Review: Remembered Sin

Remembered Sin by Harry Whittington
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

One of Whittington’s fabled “missing 38”, this one is a sleazed up nurse romance telling the story of horny young nurse Lenora who decides to take in her down-and-out former lover and his nympho and psychotic wife into her home. This greatly displeases her crippled aunt housemate, and her current lover – the jealous Dr. Whalen. The psycho wife is nasty and delusional enough to keep her set pieces mostly entertaining and arguably the highlight of the book. Pretty decent plot with several secondary characters and a few somewhat steamy R-rated trysts. Solid writing and nicely paced so readable without having to skim, like so many other sleazers. The sex scenes are fairly innocuous and brief so don’t expect to get aroused. Can’t recommend it, although okay for the Whittington completists, and another addition to this blog’s “missing 38” reviews. I give it two stars.

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Review: Carla

Carla by Sheldon Lord
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was Lawrence Block's first published novel. Marketed to men of that era (1958) as a sex book about a nymphomanic, but it could just as easily have been marketed under a different name and with different art and jacket copy to women as a romance. This is a censorship era book so the sex scenes are veiled and euphemistic but I'm sure it was quite scandalous at the time. There is one particularly gruesome scene, a flashback to when Carla was fourteen and her mother takes her to to get a back alley abortion, that shows off the kind of writer Block would become. Otherwise, the writing here is similar to what Orrie Hitt was writing at the same time. Page after page of shallow psychology passed off as the character's, mostly Carla's, thought processes.

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Review: The Bad Girls

The Bad Girls by Bud Clifton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

EIghteen year old good girl Janey thinks she is pregnant after being raped and is convinced by bad girl Allie to skip town to avoid 1950s era shame. They travel to the sleazy section of San Francisco where they encounter gang members, pimps, prostitutes, pornographers, and crooked cops. Quickly running out of money, they are forced to make decisions that are less than honorable. Bud Clifton is a pseudonym of David Stacton who was a notable poet and historian and his writing chops are evident here. Stylistically his prose is an unusual barrage of short and concise sentences which suits the subject matter well. No one wants to read long florid descriptive prose in a sleazer. Bad girl Allie is the most interesting character and the writer does an exceptional job writing her dialog, which alternates between being a kind and faithful friend to Janey, and a rage spewing vengeful bitch to most others. The plot is more of a coming of age story and character study than a crime or mystery story, which is okay. Turned out to be less forgettable than most sleazers so I give it a solid three stars.

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Review: Temporary Secretary

Temporary Secretary by Joan Ellis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the novel's first sentence we learn that Audrey Owens is tall, slim, and bosomy. She's 19, and unlike the blonde in Paul Rader's cover painting, she's a redhead. Before too many pages we learn that she's only been in New York City for four weeks after having moved there from Coalsville. A recent graduate from secretarial school she is working for a temp agency because she wants jobs where she can meet men. Audrey has a Plan, which is to use, in her words, her "man-bait" body to snag a husband with a Class A future. Audrey is hired out to Carlyle Cosmetics, run by the "dominating" Sara Carlyle, who has a lesbian reputation. Audrey is assigned to VP, and Sara's fixer, Bob Dixon. Audrey wastes no time and gives it up to Bob on his office carpet the first day of her assignment. Next she beds her boss at the temp agency. Followed by a chemist at the cosmetics company. Soon she's juggling relationships with all three of these potential husbands. Not so fast, as Sara asks Audrey to bring her steno pad over to Sara's Park Avenue apartment for some private dictation. What's a girl with a Plan to do? No spoilers from me. This is a smoothly written office romance by one of Midwood's top sleaze authors, Julie Ellis. Ellis authored a massive number of sleaze novels in the 1960s under several pseudonyms before going on to a mainstream career writing gothic, plantation, and historical romances from 1970 until her death in 2006. Her main pseudonym for the sleaze books was Joan Ellis, under whose byline she wrote 46 books just for Midwood. I have most of those in my collection and enjoyed this one so will read and review some more.

