Thrift Shop Book Covers: "Monocolo"

Monocolo, by Theodore Taylor, was published as a hardcover in 1989 by Donald I. Fine. The edition that caught my eye is the mass market paperback published by St. Martin’s Press in 1991. The cover art has a television movie quality to it with those great early-1990s colors and the showgirl trapped inside a kitchen knife’s blade. The artist: Edwin Herder

The first sentence:

Sunday night, January 28, 1979—Epperson “Fingers” Watts, Jr., wide receiver for the Oakland Raiders, was saying, “Now, here’s a good-looking piece of thigh,” as he inserted it into the full-color erotic jigsaw puzzle.

Theodore Taylor is best known for his young adult novels, including The Cay and The Bomb, but he also wrote twelve adult novels, including two mystery novels: The Stalker, and Monocolo.