This Is a Temperate Climate?

Yes, I know, I know: I was just complaining back in early February about how dreary and damp conditions were here in Seattle. But it’s now mid-July. And with the city experiencing what one local TV weatherman says is the “third straight summer that’s had way more warm days than average” (“So far this year … Seattle has had 25 days at 80 degrees or warmer, 15 days at 85 degrees or warmer, and a whopping 6 days at 90 or hotter.”), I am ready for rain again. What’s often said about Seattleites is really true: we are never happy with the weather, no matter what’s happening outside.

These hot days put me in mind of the following vintage novel, a different edition of which (illustrated by Ron Lesser) appears in my recently expanded gallery of summertime book covers.



Dead Heat, by Richard S. Prather (Pocket, 1964).
Illustration by Barye Phillips.