Sleaze: New Additions to My Collection (Winter 2008-Spring 2009)

Sex Nuts... The Pervert Report
by Noah McGraw, Ph.D.
1969 (1st edition)
Impact Library
160 pages

Front cover text: Amazing case histories of wild sex nuts seeking erotic kicks in oral, incest, voyeur and swap depravity.
Back cover text: Sex Nuts... The Pervert Report. Wild and degenerate sex wrapped in lust and obsession that can only be untied and sated by rare forms of erotic debasement. Smashing case histories of variations in aberrations. Clinical—authoritative, crushing.
First sentence (Preface by "Noah McGraw, Ph.D."): Since sex dwells so predominantly in the realm of the mental processes, it ought not to be either surprising or revolting that approaches, views, manifestations, like and dislikes linked to the sex drive are as manifold as the differences between individual minds and bodies.
Last Sentence: Well, that was why we’d come to France in the first place, wasn’t it?

Turquish Delights
by Earl Rosen
1970 (1st American edition)
Photo Illustrated
UG Books
149 pages
Design & cover by Charles Barrow

Synopsis: Not a novel, but 3 longer stories, all of which mostly concerned with lesbian affairs. There’s only one man involved in the title story, who disguises as a woman and works as a masseuse.

Reluctant Pussy
by George Franklin
1971
Torch Reader
181 pages
Introduction by Zackery Phillips, MA

Synopsis: Colleen and Brenda are about 20 and have been friends for years. They are hot young women and carefree, they live a life of drinking, drugs and sex. They are bi and quite promiscuous. One day Colleen happens to meet the local reverend and they end up in bed.
First sentence: Colleen White finished doing the dishes and, exhausted, took a shower and got into her baby-dolls.
Last sentence: She thought for a minute, then, reaching for his prick, she said softly, “Fuck me!”

All the Wife’s Men
by Casey Ward
1974
Midnight Reader/Greenleaf Classics
205 pages

Synopsis: (Back cover) Behind Jacques Valcartier's meteoric rise in politics there was a woman who was more a wanton than a wife! Martha Valcartier was willing to do anything to get votes for her husband - even if it meant running his campaigns from a four-poster bed, offering her desirous body to the men who would insure his election. And when the votes were in, Jacques' popularity was as smashing as his wife's success in bed! All the wife’s men – the shocking story of a wife corrupted by the shame she wrought!
First sentences: Marha Valcartier stood, apparently looking through the kitchen window, as she dried and dried again the breakfast dish in her hands. In actual fact she was seeing in her mind’s eye the masturbating scene she’d secretly witnessed the day before.
Last sentence: It was the beginning of a long morning she was sure, and years of sexual completion ahead, as his hands pressed her passionately closer to his body.

Doctor Onan
by Jon Horn
1970
The Olympia Press
192 pages

Front cover text: If Doctor Onan’s couch could only talk... Wow!
Back cover text: If Doctor Onan’s couch could only talk... Wow! Well it does, and here it is, real, incredible, and hilarious. A lusty book guaranteed to blow your libido.
First sentence: My consultation schedule is full up, and my Park Avenue penthouse office suit is always busy with the comings and goings of the great and the near-great, who seek me out for my special brand of “anything goes” sex therapy.
Last sentence: And I Remained at the retreat near Kathmandu for many moons, He-Who-Dropped-From-The-Sky, reflecting on my follies and learning to praise all the things of life in the ancient tongue, as I cleaned and washed and polished the chamber pots of the Holy Ones...

Season of the Witch
by Hank Stine
1968
Essex House
224 pages
(Postscript by Harlan Ellison)

Back cover: She was the first woman he had ever been. Andre Fuller had been convicted of the brutal rape-murder of a young woman and was awaiting the sentence of death. But this was tomorrow and concepts had changed. A human life was too valuable to throw away in a futile gesture of revenge. Rather Andre learned that he must replace the life that he had taken. He had become the woman he had killed in a bizarre and totally terrifying new approach to capital punishment. Daringly provocative, and boldly unique, Season of the Witch is a brilliant speculative novel of sexual transformation depicting, with force and compassion, the emotional struggle of a man's psyche buried in the body of a woman, and the gradual, agonized emergence of a female psyche to dominate and replace its nemesis.
According to Wikipedia: "Jean Marie Stine (born 1945) is an American science fiction editor, writer, anthologists, and publisher. Stine was born Henry Eugene Stine, becoming Jean Marie as the result of a sex change."
Season of the Witch was filmed in 1995 as Synapse – aka Memory Run – (trailer) by Allan A. Goldstein (the same man behind Death Wish V: Faces of Death (1994) and The Snake King (2005). The Great Canadian Guide to the Movies (and TV) says the following about the film: "In an oppressive future, the mind of a petty thief (Makepeace) is transferred into his dead girlfriend's body (Duffy) as part of an experiment, but she/he escapes and joins up with some rebels. Confusing, cheap-looking science fiction thriller has poor writing and direction. Too bad, because the story elements could have worked and it had a better cast than most cheapo sci-fiers, particularly Morse and Bennett and Higginson (the latter two in small parts). Good costume designs. - extreme violence, sexual content, brief female nudity.- 89 min."