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Review: Flesh Curse

Flesh Curse by Harry Whittington
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's because there are still great lost noirs waiting to be found that I wade through the vintage sleaze stacks. It's one thing to know that this 1964 John Dexter is one of the famed "missing 38" that Harry Whittington wrote for Greenleaf imprints between 1964 and 1967, and another thing to actually read this blistering noir and realize it's as good or better than most of the crime noir novels he placed with mainstream publishers such as Ace, Avon, and Fawcett Gold Medal. Larry Burgess and his twin Curt are heading to California on a train from Baltimore to visit their wealthy grandfather. Not so innocent a journey, however, as Larry has wracked up $30,000 in gambling debts he can't pay and has welched and is on the run. His brother knows he's in trouble but not to what extent. Without giving too much of the plot away, the mob is on Larry's trail and we find out just how far he will go to survive. What elevates this one is the first person narration from Larry's point of view. Frequently bad guy narrators are the heroes of their own tale. They don't see themselves from society's perspective, don't see themselves as evil. They are motivated to get what they want just like everyone else. Larry doesn't see himself as a hero. He knows he's a welch, thief, liar, and all around loser. He berates himself for being such a loser and simmers in his broth of self-loathing. And yet, that doesn't cause him to change, or slow down one bit his attempt to escape, no matter whom he hurts. The narration hurtles along equally fueled by obsession and paranoia, much like a Cornell Woolrich novel, until the pressure can't be contained. I think this is another example of how writing for a sleaze publisher freed Whittington to hold nothing back because he didn't have to fit Larry Burgess into a mainstream template. We are used to this type of narration in contemporary noir and dark fiction, but it was rare in the 1950s and 1960s, which is one of the reason that these old crime noirs are so prized.

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Review: Lust Pro

Lust Pro by John Dexter
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

John Dexter was a house name at Greenleaf used for just about everybody, but this one was by Richard A. Curtis, who also wrote three books under the Burt Alden pseudo. Haven't found much on Curtis other than that he was among the crew at the Scott Meredith Agency who started out reading manuscripts and graduated to writing sleazers to feed the Greenleaf production line (30 plus books a month at one point). Raleigh is the golf pro at the Baywind Country Club and the first chapter is not too bad as he dusts off the club champion on the 18th hole while eyeing the guy's wife and ignoring his own. The plot, which all told probably takes up about 10 of the 189 pages, has Raleigh negotiating a deal for some of the members to buy the country club. The rest of the book consists of poorly written sex scenes, with a smattering of better written scenes where Raleigh is hitting balls on the practice range while trying to get his head straight. Not recommended.

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Review: Isle of Sin

Isle of Sin by John Dexter
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This 1961 Nightstand reads like a frat-boy fantasy. First-person narrator Rick Lane is a sleazy folk singer chasing fame, fortune, and fanny. His agent lands him a summer gig at a resort town that resembles Provincetown and it is a target rich environment. He can't keep his pants on for any longer than the time it takes to remove them. The nightclub crowds love his performances and future stardom is assured. There's a slight speed bump in the last third of the novel, but let's not kid ourselves about how this fantasy will end.

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Review: Sin Ship Skipper

Sin Ship Skipper by Alan Marshall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Better written and edited than most vintage sleaze novels I've read, which makes me wonder which well-known author might have written this one. Alan Marshall was basically a house name for Greenleaf, although it was first used by Donald Westlake when he started publishing with Midwood and later for his Nightstand (Greenleaf) novels. This is not a Westlake, however, and its 1968 publication date likely rules out some of the other mainstream authors who started out publishing sleaze under pseudonyms. That said, sometimes older manuscripts were pulled out of storage and published years later, so who knows. Need to do more sleuthing, and this may be nothing, but I have found numerous stylistic and textual clues (of the sort that have been used to identify Whittington and Block novels) that point to John Jakes. Jakes was identified by Earl Kemp (Greenleaf editor) as the early J. X. Williams (a pseudo also later also used for Whittington novels), and one Alan Marshall—Shame Isle —has been previously linked to Jakes, which is one of the novels where I found stylistic similarities to Sin Ship Skipper. This is a bawdy blackmail fueled crime novel that takes place mostly at sea on board a yacht on its way from San Francisco to Panama. The first person protagonist is Captain Toby Dorn who has a reputation in the bunk as well as at the helm. The guests on the yacht include a bevy of what Dorn might describe as bed-able broads and he spends most of his time bouncing them on his bunk. Well, what else would you expect from a Greenleaf novel? The sex is not too explicit and the last half of the novel is focused on the unraveling of the blackmail plot and a series of murders that go along with it. Not great but a cut above the typical sleazer.

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Review: Sex and the Stewardess

Sex and the Stewardess by John Warren Wells
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

John Warren Wells was a pseudonym used by Lawrence Block for a whole series of these supposedly sociological/cultural studies of sexual behavior during the Sexual Revolution in the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s. Here we have "interviews" with stewardesses conducted by Wells. Made up, of course. There are interviews with eight typecast stews: the swinger, the good kid, the hooker, the celebrity hound, etc. Lots of made up biography and armchair psychology and cliched fantasy about hyper-sexual stewardesses. In the introduction it is suggested that stewardesses have replaced farmer's daughters as the new male fantasy (this is 1969). "She is every man's dream mistress, pleasant and poised, neatly groomed and becomingly coifed, cool under stress, always smiling, and - because she is booked on another flight tomorrow morning - as conveniently disposable as an air sickness bag." Even if this ilk of book is all fictional it is an interesting cultural time-machine.

