 You want me to be a good girl? I can do that. But it'll cost you extra. 
We run into Robert McGinnis everywhere. In fact, we suspect his art is so collectible that his covers are the reason some vintage paperbacks avoid oblivion. But Don Kingery's Good Time Girl, though obscure, deserves to survive on its own merits. It's a good book. The story, which is set in a small Louisiana town called Bay Ste. Marie, deals with a journalist named Jack Candless who agrees to push a false story of rape in order to advance his flagging career. The alleged victim is the town prostitute, but Candless helps make her over into a virginal good girl. The whole scheme is supposed to last only a few days, but of course it spirals completely out of control—not least because Jackie blue is a blackout drunk. This is the first time we've read Kingery, but hopefully not the last. Good Time Girl is confidently written, compellingly plotted, interestingly peopled, emotionally believable in terms of alcoholism, and has a convincing sense of place that makes clear Kingery knows the dirty south well. Top marks.
 Underneath her cool exterior lies a completely different woman. 
Paula is another southern sin novel—i.e. set in a decadent, overheated south where sex and greed combine to produce deadly results. This one follows an oil worker who goes to work for an impotent millionaire and his young hottie of a wife—the eponymous Paula. Hero gets hottie pregnant and murder must follow, but it’s after the killing that things really begin to fall apart, and in unpredictable ways. You know the basic idea because you read it in James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and “Double Indemnity.” Though the cover art from Mitchell Hooks doesn’t specifically invoke a southern mood, it’s really quite nice, especially how the robe is rendered in a style that verges on calligraphy, complimenting the edges of the mirror, and how the reflection in the glass is red, revealing the fiery intensity beneath Paula's cool exterior. Nice touch. You can see a couple more Hooks pieces here and here.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Nagasaki Destroyed
The United States detonates a nuclear bomb codenamed Fat Man over the city of Nagasaki. It is the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. 40,000 to 75,000 people are killed immediately, with tens of thousands more sickening and dying later due to radiation poisoning. The U.S. had plans to drop as many as seven more bombs on Japan, but the nation surrendered days later. 1969—Manson Followers Murder Five
Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murder pregnant actress Sharon Tate and coffee heiress Abigail Folger, along with Wojciech Frykowski, Jay Sebring, and Steven Parent. The crimes terrify the Los Angeles celebrity community, and even today continue to fascinate the worldwide public. 1963—Gang Pulls Off Great Train Robbery
A fifteen member gang robs a train of £2.6 million at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England. Thirteen of the fifteen are later caught, but some subsequently escape from prison, and one, Ronnie Biggs, is only recaptured in 2001 after voluntarily returning to England. 1974—Nixon Resigns
After two years of public outcry over the Watergate scandal, U.S. president Richard M. Nixon announces to a national television audience that he will resign, effective the next day. Vice President Gerald R. Ford completes the remainder of Nixon's term. 1947—Journey of the Kon-Tiki Ends
Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into a reef in the Tuamotu Islands after a 4300 mile (7000 kilomteter) journey from South America. Heyerdahl was attempting to prove —in rather circuitous fashion—that South American natives were descended from Pacific Islanders.
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