The Sex Tasters
by Geoffrey Kyle
Undated
Brighton Books
188 pages

Back cover: Lilli and Pete shared more than a marriage bed - each had a wild, uncontrollable need for lusty new partners: men and women able to satisfy their insatiable craving for oral sex!

The Photographer’s Model
by Donna Paradise
1977
Dover Press/Publisher’s Consultants
188 pages

Synopsis: Ralph and Marilyn are in the erotic photography business. They live in a suburb, near a young couple, Ellen and Teddy. The two are newlyweds and pretty innocent and naive. One day Ellen watches a shooting at Ralph’s studio and gets excited. She’s no longer satisfied with Teddy’s clumsy love-making and starts an affair with a co-worker of his. At the same time she feels attracted to Marilyn.
First sentence: Marilyn rinsed the dishes quickly while she gazed out the window of her tiny kitchen at the spectacular southern Californian sunset.
Last sentence(s): Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled. Another rabbit had died, after falling hopelessly under the spell of his hypnotic stare. Life went on.

The Coach’s Craving
by Michael Murray
1977
Brighton Books
190 pages

Synopsis: Peg and Marti, two teenage girls, are in the high-school gym at a time they shouldn’t be there. They are surprised by the coach of the gym team. Instead of punishing them he takes advantage of the situation and starts playing erotic games with them. Marti wants more and meets the coach again the next day. She is ready for some real sex.

The Lovers’ Crusade
by Mary Sativa
1971
The Olympia Press
189 pages

Front cover: A legend of knights and damsels, and the roaring fires of passion.
Back cover: Mary Sativa is the author of Olympia’s bestselling novel, Acid Temple Ball, an autobiographical account of her voyage among today’s sex and drug cults—one of the very few truly authentic novels of its type. Her researches into the past have led to this wonderful evocation of a medieval world which appears strangely similar to the one being created in our own time by the New Primitive of America—the Hippies. Blind faith and pure love, ceaseless errantry, magic dreams and proud poverty are the lot of her heroes. But they belong to a time when men were giants and women princesses, and when life unrolled its course in a fiery torrent of lust and brimstone.
First sentence: The armies moved slowly out of the great city Byzantium.
Last sentence: He smiled down gently at the crowd as he strummed the lute strings—each note a cry against the night. (According to Earl Kemp, Mary Sativa is pseudonym for Sharon Rudahl. (That “Mary Sativa” is a pseudonym is obvious, seeing how obvious a play it is on two names for pot.) Rudahl was amongst the few female comic artists that took part in the initial underground comix of the early 1970s. Her most recent publication is a graphics biography of Emma Goldman.

Epitaph for Brutality
by Allen Millstone
1972
Euro Classic/Star Distributors
190 Pages

Back cover: The sexual pain and agony was beyond anything she could have experienced ever before. He enjoyed giving pain, his appetite for sensual pleasure insatiable. Women fell at his knees as if he were king, and for them he was the king of pain and pleasure. He took fiendish delight in the perverted. Nothing was too bizarre for his tastes.

The Back Door Girl
by Sterling Harkins
1971
Brandon Books
190 pages
Original title: Her Anal Lovers

Front cover: Every man who saw Maisie wanted her —and Maisie wanted men. But her unique and selfish desires led her into an unexpected trap...
Back cover: Maisie began to feel sensual urges when she was fourteen. They grew stronger as she grew older. And finally her needs were desperate – but so were the fears that had been instilled in her by her puritanical mother. So, knowingly and of her own free will, she became a... back door girl.

Bruce Kimley Returns
by George Kuster
Undated
Magna Classic
158 pages.

Synopsis: Not a novel but 2 long erotic stories. - Former celebrity Bruce Kimley is 60 now and newly married to Eileen. They live in a mansion in the country, looked after by the Lake couple and their son Clive. Clive succeeds in seducing Eileen and so does his father Frank, who also seduces Eileen’s younger sister Wendy. - It’s not often that Stewart takes out his young wife Wendy. One evening he does and Wendy has too much to drink. When she wakes up she is in bed with a stranger. It’s Paddy Kent, who soon pimps her out, mostly to elderly gentlemen, but also to a virile Negro and an ugly old oriental.

The Lusting Couple
by Melanie Winston
1972
Star Books
190 pages

Back cover: They needed each other more than society could allow. Jessie and Abe are two college students with a passion that knows no bounds. They were fighting an uphill fight trying always to live down their sordid reputations. There is no act of sex they would not do with each other. Their lust rules their lives and torments their souls.

Wife In Heat
by Andy Stillman
1977
Brighton Books
191 pages

Synopsis: Connie Minor is a hot woman. She is married to Shelby, but he’s often away and not a good lover anyway. One day she is seduced by her neighbor Jerry and from that moment on she can’t control her sex drive any longer. She starts a hot affair with a virile teenager and then takes on a number of his friends in an outright orgy.

First sentence: Connie Minor was grinding her pelvis hard, bucking up into Shelby’s hairy belly.
Last sentence: Then she reached for the telephone and dialed Daggio’s Repair Service.

