Monday, September 23, 2024
Unboxing Operation Hang Ten
Friday, September 6, 2024
A Matter of Adultery
The book stars Chris Howard, a public relations executive that absolutely loves the look, feel, and aura of women. He's obsessed with women and has made it a steadfast vow to never marry. Whenever he gets too close to a woman he immediately plants the smell of baby diapers in his mind and then quickly scampers out of the intimate relationship. It is a game he plays with himself and others that aligns with his career choice of backing ambitious men for various public official roles.
Howard's newest client is a politician named Morley. However, his contact for Morley is the man's sexy wife Jen. She's a tramp who imposes her will by expertly seducing men. Howard takes the contract to plan Morley's campaign for governorship of his state. However, Howard must walk a balance beam between sleeping with Jen, which is a must, while also supporting Morley in his political endeavors. Needless to say a talented man like Howard can juggle both jobs very well. However, there are three main issues confounding his position.
The first issue is a racketeer that doesn't want Morley elected. To stop the proceedings they put a price on Howard's head. After numerous attempts to kill him Howard buys some protection in the form of an ex-OSS (that's today's CIA) agent and war hero named Amy Downs. She takes the job to investigate the killers to protect Morley and Howard. The second issue is that Amy and Howard have a physical chemistry that is electric. While Howard is resting from his sexcapades with Jen he has to make room for Amy in his bed. Which brings us to the third issue and what I consider the real focus of the book – Howard's secretary and business partner Darleen.
Howard's daily work routine and very existence is plagued by the sexiest woman in the novel. Darleen is a beautiful, loving, highly-charged virgin that adores Howard. Darleen's love for the man extends to forgiving trust that no matter how many women Howard sleeps with he will ultimately choose her someday. Howard himself knows this but fights his urges to sexually engage with Darleen. His battle is an emotional and physical test of willpower and inner fortitude.
Like most of these mid 20th century sleaze novels A Matter of Adultery is far better than its reputation as disposable fiction read with one hand. This book, like many others of the era, is a melodrama packed with tantalizing romance that is void of any graphic sex. I will say this book may be the first one of this era that states “orgasm” in the lovemaking...but it doesn't get much hotter than that. The central theme rests in the conflict between Howard and his strict bachelorhood and Darleen with her eyes on the prize. As a romance novel the author nails it. As a crime-fiction story it mostly works with just enough action to keep it breezing by. It is mostly an original story and plot but I did see a twinkling of a White Christmas plot-point that may have been recycled. Otherwise, A Matter of Adultery is worth pursuing. Recommended.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Monday, August 12, 2024
Pleasure Ground
Our narrator is a 6’6” human giant named Bert Forbes, and he’s new in town looking for a fresh start as a farm worker after learning that his beloved wife was faithless and gave birth to another man’s child. After spending a year as a drifter, Bert lands a gig on Flint Collins’ farm. Old Man Collins is 50 and just met a much-younger woman on a cattle-buying trip and married her immediately. She will be arriving to the farm soon on a bus and the farmhands have been warned to keep their distance.
With that set-up, the novel pretty much writes itself thereafter. Bert meets a beautiful, stacked girl at a community dance, and she lives next door to the Collins Ranch and refuses to sell her land. Bert sees her naked in the woodsy swimming pond adjacent to the farm (as depicted on the cover), and the two develop a sweet interest in one another. Meanwhile, the new Mrs. Collins arrives and her breasts are even bigger and more voluptuous than the reader anticipated. How can Bert resist?
The new lady of the house seems to have the hots for our hero, Bert. His boss is a dick (who gets worse as the novel progresses), so Bert isn’t too worried about the ethical dilemma. He just wants to get paid without becoming the victim of workplace violence. There are other women in his orbit and the horny farmhands make it quite a compelling little soap opera. There’s plenty of off-page sex as well.
Hitt’s presentation of the lives of these broke-ass farm people felt like the author was channeling the down-and-out urban blight of his literary contemporary, David Goodis. Both writers did a fantastic job of portraying society’s losers and the circumstances that drive them into self-destructive behavior and criminality.
There’s nothing in this paperback that you won’t see coming, but Hitt does an admirable job of making it compelling nonetheless. The violent crime that encompasses the novel’s non-sexual climax is well-developed and earned through careful character development.
Hitt was the best at this type of book from the soft-core sleaze paperback era, and Pleasure Ground is one of his finest works. If you’ve never read one of his novels, this is a fine place to start. Buy a copy of the book HERE.