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Review: Hot Pants Karen

Hot Pants Karen by Mark Allen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This Bee-Line Books sleaze novel from 1970 is far more pornographic than it’s predecessors, the soft-porn novels of the 1960s. It tells the story of virginal Karen who is gang-raped, awakening her sexuality, which stuns her boyfriend Billy into enlisting into the war in Vietnam. and Karen to skip town to hang with anti-war hippies who turn her on to casual sex and orgies. Of course Karen and Billy still have feelings for each other when he returns after three years,which they try to deny by having sex with others. A good portion of the book is graphic sex scenes which are fairly well written although they become tiresome. The females are all very verbose during sex and spout streams of unintentionally hilarious dirty-talk littered with hippie vernacular and slang, language which permeates the book making it an amusing time capsule of the era. The Pro-War vs. Anti-War sentiments were a nice touch, and surprising no slut-shaming or punishment for for the females who engage in casual sex. A cut above average for a hard-core sleazer. Two and a half stars.

Review: Horizontal Secretary

Horizontal Secretary by Amy Harris
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As with many of these vintage sleaze novels you can't go by the description on the back cover. There really is no plot to this one. Ellie is a secretary in the shipping department. She's 27 and a virgin when the book begins. Blake, the head of the PR department is putting on the moves and succeeds in seducing Ellie. It's over quick and she's disappointed. She moves on to Frank, a police detective she last dated two years previously and had brushed off. Not this time. Again it's too quick. Is that all there is? she thinks out loud and Frank gives her another go, slower this time. Fireworks! And again and again. But then Frank doesn't call for three days. Blake does instead and she gives him another go. Blake is not the one. Frank finally calls and now wants to marry her. Nope. Ellie dumps him quick. Dave, the next door neighbor beckons as the book ends. This is still 1963 and, fair warning, the sex is not explicit. The first-person narration is strong and we experience this emotional whirlwind along with Ellie. Amy Harris wrote five other books for Midwood and they might be worth checking out: Y-175 Forever Amy, F-203 Birth of a Tramp, F-212 Touch Me Gently, F-215 Counter Girl, and F-265 All of Me. Cover art? Yes, that is Paul Rader's work.

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Review: Sin Doll

Sin Doll by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Basic good girl gone bad plot. Cherry's motive is money and heavy hitting the booze makes her go further than she intended. Plus she's constantly berated with “you are no good, just like your mother, she was a tramp and put you up for adoption.” Next thing you know she is quitting her factory job and becoming the sin doll of the title by posing nude for 1950s era pornography. As with most of Hitt’s books he stays on the good side of the censors by omitting the sex scenes and skewing the narrative with moralizing. It gets redundant as she has the same don’t-be-a-bad-girl-be-a-good-girl arguments with her parents over and over. And her boyfriend wants to have the same argument over and over about getting married. Having to listen to all that, no wonder she drinks and has a lesbian affair instead.

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Review: On Company Time

On Company Time by Daniel A. Morton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A shallow tale of office romance. Robin arrives in the city from a small town in Iowa and quickly lands a secretarial job for the publisher of a scandal sheet. She falls almost instantly in love with co-worker Jim but before she can consummate that love, her boss - "Just call me Nails, everyone does" - goes into full seduction mode. Soon he's groping her in the office, in the restaurant, and in the taxi cab, where he, yes, you guessed it, nails her. It is that kind of book. What follows is a few dates with both the boss and Jim, more hanky panky, and some petty office jealousies, which causes a few people to get fired. Jim and Robin quit, but not before telling off Nails. That's it. Only 123 pages of large type and I read this in the amount of time it took to slowly drink a beer. Which may or may not be a recommendation. It's a Midwood paperback. Vintage 1960s sleaze. Not much to this one and not worth tracking down.

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Review: Savage Surrender

Savage Surrender by March Hastings
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Sally Singer, writing here as March Hastings, was a skillful writer that toiled at penning mostly lesbian and sleaze novels for low-brow publishers like Beacon. Here she tells the story of a racecar driver and journalist named Chuck, his nymphomaniac wife Eve, a frigid woman named Robin who is married to an abusive husband, and their wimpy son, aptly called Skinny. The plot revolves around Chuck’s sexual obsession with Robin, with the other characters contributing various complications to his motives. Singer’s strength is her crackling dialog, although her plotting often falls flat. More of a drama than sleaze, and although a murder does occur there is no hiding of the body or noir type elements that I was hoping for. The murder does free Robin from her frigidity which I thought was a bit of a forehead slapper. The novel was okay but I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend it. Two stars, maybe two and a half.