Sin Girl
by Lynn Martin
1967
Bee-Line Books
155 pages

Front cover: Fay Orchid was the hottest stripper Chicago had ever seen, and now she was her—naked in my arms!
Back cover: She spoke his language... the language of sex! “Come here, lover,” she murmured softly in his ear. “I’ve got something for you—something you’ve wanted for a long, long time.”

Mistress of the Plantation
by Melanie Edwards
1972
Star Original/Free Press Library
190 pages

Front cover: She was their mistress and she made the studs perform as no one else could.
Back cover: He took her like the animal she was.
Foreword: The Harley plantation was one of the best-run in that part of the South. The tobacco fields were bursting with fresh aromatic leaf, and the workers were bursting with another fruit, the fruit of their lust. The day-to-day happenings of the Harley plantation seemed on the surface to be smooth and uneventful. But underneath a veneer of propriety and caIm, the workers and owners alike engaged in wild bouts of sex.
First sentence: ”Oh, goodness, Clem, it’s so hard!” the girl exclaimed.
Last sentence: Now she was going to get what she really wanted.

The Taming
by Count Ludwig Kronenburg
1968
Century Books
188 pages

Front cover: The brutal story of an aristocratic young girl forced into an animal life of total slavery to another woman.
Back cover: Marcia Morrison, my voluptuous, haughty, nineteen-year-old niece, lived in a world of cotillions and Paris finishing schools. My interest in her was far more than avuncular, but she held me, a mere commoner, in utter contempt. Furthermore, when she turned twenty-one, she would inherit the castle I'd been living in - and the money I'd been using to maintain my grand style of living. I knew I had to teach her a lesson soon, and I thought I had my answer. I knew a certain lady – Nancy - who was famous for "taming" snobbish young nymphets, and by the time this lady finished with Marcia, I felt, all my worries would be at an end. But I had not reckoned with Nancy's own ideas of enslavement! . . .

Bedroom Coach
by Lamarr McMann
1971
Party Books/Traveler’s Companion
181 pages

Back cover: They called him Crazycock. He was great on the sportsfield, but his prowess at bedroom athletics was TERRIFIC! He called the sexual shots with woman after woman, training them to deliver the highest peak of ecstatic performance in everybody’s most beloved sport.

Lieutenant Pussy
by Curt Aldrich
1977
Brighton Books
191 pages

Synopsis: Lieutenant Linda Brent has been assigned to a small isolated post. From the very first day on she is erotically exploited by both the commanding officer and the sergeant who does his dirty work. Linda tries to resist the degrading treatment of the two powerful men, but her own sexuality makes her submit. Before long she is in the sergeant’s evil clutches and forced to do his bidding with every horny GI on the base.

When Hubby’s Away
(no author credited)
1977
Red Devil Books/Publisher’s Consultants
160 pages

Synopsis: Ten women tell of their erotic experiences, one after the other, each from the first-person point-of-view. The women are married, but once they’re without their husband for a time and get horny they seduce travelling salesmen, neighbors, teenage boys, whoever crosses their path at the right moment.

The Passionate Waitress
by Marna James
1974
Bentley Library/Publisher’s Consultants
191 pages

Synopsis: Mimi Goodman works at a Sunset Strip nightspot as a cocktail waitress. Her appearance and opportunities make her yield to temptation all too many times. At first she enjoys the attention and seeks to placate her powerful young sex drives, but the longer the activities continue the more she begins to realize how empty her life actually is. She gets an education the hard way.

Battalion Broads
by Olivia Rangely
September 1965 (1st printing)
Playtime Books
160 pages

Front cover text: Army wives gone wild, getting their sex while the men were away.
Back cover text: The Colonel was no match for the “hot pants brigade” and their frenzy of lust.

Fiction: The Unhatched Egghead

(Ted Mark, Lancer Books, 1966)

Another winner from “Ted Mark", the man who brought you The Nude Who Never and A Hard Day’s Knight, not to mention I Was A Teeny-Bopper For The CIA. If it is of any relevance, The Unhatched Egghead is actually a lot better than Mark’s much more popular (and easier to find) The Pussycat Transplant – although the cover photograph is hardly half as attractive as the cover art of the latter publication.
The story is about Archimedes Jones, the son of loving and unbelievably rich parents, a young man in his late teens, a boy of genius intelligence, gifted in sciences and the arts, able to move smoothly between the world of hip young cats, big business industrialists, cerebral science and fine arts, but plagued by one problem: he’s a virgin. Revealing this to a lecherous scientist friend one evening, call girls get called to solve his problem, but before he can get both legs out of his trousers for some serious fun, a shot rings out and the story begins. His pal is dead, the call girls have disappeared and top secret papers revealing how gold can be gained from simple metals have vanished.
Archi decides to find out who killed his friend and save the gold standard (and thus the world, of course), and does so by following up the names he finds in the little black book of the dead man. Going from woman to woman, he experiences one “hilarious” adventure after the other, continually getting mere inches away from losing his cherry, but forever being stopped at the last second.
Is it funny? Well, more or less. The book probably won’t make you roll on the floor in laughter – or even laugh loudly, for that matter – but it is at least painless to read, goes at a quick pace and causes a slight chuckle on occasion. Like most of Mark’s books, The Unhatched Egghead is a dated attempt at a humorous updating of Voltaire’s Candide. Unlike most of his books, though, this Lancer edition has one fucking ugly cover photo – a cover that has little to do with the book’s contents. (As is, actually, normal for most of the cover illustrations to a Ted Mark book.)