Friday, July 5, 2024
The Other Woman
The novel itself is pretty solid. Our narrator is Florida real estate agent Neil Cowan who has a buyer for 40 acres on the lake that would be perfect for a new housing development. The buyer is John Royal, a wealthy town patriarch married to Emmaline, his voluptuous and much-younger bride.
Of course, Neil is completely taken by Emmaline. Who wouldn’t be? She’s elegant, smart and sexy. She’s also got the vibe of a woman looking for trouble. Neil is happily married himself, but this is a 1960 sleaze-crime novel, so the rules are different.
It takes no time at all before Neil and Emmaline commence a hot and heavy affair and even less time before she’s suggesting to Neil that murdering her husband will allow them to be together with all his money.
A sizable percentage of books from this era all have the same setup, but The Other Woman takes an abrupt left turn and becomes an honest-to-goodness murder mystery with Neil at the helm of the whodunnit. There are twists and turns and frame-ups and red-herrings and everything you like from a vintage crime thriller.
Burgess was a solid writer and he ties up the plot with a logical and compelling solution. There are hundreds of books from this era about a wrongfully-accused man solving a crime to clear his own name, yet The Other Woman is as good as they come. It’s literary comfort food and an easy recommendation.
About the Author:
The identity of the author Charles Burgess remains a mystery. Here’s what we know:
Novels:
Backfire (Australia, Phantom, 1959)
The Other Woman (Beacon, 1960)
Short Fiction:
“I’d Die for You” (Manhunt, Oct 1958)
True Crime: as by Charles L. Burgess:
"Never Kill a Cop!" (Complete Detective Cases, Jan 1947)
"Case of the Buck-Happy Brunette" (Revealing Detective Cases, Aug 1949)
"A Killer with Women" (Underworld Detective, Dec 1951)
"Laughing Stranger from Dalton, Georgia" (Official Detective Stories, Feb 1956)
"Fat Man Blues" (True Crime, May 1956)
Paperback Warrior engaged Florida’s most prestigious private investigative firm to locate the author and his heirs. While there were many solid leads, our gumshoe was unable to definitively solve the case. More on this story as it develops.
Buy a copy of this book HERE
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Return to Vikki
Frank Shelby lives an idyllic suburban life with a good job and a pretty wife. This is all upended one day when his past comes knocking from his prior life back east in the form of a mob henchman. You see, before he was Frank Shelby, he was a master thief named Connor, now a wanted man and a fugitive. Frank’s wife has no clue about her husband’s double-life.
The visitor makes him a deal: travel back to Manhattan to meet with a mob boss about “one more job” or deal with the police and the repercussions of his old life. Making up an excuse to his wife, Frank travels back east to learn more.
Before he knows it, Frank finds himself at a mob-owned titty-bar called Club Xanadu only to find the titular Vikki dancing on stage. Frank and Vikki used to be an item before Frank dipped out and left the criminal life without saying goodbye to Vikki. Once he finally gets an audience with the mob boss, it is explained that the job requires “stealing an entire bank” — not robbing it, stealing it.
The mobster further explains that what he’s talking about is a bank that is moving across New York City from one location to another. This will involve packing up the vault and all of the assets and physically moving it across the city. It will take a man like Frank, with a particular set of skills to pull off a heist this audacious. The racketeer makes Frank an offer he can’t refuse, and the planning begins.
Along the way there’s a murder frame-up, a random beating, and extensive sexual temptation. Perhaps there was a bit too much happening, and the paperback would have been better with less mid-novel clutter and a greater focus on the heist planning and execution? In any case, it’s never particularly hard to follow.
Never fear, the novel gets back on track for the final act of the heist and its aftermath. The robbery itself is creatively-executed and the moral dilemmas surrounding it were completely compelling. The aftermath has an audacious action set piece and a killing evoking an early James Bond film.
Overall, Return to Vikki was a remarkably good - and twice mispackaged - heist novel that fans of Lionel White and Richard Stark will enjoy immensely. Recommended.
Buy a copy of the book HERE.
Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Bait
Melody Frane is 17 years old and living in a one-room shack on an Arizona migratory farm. Daily, she performs hard labor and arrives home to hear the rhythmical sounds of a squeaky mattress holding her drunk mother and a hoodlum. Melody wants out, and she has the knock 'em dead good looks to rise above her sorrowful lifestyle. Her meal ticket might be Harry Ransome.
