverish collecting quest for those (a quest detailed across EE a couple of years back) that got me into the series in the first place. Much as I love paperbacks, hardbacks are my first love, and the Allison & Busby editions are still essentially the only way to collect the bulk of the original series in hardback. At least, for now…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: McGinnis’ cover for The Rare Coin Score is my absolute favorite Parker cover.
One of my favorite Parker books, too.
Braking systems are rated by hopeerowsr. Don’t see the spec very often. IIRC, 600hp is common. There were damn few factory cars that could overpower their brakes on the drive axles, let alone all 4 wheels. My ’71 Mustang, with close to 500hp, could melt the rear drums, but it could barely slide the front tires with locked up disc brakes. An auto trans with a low 4.11 Detroit Locker equipped rear end helped with the melting. (speaking from experience-left the parking brake on) When they nearly ruined Audi with that bullshit, I was dumbfounded. That was when I realized the media was playing games with their audience.
I can see where a small press could make a good deal of money on reprinting the Parker series, or at the very least the early ones which were PB originals, in deluxe hardcover editions. I’ve been spouting off about some house reprinting the Travis McGee series in deluxe hardcover for years.
The JDMs are very hard to find in decent shape (most of them are grimy, torn-up ex-Libs that I suspect are being stolen from around the Country’s Libraries at an alarming rate for profit, along with other rare 1st editions–almost all the older JDM hardbacks in Libs here where I live are “missing”). And if you do find one you have to refinance your house to buy it. Parker and Trav are due for a deluxe HC reprinting.
I am glad, however, U of C did a beautiful job with the PB reprints, and am glad Random House is reprinting the McGees in JAN in Trade Paperback, apparently the bigger sized ones with better paper stock. Hooray!
Yeah, the McGinnis cover for that one is awesome. He illustrated so many covers for so many of my favorite books. Besides the Parker series look how great he did by the Travis McGee novels. Totally iconic.
I was mulling over this issue, and coedlucnd:1) Some modern cars have MOST functions controlled by computer – brakes, cruise, throttle, gear selection, starter, ignition, injection.2) If all these functions were run by a single computer, then in the event of an ECU brain-fart, it would be possible that the system IGNORED all inputs (or more precisely, never got around to responding because the control program was in a tight loop trying to get the cruise-maintained speed to Vmax.)Conclusion? It is POSSIBLE that the anecdotes are true- at least for very new cars – but I want more information before I believe it.