Non-Fiction: Rascals in Paradise

James A. Michener & A. Grove Day, Fawcett Crest, 1983)

Originally printed in 1957, its reprint in 1983 had undoubtedly something to do with the author's unbridled success as a best selling novelist at the time. A perfect book for a precocious pre-teen youth who dreams of south sea adventure but gets bored by Errol Flynn movies. Other people might find it useful for learning the true events behind such legendary stories as The Mutiny on the Bounty, including the before, during and after. Modern purveyors of low culture will find the chapter on Leetag, the legendary American painter of black velvet kitsch that lived and partied in Tahiti. Easily five out of the 10 chapters of the book read as if they could make a damned exciting movie, if not a mini series. The chapters on "Charles !" and Dona Isabel make one sick to the stomach from disbelief and disgust, being yet more narratives proving that the stupid and evil always land on their feet. The stories would also make great films—though Hollywood would probably want to make Dona Isabel a nice person. The most un-understandable of all stories narrated is that of Will Mariner. Homesick or not, why a guy would want to give up all that which he managed to create on a dream island in exchange for the dull life (and death) he returned to in England defies comprehension. Well researched – as to be expected from a Michener book, non-fiction or not – with a thick bibliography, the book is an easy and informative read, both for those interested in the subject and those just looking for something entertaining to read while soaking in the tub.

True Crime: The Beauty Queen Killer

(Bruce Gibney, Pinacle, 1990)

Any regular reader of True Crime books should be familiar with Pinnacle Books and their never changing quality. True Jack Webb “Just the facts, Ma’am” publications, based mostly on newspaper research, fleshed out by police reports, normally lacking any on-site research or noticeable psychological insight. This book is no exception, right down the company’s tendency for second-rate editorial work: more than one sentence in this book is incomplete, more than one pronoun is indirect. (But then, what else can be expected from a company that even misspells its own name on the book’s cover, forgetting the second “n” in the word “Pinnacle.“)
First printed in 1984, the same year that the killings transpired and probably concurrently to some of the victim’s funerals, this book dryly narrates the 26+ day cross-country murder spree of Chris Wilder, an Australian-raised American builder. (Gibney refers to both a six-week, 47 day and 26 day time period, so take your pick.) Starting down in Florida, where he lived at the time, Wilder went on throughout the USA, killing a large number of young, hot looking all-American young women along the way before killing himself in a backwoods hamlet in Connecticut just as some police were about to bag him. The actual amount of murders and related sex crimes he may have committed is unknown, for there is more than enough evidence to suggest that he had been committing such crimes both in Australia and in the USA for many years previously, if not for much of his adult life. Easy reading padded with a totally unnecessary article about some True Crime Reporter’s less than successful use of a psychic to discover the unlocated bodies of two of Wilder’s victims, as well as the Psychological Reports made by the two shrinks who examined him prior to his final joy ride. That Wilder was one sick man is obvious, but the when, where, why, what and how he became so isn’t to be found in this book; even the psychological reports are not of much help, as they fail to agree on what’s going down in the man’s head. As to be expected, Gibney takes the easy if not somewhat true stance that American justice screwed up again by not realizing earlier just how sick this known sex-offender was and stopping him before he left his body strewn path across the 48 continental states. Regrettably, and also to be expected, he offers no feasible suggestions on what should be corrected—but then, that might be expecting too much from a supermarket pulp quickie like this one.
In any event, before you blow your hard-earned 50 cents at the next church swap meet on this piece of trash, go to this website for a better, more factual (and, needless to say, up-to-date) version of the events.

Pop Culture: Sci Fi TV – From the Twilight Zone to Deep Space Nine

(James Van Hise, Harper Non-Fiction, 1995)

Nothing special here – in fact, this by now long out-of-date paperback isn’t really worth the paper it is printed on. Indeed, one can only mourn for the trees that were wasted on this sycophantic time-waster. Van Hise's tastes run pretty mainstream, and seem to lack any appreciation of kitch or good bad taste, ala UFO. His "authoritative, magnificently opinionated guide to the first fabulous fifty years" is pretty thin reading, made quicker by the fact that my copy of the book was misbound and lacks pages 55 through 86 (but comes with two sets of pages 167 through 198). In truth, I doubt the missing pages would have improved the publication any. His style is painlessly poppy and reads easily, but most of the book consists of synopsises of his favorite episodes, the little criticism lacking depth or insight. But what makes this book trash is the last chapter, a paean to Deep Space Nine written before the program had even been aired. Okay, maybe Deep Space Nine did become the most interesting of all the Star Trek series – up until its extremely rushed and dissatisfying final episode – but to praise it before it has been on the air reeks of ass kissing or advertising residuals and casts a suspicious light to the whole book. Reference material this book will never be, but as paper to get the barbeque going it functions fine. If you see for sale at your local thriftstore, leave it there.

Non-Fiction (?): The Happy Hooker

(Xaviera Hollander, 1973, Dell Publishing Co.)