Harry is the town's wealthy entrepreneur, holding the keys to the city through real estate, investments, and solid business savvy. However, most of his success comes from swindling young women like Melody as special concessions to close the big deal. When Harry propositions Melody for the big plays, she hesitantly accepts. Soon, she's wining and dining in Los Angeles while attending a performing arts school that hopes to firm up her mind and soul to deliver the goods. She's forced into uncompromising situations with Harry and his business associates while pining for the real love of her life, a hard-working pilot that works for Harry.
Bait was originally published by Beacon, a sleaze publisher that mostly offered very tepid sex scenes (what we would consider PG-13 today) peppered through a gripping human conflict story. Author Charles Boeckman wrote some of the best Beacon paperbacks as Alex Carter, and Bait sort of falls into the same overall theme. Vance presents the glitz and glamour of the high-dollar white-collar, but underlines it with a blue-collar “fish out of water” story of a small-town girl pressured into unfamiliarity. As a breezy read, take the Bait and enjoy. Recommended.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Flesh Parade
Our “hero” is 21 year-old Tony Cross, and he is fresh out of the U.S. Air Force and looking to start a new life pumping gas or changing tires in his hometown of Norfolk, Virginia. He sees a pretty girl at the bus station, and decides to go to Cleveland with her in hopes of an encounter.
Along the way, Tony gets off the bus to get laid, and temporarily settles down in a small town. There he is propositioned by a bartender to commit a smuggling crime in and out of Canada with a woman the bartender assigns him. On this trip, he discovers the wonders of marijuana.
In a normal Lawrence Block novel, this would have been the spark for a series of criminal misadventures. However, this is a 1960s sex book written under a pseudonym. The paperback is really a coming-of-age story about a guy choosing to travel across the country getting laid at every stop. He does some pretty immoral things along the way, and the listener reader is left wondering if he will find any kind of ethical redemption or even love?
As far as plots go, it’s actually fairly weak. The sex scenes are plenty hot for the era and somewhat disturbing at times. Tony is not a good person, and you should not be rooting for him. He leaves a trail of broken hearts and broken lives behind and treats women as conquests. But he’s a dysfunctional character in a completely interesting way.
The reason you should read and enjoy this novels because the writing is very crisp. It’s noticeably a Lawrence Block novel, almost a darker prototype for the Chip Harrison books from slightly later in his career. The pages flew by and left the reader wondering how Tony would get out of one mess only to find himself enmeshed in another.
Flesh Parade is not a sleaze fiction masterpiece. If you’re looking for that, check out the novels of Orrie Hitt. But I think you could do a lot worse than this book. It was compelling as hell and you should check it out if you’re into this type of thing. Recommended.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Chip Harrison #03 - Make Out with Murder
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Slave Island
The 300-page paperback begins in Boston with Billy Peake, a young English colonial, awaiting a shipment of Mexican silver to arrive on a convoy ship. However, the ship's captain and a local businessman named Easton conspired to swindle Peake out of the cargo. After convincing Billy to rut out all of his frustrations at the local whorehouse, the two get Billy drunk and throw him on a ship destined for Africa's slave coast. Two days later Billy awakens to find himself in bondage.
Arriving in Africa, Billy is placed into caged slavery and forced to mate with a young white woman named Jenny. At first Billy refuses, but as time marches on the two do the wild monkey dance and get it on. Then, the two are forced to walk with a parade of slaves across the continent to an island north of Madagascar named Slave Island. It's a prison dedicated “for the worst Arabian, Turk, and European scum, a Tower of Babel in the ocean for more sinner than saints.”
I know what you're thinking – this sounds awesome! A wild adventure ripe with jungle savagery, the inevitable fight to the death on an island prison, nautical battles, and a revenge plot as Billy fights his way to freedom in the Hellish heat of Slave Island. Well, scratch all the excitement off that excursion list. This literary cruise is headed to a penis extravaganza led by a phallus-obsessed captain named Simon Finch.
I mentioned the page count earlier. Out of those 300 pages, approximately 200 is dedicated to just straight, plain 'ole porno. I'm fairly certain Finch is making up for something because nearly every word is “phallus”, “penis”, “meat”, “sheathed manhood”, “prick”, “throbbing member”, “shaft” or just “dick”. I thought author Dan Streib was fascinated with genitalia, but he's no stiff competition for Finch. This dude is dialed into dick in a big boner way.
