Friday, March 18, 2011

Macfadden 60-351 (1967)

Title : The Yellow Villa
Author : Suzanne Blanc
Cover art : photo [uncredited]
  [New York, Macfadden, 1967. No. 60-351. An Inspector Menendes mystery. First published, Garden City, NJ, Doubleday, the Crime Club, 1964].

style **
substance **
collectibility *



Yellow Villa is a potboiler mystery set in Mexico and arrives a little late for the vintage cycle. Anyway, the Macfadden reissue features a curiously garish 60s style cover with a shapely brunette in a tight fitting spacesuit-like dress brightly lit by a swirling spotlight. Cool yellow lettering for the title and author. Is the model on the cover wearing a wig? Fun to compare this vintage pb interpretation with the Dutch Prisma Detectives' De Diva en de Dood. I like the Macfadden (quite a bit) better.



Monday, March 14, 2011

Site of the month

The Flickering Wall.
   A fun discovery for cinema buffs. Per the author's description, these are capsule films reviews expressed in the style of Leslie Halliwell, but without his talent for pithy prose. The site has been active since 2006, and seems to cover only currently released films.