Another thrift store bookshelf staple, a long out of print relic from the past which made big, big waves when it first came out and went through numerous printings—17 between its first release in February 1972 and this copy printing in May 1973—but which has aged rather badly, though perhaps not quiet as badly that late 1960’s fictional account of the life of stewardesses, Coffee, Tea or Me, to which Hollander’s book shares many similarities in writing style, humor and illiberal “liberal” attitude. Most women probably don’t even know or remember who she is, while most men probably know or remember Xaviera only as the (former) progressive, hedonistic advice columnist from Penthouse, always ready with a racy sex story related to the question. Since her deportation years ago and gradual disappearance from any headlines but for the occasional supermarket tabloid’s, few Americans have probably ever actually read this book or any of the other myriad of straight-to-paperbacks she has written. Not to say that this book isn’t an entertainingly sleazy read, providing one merely skims most of the books last third. Oddly enough, from today’s point of view, in The Happy Hooker, Xaviera, possibly excepting her willingness to screw a dog and her dead-on-the-head-of-the-nail attitude about prostitution as a viable economic choice and phenomenon that will never go away, comes across not only somewhat conservative, but both judgmental and slightly messed up as well.
Much of what she writes seems questionable at best, sometimes in terms of its truth, other times in terms of its message. Her Daddy may have been a great guy, and walking around the house naked is normal, but doing so with a hard-on reeks of something other than fatherly love or actual fact—especially if her mother was the type to tell her to save her virginity for when she gets married. Likewise, not only does her description of nudist camps as fuck happy bacchanalian places to swing contradict my personal experience of rolling green acres decked out mostly with old, sagging or flabby flesh, but her claims that many a bored Westchester housewife earn pocket money and add a little excitement to their lives by working as a prostitute seems more sensationalist than realistic, especially when one considers that it must be their husbands who keep prostitutes hard at work (which, in turn, would mean that that hubby and wife’s paths must eventually cross). And if she really did get around to regularly porking her sister’s husband down in South Africa after deciding that the dog wasn’t enough, would she really stop the affair so her sister doesn’t figure it out, only to publish it some years later in a guaranteed best seller for the whole world to read? And let’s not even get into discussing her version of the events that led up to her getting busted, for surely, as she says, she never, ever, ever tried on her own to bribe any NYC cops into letting her run her business undisturbed.
Amongst the more glaring signs of how badly this book has aged is the ease in which she drops the derogatory “fag“ and even tries to lend substance to the absurd, unrealistic idea that “fags“ can be “cured“ by a good fuck with a good woman like her. In turn, it is also oddly disconcerting that a swinging, bisexual, nymphomaniac, hedonistic hooker that is not only willing to fuck a dog but also admits to having a special kink for popping the cherries of virgin teenagers (where was she when I was growing up?) should heap such a large amount of judgmental, derogatory slag upon kinky people whose fetishes are as inane as cross dressing, water sports, B&D, S&M and so forth. (Okay, maybe the concept of Hot Chocolate is sickening, but if one doesn’t forcefully hurt others, what they do is their thing.)
Probably the most factual aspect of The Happy Hooker is its presentation of men as being, for the most part, assholes who have little or no respect for women. But then, Hollander seems to have a fable for abusive relationships, for both her two big loves did little more than use her, abuse her, disrespect her and toss her aside.... interestingly enough, she in turn herself does all but the last to her (at the time) present boyfriend Larry, the first man in her book that actually seems to care for her. But then, unlike her other relationships of importance, he doesn’t have a big dick.
All in all The Happy Hooker is entertaining enough, with more than one salacious sex scene and a few interesting points. Regrettably, not only does it does get dull and repetitious after the first two thirds, but Hollander’s naiveté verges so much on being criminal, if not simply unbelievable, that after a while, she loses all sympathy of the reader. A little more common sense, self-insight and self-criticism wouldn’t hurt her. As it is, the book leaves a slightly distasteful aftertaste, much like a drinkable cheap wine beginning to go to vinegar.
Update: So where is she now? Try her website and find out. She done good for herself–all the power to her. Still, I wonder if she still thinks “fags” can be cured by a good hetro fuck. Many of her books have been updated and rereleased, including this one.
Images (all found on-line), top to bottom:
The cover of the recent printing.
An image of Xaviera being measured for a new bra.
Xaviera today, heavier but happy as always.
A photo collage of photos of Xaviera – the smaller black and white inserted one was taken from Earl Wilson’s non-scandalous book Show Business Laid Bare (Signet, 1974), in which she is incorrectly referred to as “Scandinavian”.