Look, Savage Island is mostly what I would consider a plantation novel or a slave gothic. Lots of African American men being sold into slavery and forced into wild sexual encounters with lonely white women. If that's your thing, you may dig this. There's also plenty of cathouse antics, tons of rape, and some wild (I mean wild!) stuff with dicks being sliced off and stuffed with sand and then being placed on sticks to...well you get it. Maybe 100 hundred pages is the rough and tumble adventure stuff, which is where I like it, and I mostly just skipped all the graphic sex. If you like the plantation stuff, Slave Island is probably a must. There's nothing particularly discouraging about Finch's writing other than his unhealthy fixation on dick. I'm not reading a word of the author's other stuff and will count Slave Island as a one-time sentence. I'm sure I'll never be a repeat offender.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Monday, November 20, 2023
Little Sister
Our narrator is Private Detective Andrew Brice, and he is summoned to a new client meeting at a large estate. His client is a wealthy, attractive woman named Miss Vivian Prosper who has just gone through a financially-advantageous divorce. Vivian shares the lakefront mansion with her little sister, Linda — and since the novel is called Little Sister, you probably saw that coming.
Little Sister Linda is a 17 year-old whiskey-swilling hellion, and she stands to inherit a pile of money from a trust fund soon when she reaches 18. Linda intends to marry a 30 year-old gas station attendant, and Big Sister Vivian wants PI Brice to break up the romance because the loser boyfriend is clearly just trying to get his claws on the trust fund cash.
All of this is conveyed in the Chapter One meeting between Brice and Vivian. The reader sees where this is going, and then Little Sister Linda arrives home in her convertible, drunk-as-a-skunk with a dead body in the trunk. And THAT’S how you start a private eye paperback.
As a licensed professional, Brice is duty bound to report the corpse in the trunk to the police, but sexy Vivian has other ideas. Could the prospect of getting laid with the seductive divorcee possibly convince our PI to dispose of the body with no police involvement? That’s the kind of thing that could turn a hardboiled private eye mystery into a femme fatale crime noir paperback.
You’ll need to read the book to find out how Brice handles this and other dilemmas he confronts throughout this lean paperback. The plot eventually settles into a pretty standard PI mystery with Brice interviewing one witness after another until the situation becomes both more clear and more messy as red herrings arise. It’s all well-written with a sexy undercurrent thanks to the seductive sisters at the eye of the storm and the fact that every female interviewee throws themselves at Brice.
The climactic conclusion is a scene where the villain, now revealed, explains the motivation and execution of the murder in painstaking detail while holding a gun on Brice. It’s an overused trope in mystery fiction, but well-executed in this case.
And that’s the thing with Little Sister. This paperback breaks zero new ground for a private eye mystery of the 1950s. However, if you’re in the mood for a completely traditional and readable genre paperback, you could do a lot worse. It’s about as good as a better-than-average Mike Shayne novel.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Monday, November 6, 2023
The Trailsman #87 - Brothel Bullets
The paperback hits the ground running with Skye Fargo (The Trailsman) rescuing a teenage girl from a thug who snatched her off the trails to make her work as whore in Cactus Corners, Arizona. Fargo is a sex-positive kinda guy, but this forcible arrangement offends his sensibilities. The girl’s sister is being held at the brothel, and there’s a rich father who will pay to have his daughters returned. It’s hero time.
Recovering the girls is simple enough, but Fargo is re-hired to capture the human traffickers behind this kidnapping operation and deliver them to the father’s ranch for some frontier justice. Along the way, he teams up with a plucky woman whose best friend was kidnapped by the same crew.
Brothel Bullets was released in March 1989, three months before the first Canyon O’Grady novel. It’s clear that Messmann was hoping to hype the character in The Trailsman before rolling out the full O’Grady experience. O’Grady doesn’t make his appearance until page 122 of this 166 page paperback. It’s a brief team-up, and O’Grady doesn’t even get laid or discuss his day job as the President’s own secret agent. In fairness, O’Grady’s appearance isn’t mentioned on the book’s cover, description or inside blurb, so the publisher wasn’t overtly hyping this prequel. I suspect I’m probably the only reader mildly excited about this glimpse into the Jon Sharpe Extended Universe.
In any case, Brothel Bullets is a damn fine installment in The Trailsman series. There’s a solid mystery regarding exactly who is behind the sex trafficking operation and plenty of action sequences along the way. Because this is an adult western, there’s many hot sex scenes, if that’s your jam. The adult westerns tend to be fungible with little to distinguish one title from another, but this one is a standout among them. Read and enjoy.