Recently reprinted by Cutting Edge Books.

Review: Dolls and Dues

Dolls and Dues by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hitt's books make for interesting cultural anthropology artifacts because he usually focuses on some occupation or business or business-like scam and immerses his protagonist in that world. Here we have a union organizer circa 1957. The target is the 16,000 insurance agents at a large insurance company, and Paul Jackson's task is to get all those agents to join a newly created union and then call a strike against the insurance company. When the agents are slow to sign up Jackson comes up with his brainstorm: host big parties for the agents and make sure there are plenty of hookers and booze. Yes, the agents start signing up in droves. Jackson hires a crew of good looking women and sends them on a road trip to towns where the insurance company has lots of agents. The union dues start rolling in. I will spare you the rest of the plot, but it involves greed and fraud and the eventual fall of Paul Jackson from his perch as President of the union. Oh, yeah, he has a problem with the dolls. He beds pretty much every woman he comes in contact with, although none of that is ever described, simply alluded to in a sentence.

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Review: Untamed Lust

Untamed Lust by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In between all the sleaze-noir rutting, what we have here is some of Hitt's most evocative writing. And where does his best writing show up? In his descriptions of Eddie out trapping animals in the woods. Fascinating that one of the rare times that Hitt's writing approaches literary quality is when he describes trapping turtles, otter, fox, and mink. Hitt is usually at his best when describing his characters at their work and he is at the top of his game describing Eddie in the woods. He is laughable, however, when he describes Eddie bedding down the three women in this novel with prose steeped in junior high sensibility. Hard to get too excited about this novel because its interesting characters and a good noir plot are obscured by Hitt's at times shallow writing.

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Review: Yesterday's Virgin

Yesterday's Virgin by John Furlough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

John Furlough is a pseudonym used by Glenn Lough/Low for his Beacon offerings. This one is backwoods sleaze, a favorite subgenre of mine, and tells the story of hunky Harty Blestow, a cranky and amorous young buck living in a cabin on his deceased grandfather's land where there is rumored to be hidden treasure worth $25,000. A darkened-bedroom mystery woman warns Harty of a plot devised by some violent local hillbillies to steal the treasure, which Harty doesn’t believe actually exists. At the same time a couple of cute and horny distant cousins from the big city unexpectedly show up to do a little ancestry digging. Very well written for a Beacon with some wild and outrageous plotting and plenty of sex and violence. The writer makes fine use of cliffhangers at the end of the chapters, like the Hardy Boys books, making this one propulsive and difficult to put down. A very pleasant surprise and very clearly a top notch backwoods sleazer. I liked it a lot. Four stars.

Review: The "B" Girls

The "B" Girls by Thomas N. Tomm
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Good find that has me looking for more books by Tomm. At the sentence level this is some of the best writing I've read in a sleazer. Literary quality. Structurally, though, pretty dang strange. The mystery is introduced with thirty pages to go and then is quickly solved. It does look backward and explain some of the events from earlier in the novel, but totally missed the opportunity to have the protagonist chasing the mystery from the start. Same with the murder, which comes at the halfway mark; should have happened much earlier in the book. Instead we get a lot of character development and a mild adventure and plenty of sex scenes in the first 80 pages without knowing where things are going or why. The writing is good, though, so who cares? Then we have the murder and our protagonist is on the run for fifty or so pages, before finally waking up and realizing he has to solve the mystery we didn't know existed. It's actually quite complex but is dusted off in 15 or so pages after 10 pages of setup. Enjoyed this one a lot, but it definitely could have been a more rip-roaring crime novel with a different structure.

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Review: Love or Kill Them All

Love or Kill Them All by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Writing as Nicky Weaver, this was Orrie Hitt's attempt at a hard boiled detective. Maybe it's not as bad as my one star would indicate, but there are so many better books. Why bother? The dialog is really bad, corny and full of non-sequitors. Dialog is usually a strength of Hitt's books. Not here. The plot is somewhat coherent, but Nicky Weaver's investigation isn't. Doesn't happen very often - didn't and don't want to finish this one.

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Review: Dirt Farm

Dirt Farm by Orrie Hitt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Classic Hitt. Clean prose and plenty of tension. Similar plot to several other of his books: drifter type shows up looking for work. This time it's a farm. There's too many women around for him to keep his mind on the job. Hitt does a great job using the dialog to show character, letting several characters hang themselves with their words. Would have been better if there were more action and less talking, however, and could have used more sex and more violence. Lost steam in the second half and the ending was also disappointingly anticlimactic.

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