True Crime: Deadly Lessons

(Ken Englade, Grafton,1991)

Another book by Englade about another not so interesting murder that has none-the-less held US America's fascination for a long time – the murder even indirectly served as the inspiration to Gus Van Saint's popular film To Die For (1995).
Much like Englade's Beyond Reason, this book tells about yet another young, mildly attractive, mildly intelligent, cold-blooded fem fatale who convinces her boy-toy to murder for her. Unlike Beyond Reason, the dastardly deed takes place not amongst the well-bred families of the pedigreed upper class and international consuls, but rather, grovels smack dab in the middle of lower middle class and white trash New England. Likewise, unlike Englade’s other two-word titled volume, Deadly Lessons is readably short in length and utilizes a simplified vocabulary, much like any super market quickie, though Englade’s trademark wittily picturesque descriptive phrases still pepper the pages. The title Deadly Lessons is actually stretching the truth, for while Ice Princess Pam Smart did indeed work for the school administration in New Hampshire, she was never a teacher. The only lessons she gave (the at-the-time virgin) Billy Flynn once they met in 1990 were purely extracurricular.
Twenty three years old, unhappily married and oddly immature, Pam Smart used lies, money and 15-year-old Billy Flynn’s raging hormones to convince the young idiot to kill her husband, Gregg Smart. Wanting to keep the dog, the white sofa and the money from Gregg’s life insurance, Pam saw divorce as no option and ended up involving at least five young teenagers in the sordid and brutal shooting death of her unwanted husband. Needless to say, “murder want out“ and within three months the shit hit the fan and three youths plus Pam are on their way first to court and then to jail. Not very interesting a case, more sordid than unusual, which for the most part propagates the idea that there are a lot of stupid, cold-hearted egoists out there in the big bad world. Needless to say, she lost the dog, white sofa and the insurance money.

Update: Pam is still in jail and has a metal plate in her head from a beating she took for supposedly snitching on the lesbian relationship of two jail mates (Mona Graves and Ghania Miller). Pam will probably die in jail, but the various teenagers she involved will all be coming up for parole towards the end of the next decade. Maybe they’ve all learned their lesson...?

Fiction: The Pussycat Transplant

(Ted Mark, Berkley Medallion, 1968)

Truth be told, the best thing about this book is the cover, which features – as you can see above – a nicely painted illustration of a young, healthy, slim woman lying naked on a bed, her nether regions discreetly covered by a white towel, her long legs, flat stomach, hour glass figure, and pleasantly sized orbs free for all to see, a happy smile decorating her pleasant face. The book is a sequel to The Girl from Pussycat, also by “Ted Mark,” the author of untold trash from the 1950s to 1970s, including the nefarious but seldom read Man From O.R.G.Y. books, one of which was actually made (minus most of the sex) into a third-class Z-film in 1970 by James Hill, the director of the famed family film, Born Free (1966). Seldom screened anywhere, it is also known as The Real Gone Girls. Ted Mark is actually the pseudonym of at least one writer, possibly more. (This book is copyrighted to the American writer Ted Gottfried, born 1928, but the number books and articles attributed to Ted Mark is so large that the concept of one man writing it all is almost unimaginable – he would’ve had to have spent as much more time at a typewriter than Stephen King has at his computer, especially since Gottfired is known to have published under 4 or 6 other pseudonyms as well.)
Most of Mark’s books from the late 60s and early 70s feature the same type of hippie humor that Terry Southern specialized in his books Candy and The Magic Christian, but read more like cheap, badly written imitations penned by pubescent boys who giggle at the word sex. Hit or miss affairs, they can elicit an occasional chuckle, but generally they wear thin quickly and become annoying, the humor being as dated as it is childish.
In this book, like its forerunner, the heroine is hardly a “conniving female,” as described on the book’s back jacket, but, just like Terry Southern’s Candy, is rather a less than intelligent but physically attractive young chick who has gotten herself pregnant. In search of an illegal abortion (for those of you who don’t remember, it wasn’t always your right to have one), she ends up at the practice of a “Dr. Kilembrio” and his lesbian nurse “Miss Carridge” (Ha! Ha! – get the jokes?). In the sixties, lesbians were still perverts, so the reader gets treated to a rather unpleasant sex scene in which Mark goes into detail about the dirty fingernails of Miss Carridge as she “examines” Penny’s clitoris. Neither funny nor sexy, everything that comes afterwards seems almost anticlimactic. (Ha! Ha! – get the joke?) Penny gets popped into a furnace by Miss Carridge when the nurse mistakenly believes the practice is being raided, but Penny’s barbecued body gets pulled out early enough for them to transplant her brain into the body of a man upstairs (also named Penny) who just blew his brains out. Penny, her breasts gone “without so much as a thanks for the mammary,” spends the rest of the book getting use to her penis as she tries to find out why Mr. Penny stole a lot of dough from work and then killed himself.
Virtually every women in the book end up being killed by the book's end, as does (s)he – only to wake up at the end with her brain again newly transplanted into the body of yet another young pregnant woman, the father being the same man who had gotten her knocked up in the first place (and, actually, taken her virginity in the first book of the series, The Girl From Pussycat).
Anti-establishment satire? Hack writing paid by the word? Hilariously off the wall? Idiotically immature? Sexist? Modern? Well, take a guess, why donchya....