Fun Fact: Canyon O’Grady and Skye Fargo team up again in Trailsman #100: Riverboat Gold from April 1990.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
A Woman Possessed
As with the best of Whittington’s novels, he wastes no time getting into the plot. Convicted murderer Dan Ferrel is an inmate on a prison road gang swinging a grass sling to cut down the weeds along the steamy highway. Nobody else knows that Dan is expecting company. Namely, a woman named May who should be roaring up any minute in a blue car to facilitate his escape from the shotgun-toting guards.
Of course, the escape happens and Dan is on the run. May is smitten for Dan, but it’s clear that Dan is just using his psychological hold over May to manipulate her into facilitating his getaway. Dan has another woman on his mind - an old flame with whom Dan has a score to settle.
The second plot thread involves Dan’s brother, Paul. He’s the good kid of the family who is going to attend medical school and make something of himself. Paul just started dating a night club singer — always a disreputable profession in these books — and the songbird is pressuring Paul to join her in a heist, so they can be together with a little cash for a change.
The prison guard overseeing the road gang is Virgil Hawkins, and he’s a gun-crazy psychopath just looking for a reason to kill an inmate. When Dan escapes the road gang, Virgil takes it as a personal affront and takes vacation time to hunt Dan himself. This was a great storyline that I wish the author had further developed.
This is top-tier Whittington: Violent, exciting and compelling. The Beacon Books imprint also means sex scenes a few notches more graphic than the usual 1961 fare. There’s really nothing not to like about this one, and thanks to Stark House, you can read it without spending an arm and a leg. Recommended.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Change Partners
In 1960, Ernest Evans, known as the famous singer and dancer Chubby Checker, released a cover of Hank Ballard's song “The Twist”. The song, and Checker's dance move, lit up the club floors and had incredible success on radio. But, “The Twist” dance was considered pretty provocative for 1960.
In Change Partners, Les Kennedy arrives home from his photography studio to find his suburban housewife Vicki doing the Twist dance in his living room. The way her hips and buttocks twist and shake puts Les into an immediate sexual surrender. After the two make love, they agree to head to the local country club to dance the night away. It is here that Les gets drunk and Vicki gyrates with a used car salesman. Spotting his wife's sexy dance moves on the floor with a stranger, Les makes a club spectacle by dragging her to the car and back home. Things aren't looking good for the Kennedys.
Pretty soon, the club incident spills over into marital disharmony when Vicki begins an affair with the used car salesman from the dance. In retaliation – you know where this is going by the title – Les strikes up an affair with the couple's friend and dance instructor Sybil. The married couple's sexual encounters with other people makes up the bulk of the narrative.
Before you start thinking this story seems tepid and dull, let me remind you that this sort of novel isn't a far stretch from what Gil Brewer and Orrie Hitt were doing with their own sexy crime-fiction. Arguably, those authors created crime stories with the real focus being the tumultuous affairs and sexy flirting to propel the plot. Boeckman is just missing the crime element in his books, but to be clear there is a crime committed in Change Partners that provokes some jail time for the main character. But, it isn't anything exceptional. Instead, the author pursues the hot chemistry and sex (never graphic) that the characters experience as their marriage deteriorates. The emotional baggage, insecurities, guilt, and motivation to adultery is what makes the narrative twist and turn to the literary music.
Like Boy-Lover and Traded Wives, Boeckman pens another gem with this portrait of suburban marital Hell. If you enjoy the riches-to-rags fall from grace noir that stems from crime-fiction, then you'll love this book. Recommended.
Buy a copy of this book HERE
Monday, July 24, 2023
John Adam - Samurai
John Adam – Samurai (1971) is set in the year 1600 and stars John Adam, a 20-year old guy running from the law in Plymouth, England. Like a lot of these international, historical-adventure novels, Adam ends up on a ship under the flag of the East India Company. After stops in India and Java, Adam and his shipmates are overtaken by pirates and is sunk just off the coast of Japan. Adam is the only survivor.
After a few chapters that serve as an introduction to this era of Japan, Adam befriends a Samurai warrior named Kushoni. Adam learns that his ship, which was carrying muskets, was attacked by pirates that were hired by Kushoni's master. These muskets were going to be used to defend Kushoni's people from an aggressively barbaric neighboring clan. But, the pirates double-crossed Kushoni's people and now what's left of the muskets are now in the hands of the evil neighbors. You following all of this? It's really simple – Kushoni and Adam are good guys and represent good people. Everyone else can go to Hell.