Fiction: Carter Brown – None but the Lethal Heart & The Tigress

(Signet Books)

As an addicted purveyor of both thrift stores and secondhand bookshops, I have been in stores selling used books in numerous states throughout the U.S.A. as well as in various cities in such countries as Germany, Holland, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, Czech Republic, France, Uruguay and Peru. (Of them all, outside of the US, oddly enough, the best book purchases are to be made in Holland, the Czech Republic and Uruguay.) On all those bookshelves and in all those boxes full of books I have dug around in throughout the world, it has never failed that somewhere amongst the numerous volumes of cheap romances and yesterday's bad bestsellers, a slim volume suddenly sticks out, habitually featuring an unbelievably amazing—if not downright erotic—cover illustration of a fabulously beautiful babe and with the name of the author, Carter Brown, flagged prominently across the top. Again and again I have stumbled upon well-worn paperbacks featuring this name, the striking covers of which are often matched by the equally catchy titles. A reluctance to fill my own bookshelves with books that so many other people obviously see no reason to save long kept me from throwing down the few quarters generally required to purchase a secondhand Carter Brown book.
Eventually, however, much like the less readily found novels of the once ubiquitous Ted Mark, the magnetic attraction of the covers and the hilariously playful titles convinced me to spend my hard earned small change and I finally bought two novels. It was the attractive and busty babe in a bikini with a loose top and on her knees that graces the cover of None but the Lethal Heart (Signet Books, third printing, 1959) that finally got me to spend my fifty cents. True, I had in the past seen many another much more exciting cover, but in the box I was digging in at the moment, it was the most attractive cover I saw. Further down there was a second Carter Brown novel entitled The Tigress (Signet Books, first printing, 1961), and though the cover was cheap and boring in comparison to that of None but the Lethal Heart (consisting of little more than a badly painted close-up of some redhead's eyes), I decided to play Rockefeller and splurge for both. Thus I came to own my first two Carter Brown novels.
Having read them, I can truly say that in as much as what one can gather by reading only two of an estimated 223 novels, the best thing about Carter Brown novels—like those of Ted Mark—seems to be the cover art on the books. But then, if he did indeed write all the publications credited to him, the man was a prolific writer, and as one knows, quantity can directly affect quality.…
Carter Brown is actually just one of five known names under which the English born Australian writer Alan Geoffrey Yates published. Born in London on August 1st, 1923, Yates served in the Royal Navy from 1942 to 1946 and then migrated to Australia in 1948, where he became a citizen. A one-time salesman, sound recordist and PR rep for an Australian airline company, Yates took up writing full time in 1953 and, though he died on May 5th 1985, his last Carter Brown book seems to have been 1981's The Wicked Widow. He reportedly published only one novel as A. G. Yates, a science fiction book entitled Coriolanus, the Chariot! Otherwise, he generally used the names "Carter Brown" or the two variations "Peter Carter Brown" and "Peter Carter-Brown", although one source claims that he also wrote some 38 gothic novels starting in 1966 under the pen name of "Caroline Farr". (A problem here is that a different source claims that "Caroline Farr" is the pen name of another writer named Richard Wilkes-Hunter, who also wrote under the pseudonyms "Tod Conrad" and "Alex Crane". But in as much that even some of the Carter Brown books are bannered with the statement "The Carter Brown Mystery Series" rather than "by Carter Brown", it is imaginable that more people than simply Yates himself might be answerable for the huge production of novels as a whole.)
Amongst the regular main characters that he repeatedly spun his stories about, the most popular seem to be "New York's toughest private eye" DANNY BOYD; the Hollywood private eye and "savior of blackmailed film starlets" RICK LARRY HOLMAN; the hard drinking and womanizing homicide lieutenant named AL WHEELER; and MAVIS SEIDLITZ, an extraordinarily proportioned private eye who is definitely not even half as intelligent as she is good looking. Oddly enough, despite the fact that Yates/Brown was writing from Australia, seemingly all of his novels are set in the United States. Equally ironic, none of his novels ever achieved the same level of popularity there that they did in Europe or down under.
The Tigress is a Wheeler book, None but the Lethal Heart a Mavis tale. Both are quickly paced, have their share of action and more than enough corpses and occasionally prepubescent humor, but neither is a masterpiece. Of the two, The Tigress reads quicker, but None but the Lethal Heart is more fun once you get past the P.I. notion of a pulchritudinous blonde airhead detective. Still, for all its sexism and infantile humor, the novel never goes to the extremes of a Ted Mark or Terry Southern novel, though Mavis is indeed such a innocent amongst the wolves that one cannot help but occasionally think of Southern's famed main character of his novel Candy, despite the fact that Southern's novel appeared some decade or more after Mavis debut in Honey, Here's Your Hearse (1955). Actually, it seems odd that Mavis Seidlitz has never been discovered by Hollywood, for it is easy to picture her in some garish, pop art comic film of the sixties or in something similar to the Austin Powers films that have as of recent been so popular. Or a television show in the style of the original Batman TV show—that would be groovy!
The Tigress is for all intents and purposes a disappointing book. The cover blurb says "The wanton redhead was like a female tigress stalking her mate… and she made fair game for a killer:" But the back blurb turns the concept around and indicates that the "dedicated siren in search of love" is the guilty party of the novel. Inside, The Tigress turns out to be one Tania Stroud, a nympho hot for any man, and while she is a suspect she is neither the most important character nor main object of Wheeler's womanizing ways. The book, which is built around the murder of a psychologist's girlfriend and involves a private club that is best described as a Plato's Retreat for the sexually adventurous (called "perverts" back when the book was written), is not half as funny as the author tries to make it, nor is it really all that mysterious or thrilling. While some of the images are catchy—like the dead gal lying in a grave, a murdered old dead guy found laying in a coffin, a sexy babe in a maid's outfit and the Tigress herself—the story flounders forwards with no real highpoints. Hardly hardboiled, the psychological mumbo-jumbo is tiresome, the true murderer is easy to figure out, the action hardly exciting enough to wake the reader up from the state of sleep most of the book induces. Yawn. If Wheeler is indeed the most popular of Carter Brown's characters, then one can only assume that The Tigress is one of the lesser works. Indeed, in comparison to such other titles as Lament for a Lousy Lover (1960), Blonde on the Rocks (1963) and A Corpse for Christmas (1965), even the title seems second rate.
Rather unlike None but the Lethal Heart, the title of which reads much more literate than the novel itself does. This time around Mavis, "the torrid blonde private eye gets stuck with a cold corpse that's too hot to handle." The editors that wrote the cover texts must have had a lot fun writing stuff like: "Here is a sizzling scorcher, a red-hot tale of murder and mayhem, chills and spills, and the daffiest detective work this side of a dizzy blonde bombshell…named Mavis." Unlike with Wheeler, Mavis is a completely humorous figure and the novel, though featuring a lot of characters and plot twists and action, is less a detective story than a screwball comedy. Mavis, whose breasts and figure seem to be surpassed only by her self-defense abilities, is the type of person who seemingly forgets that she knows how to use her fists, for though she'll beat some guy senseless in one scene, in the next one she'll just flail her arms around idiotically as the gentlemen save the day. Still, she is such a Candide amongst the wolves, so off-the-mark that she normally only succeeds in spite of herself, that the fun eventually begins to be shared by the reader. The book is definitely fast-paced, though the whipping scene does come across ever so slightly misogynistic, even if she does manage to make a payback. By the end off the novel, not only is the body still there (augmented by a few more), but the new government of Mexico still stands, as do our heroes. You won't role around the floor laughing when you read None but the Lethal Heart, but you might smile a few times.
One could argue that it is hard to place the merit of the man's output from reading only two of his novels, but in the case of Carter Brown, the argument is probably moot. Like the works of the raunchier Ted Mark or more anti-establishment Terry Southern, the novels of Carter Brown are a product of their time. Hardly what one would call great literature, but rather much closer to assembly-line product. A painless way to survive subway rides but nothing to write a term paper about, the best advice in regards to purchasing a Carter Brown book is probably "Go by the cover." If nothing else then, even if the book is lousy, at least you have some great cover art to enjoy…