The rest of the book plays out with Kushoni showing Adam a thing or two about swords. Adam also screws a lot of Japanese bath servants in graphic sex scenes while simultaneously falling in love, sort of, with a Japanese woman named Somi. But, there's a ton of action as Kushoni beheads, pierces, spears, disembowels, and savagely guts endless hordes of bad guys. There are also some torture sequences that were a little hard to...um...digest.
Overall, this book was just bonkers, but not in a bad way. I would probably never read it again, but would consider reading the book's sequel, John Adam in Eden. It's just that Wood is such a quirky writer with some of the oddest descriptions considering this really should be a sweeping, historical novel with a little class. Instead, you have things like “quieter than a church fart” and endless religious orgies. It was just so bizarre, but like a good car wreck, I couldn't wrestle my eyes off the pages. Your mileage may vary, but this isn't a terrible way to waste a half-day.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Monday, April 17, 2023
Brother and Sister
But, if there was a PornHub take on War Against the Mafia, say 17 years before Mack Bolan and 30 years before the internet, it could have a U.S. military serviceman receiving a letter from home telling him that his parents are dead. So, he goes home and starts banging his sister. That's the introduction of Brother and Sister, a Monarch paperback original from 1961 authored by Edwin West, who is none other than the famous Donald Westlake who uses the name Richard Stark to pen the Parker series, the best heist books of all-time.
Seventeen year old Angie's child-body has developed into voluptuous womanhood. So, she's consistently fighting off the sex-starved Bob by the dim light of the dashboard radio every Friday night. But, she's finally had enough lip-puckering and wants to totally take a low blow. So, she informs heavy-handed Bob that her parents are gone and if he can slip in and out really fast, they can successfully liberate her body from its virgin prison. But, when Bob pulls into Angie's driveway, all of the house lights are on and an old aunt is in the doorway. Angie learns that her parents have both died in a horrible car wreck. Bob's receipt of the news is equally devastating, but in a different way.
Paul is twenty-one and an Airman Second Class in the United States Air Force. After bedding down a young woman in Germany, he marries her and they both live happily ever after for four consecutive months. But, one day Paul arrives home early and finds his wife serving as a blow-up doll for a another hump-happy Airman (see what I did there?). Paul divorces his slut of a wife, and after a few months receives the devastating news that his parents have died in a car wreck. The only thing he can think of is his little sister Angie. He has to come home quick.
After the funeral, Paul and Angie decide to just live together in their childhood suburban home. When Bob comes over to provide Angie physical therapy to mourn, Paul punches his lights out and sends him packing. After a few days, Paul begins to think of Angie in a different way. Angie begins to substitute Paul for Bob in her own mind. Before you know it, Paul and Angie are doing the nasty and pretending like they are married. It's a lot of incest. I mean a lot.
Thankfully, Westlake throws in a bit of crime-fiction when Paul and Angie's devious uncle appears to claim the house as his through a series of neglected loan payments. Apparently holing up in your dead parents' house committing acts of incest does come with a price. There's a mortgage payment and bills to screw with too. Ultimately, the book's second-half is like a countdown to madness as Paul and Angie begin to question their own sanity. The book's closing pages will be stuck in my mind forever. It was such a wild, crazy romp to the finish with a climax that borders on dark psychological horror.
Despite how you feel about incest (hopefully we aren't bipartisan on this), Brother and Sister was a thrill to read. Westlake is a masterful storyteller, and even when he wasn't writing crime-fiction, he could stir the emotional suspense. If you love Westlake, this is an easy recommendation. But, if you just want a wild and crazy leap into a PG-13 level sexcapade (nothing graphic here), Brother and Sister is the way to do it.
Buy a copy of this book HERE
Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Gutter Road
The paperback begins with 38 year-old, married accountant Fred Bauman picking up a stacked female hitchhiker (Reviewer Note: Silverberg is totally a breast man). The young babe is Joanne, and she strikes Fred as a sex-positive kinda gal with an aggressively flirtatious streak. In fact, she teases Fred into such a sexual lather that he forces himself upon her in what we’d call a date-rape by today’s standards.
After their car-bang is fully consummated, Joanne shifts gears and blackmails Fred. She wants $5,000 or she’s going to the cops with a load of his DNA to report his suburban ass for sexual assault. She gives him a couple days to pull the money together before disappearing into the night.
We quickly learn that this isn’t Joanne's first rodeo. In fact, the date-rape-blackmail game is her go-to source of income. Previously, she worked as a prostitute and a dominatrix, but the fake-rape business just pays better. She also has a vibrant, consensual sex life with a hoodlum named Buddy, and Silverberg certainly knows his way around a good 1960s-style sex scene.
There are a handful of side characters and family members in the novel, and Silverberg gives us a peek into each of their secret sex lives. Some of this felt like filler, but it was always well written and compelling. The problem with Gutter Road is that there’s not much of a story arc throughout the novel other than the beginning and the resolution. Otherwise, it’s really just a cycle of sex scenes among the cast of dysfunctional characters.
I will add that the last part of the book finally becomes a crime novel once Fred decides to deal with the problem of Joanne the blackmailer head-on. The climactic sequences are pretty great and in total keeping with the dark, violent, twisty conclusions of the best Manhunt stories from the same era.
Overall, I enjoyed Gutter Road. It was an interesting glimpse into societal norms and taboos from 60 years ago. Even with his early sex books, Silverberg could deliver interesting characters and some damn fine prose with a violent conclusion. I’m glad he and Stark House are making these old novels available.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
Object of Lust
Marian, age 35, is a bored and lonely housewife and mom who is initially receptive to the flirtatious advances of 22 year-old Lewis Leland. Things escalate into hot-and-heavy make-out sessions for the pair in the woodsy confines of the lake resort town where Lewis works teaches high school girls how to water-ski.
After Lewis saves Marian from drowning in the lake, they get together on-the-sly for some thank-you-sex, the encounter ends abruptly when they are almost caught together in the woods by some local kids. Marian develops cold feet and loses the fire in her belly for young Lewis. The problem? Lewis doesn’t want this forbidden romance to end and goes into a full stalker mode.
Unlike most novels about creepy stalkers, this one is partially told from the creep’s perspective. This is a trick that Runyon also employed in his groundbreaking serial killer novel from 1965, The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed. Runyon does a particularly good job of getting the reader into Lewis’ infatuated head, and the writing is particularly solid.
Unfortunately, the paperback isn’t a crime-suspense novel throughout. Instead, the plot swims in the histrionics of the daisy-chain of affairs and infidelities among the summer lovers in Marian’s orbit. It’s pretty standard fare for a 1960s sleaze paperback and nothing you haven’t read before if you’re familiar with the genre.
To be clear, the scenes with Lewis becoming increasingly unhinged were pure gold. For my money, I’d have preferred more creepy stalker stuff and way less relationship drama filler. Is this book worth your while? Runyon was definitely a unique talent, but this isn’t his best work. It’s not much better than a mediocre Orrie Hitt book covered in some light suspense shrink wrap.
Buy a copy of the book HERE.
Monday, January 9, 2023
Carnival Girl
One of the authors that Cutting Edge has focused on is Stuart James, an underrated crime-noir author that also served as a staff writer and sports reporter for magazines and newspapers. James also became an editor for Midwood Books, a subsidiary of paperback powerhouse Tower Publications. I thoroughly enjoyed the Cutting Edge editions of James' novels Frisco Flat (1960) and Judge Not My Sins (1951). I was happy to discover another Cutting Edge title, Carnival Girl, authored by Max Gareth, a pseudonym employed by James. The novel was originally published in 1960 by a small, low-budget publishing house called Chariot Books, home of other underrated novelists like Arthur Adlon and John Burton Thompson.
Norma is a gorgeous Midwestern girl raised by an alcoholic single mom. When she's nearly raped by her drunken stepfather, Norma runs away from home. In the book's opening pages, readers find Norma at an Indiana diner using her last dime for food and coffee. Thankfully, the waitress displays some pity, and arranges for her to catch a ride “west” with a truck-driving customer. However, Norma doesn't realize that the waitress earned an extra tip by selling her to the highest bidder. On a lonely stretch of blacktop, the trucker rapes Norma before she escapes to a nearby farm. After being sized-up by a farm laborer, she manages to escape what is perceived as an attempted rape by flagging down two people traveling with the carnival.
The carny duo (slang for employees of a carnival) convinces Norma that she can make it in the carnival as a stripper. Back then, a fan favorite at rural, small town carnivals is the peep show, where men and boys with enough coins could enter a tent to watch naked women dance. Norma learns a few tricks and before long she is the carnival's number one attraction. But, she draws the attention of three specific men.