Small Images: All taken from the web, these are examples of typical Carter Brown covers – none of which I yet have.

True Crime: Sex, Money and Murder in Daytona Beach

(Lee Butcher, Pinnacle Books, 1993)

Another book that proves that America is truly the land of the proud, the brave, the intelligent, the moral, the superior. In other words, more true crime idiocy, this time in the midst of the lowlife scum of the Daytona Beach boardwalk and the area's much better off Greek-American community. From page one it becomes obvious that there was no way in hell the idiots there were going to get away with it. Kosta Fotopoulos, a gun-happy fool with a definite superiority complex comes to the USA from Greece and ends up tying the knot with Lisa Paspalakis, a rich woman of Greek descent, heir (with her brother) to a money-making family business. Intelligent or not, likes so many a woman she obviously had no taste in men, for she definitely married the wrong one. Obsessed with becoming a crime king and assassin, Kosta read one too many comic books and copies of Soldier of Fortune, and tried to build his Crime Reich. Not satisfied with a ton of counterfeit money and the dough his wife would share with him, he bathed in the seamy side of the area and hooked up with an egotistical, self-centered but good looking psycho case named Deidre Hunt. It seems they told a thousand people of their plans to kill Lisa, and when they finally got around to implementing it, they did it with about as much finesse and success as Laurel & Hardy would have, had the latter couple had been psychopathic. What boggles the mind most when reading this book is how many people, both "respectable" and "non-respectable" seemed to know of Kosta's illegal activities or his plans but didn't do or say anything. Even Lisa comes across like either being a blind idiot or, at least in regards to Kosta's many activities, oddly complacent. As for all the lowlifes, well, there is no honor amongst thieves either it seems – nor brains – so no death, no confession, no witness is all that surprising. Somewhere along the way, Deidre shot an old friend to death for Kosta, who filmed it on video and then actually left the tape someplace where it was relatively easy to find, which of course happened after the ridiculous attempt on Lisa's life. Lisa now walks around with a bullet in her head, but she is alive, which can't be said of the dude who shot her. Kosta nailed him before he left the bedroom, a bullet through the head, execution style. Typical of people who believe themselves superior to everyone around them, the two made a thousand mistakes along the way that guaranteed their eventual conviction. A quick read and unbelievable story, with the typical amount of typos and general bad proof reading expected in a Pinnacle publication.

Update: Kosta Fotopoulos lost his February 15, 2008 attempt to get off death row when a prior reversal in the case was overturned, which now brings Fotopoulos one step closer to never-never land. His ex-wife Lisa has since remarried, and Deidre Hunt’s death sentence has been converted into a life sentence (she is now prisoner DC# 161918 at Homestead Correctional Institution).

Images: (Top to bottom, and, as always, trawled from the Web): The book cover, a thinner and older Kosta, and Deidre Hunt smiling for the camera.