Speed is the good guy daredevil that performs motorcycle tricks. He falls in love with Norma, but she doesn't have the same feelings for him. Instead, Norma is lusting after Lee, the bad boy carnival drummer. There's also a man named Frank, who pitches Norma a lot of cash to come to St. Louis to work his nightclub. But, she later learns that Frank is in deep with the Mob and if she takes his job, she'll be passed around as a prostitute making a meager living lying on her back for criminals. It's a twisty, hot triangle with innocent Norma caught in the middle.
With Carnival Girl, Stuart James completes a vivid, often disturbing character study of this young, unfortunate woman and her abrupt, violent end of innocence. Like Judge Not My Sins proved, James was such a clever storyteller with an uncanny ability to make his characters lifelike. By using a common crime-noir trope, the traveling carnival, James is able to submerge this inexperienced character into a world of depravity. Norma is a living doll thrust into dangerous situations and guided by seedy men with below-the-belt motivations.
Carnival Girl isn't the proverbial happily ever after story of love on the run, but instead a more provocative look at young men and women pursuing carnal desires no matter the cost. It is these types of stories that made Stuart James such a talented, organic storyteller.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Friday, November 18, 2022
Motel Trap
Motel Trap is essentially an episode of Mad Men as protagonist Dave Shelton wheels and deals his company's silk pantyhose to retail chains hoping to reverse the company's downward spiral. The narrative focuses on marketing ideas, photo shoots, women's catalogs, etc. Not exactly provocative or riveting reading.
Western novelist Lee Floren, who authored Motel Trap under one of his many pseudonyms, Matt Harding, was well outside of his element to tackle softcore, sleazy romance titles. This novel was published by Beacon in 1962, a company that was notorious for hundreds of romance paperbacks, each with gaudy blurbs like, “Her office was a motel room!”
Kudos to Floren for at least attempting to write a serious novel, like Beacon's own Charles Boeckman, who was writing the same type of books for the publisher as Alex Carter. But, unlike Boeckman, Floren's novel is predictable, penned in a pedestrian style that doesn't captivate the reader.
While its not a Hall of Shame candidate, Motel Trap is certainly lodging in the vicinity. Unless you are collecting this stuff, with “artist unknown” cover art, then for God's sake just stay away.
Buy a copy of this book HERE.
Tuesday, August 23, 2022
Traded Wives
The novel presents three couples and a single woman living in a new housing community called Garden Acres. Each of the couples is struggling in various ways that revolve around intimacy. Boeckman depicts each marriage through revolving chapters that explain each character's backstory, the evolution into marriage, and the physical wants, desires, and jealous rage within this sexual suburbia.
Debbie and Bobby have just moved into Garden Acres after graduating from high school and becoming pregnant. Their parents are wealthy, respectable contributors to the community that can't afford any negative influences. They immediately force the two kids to become married and quickly convert the couple into expecting, stereotypical middle-class suburbanites. The problem is that Bobby is still running around with the town's young hotties and Debbie isn't thrilled to be settling down after bedding down the senior class's male students. That's a real problem.
Charles is an alcohol distributor and sales rep that travels the back roads of America selling booze. He smokes cigars, drives a Cadillac, and has a loud-mouth that mostly spews dirty jokes. After meeting backwoods country girl (and virgin) Barbara Lee, he talks her into marriage and they quickly move into the thriving sexual landscape of Garden Acres. Barbara Lee wants to pursue a college education and learn more about the modern world. After conquering Barbara Lee, Charles sets his eyes on his neighbor Cheryl.Tony is a white-collar guy living the American dream – playing golf on the weekends, mowing green grass, and relaxing in the shade with his newlywed wife Cheryl. The problem is that Cheryl isn't into sex, thus creating a physical barrier between the two. Tony is sexually frustrated with Cheryl and she is equally angered with his insistence on intimacy.
Boeckman was just such a great storyteller of these noir novels. Despite the titles and covers, these novels aren't any different from a Nora Roberts novel today. There are no graphic sex scenes or much (if any) profanity. In cinematic ratings, these are probably PG-13. But, that doesn't make them any less intriguing or enjoyable.
The story-lines are detailed with plot and character development that's simply superb. The narrative thrusts these unhappy couples into a wild mix of sex, fantasy, and appeasement. Debbie with Tony and Bobby, Cheryl with Tony, Charles with Cheryl, and Bobby with a divorced, sexually starved woman named April. It's a mingling of affairs and it's fantastic. I also enjoyed the “crime-noir” aspect of Tony, Charles, and Cheryl's love-triangle. It becomes violent and engaging and is probably the real highlight of the novel. The end result is that Traded Wives is highly, highly recommended.
Buy a copy of this book HERE