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The Stallion

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Mar 112013

The Stallion, by Harold Robbins
January, 1997 Pocket Books

It bears his name, but there’s no way in hell The Stallion is the work of Harold Robbins. I’ve been told that the last novel Robbins himself wrote was 1991’s The Piranhas, and after that the books published before his death in 1997 were actually the work of his last wife, Jann. Even if I hadn’t known that before reading The Stallion it still would’ve been obvious that another author was behind this novel.

For one, the writing is too polished to be Robbins. Too much characterization and scene-setting and topical detail, and also the novel doesn’t appear to be a coke-fueled first draft. But then on the other hand, the writing lacks that weird fire that burns so brightly in Robbins’s real work, and hence comes off as flat and lifeless, something you could never say about Goodbye, Janette or Descent From Xanadu. In fact, The Stallion is incredibly, utterly, irredeemably boring. An outright friggin’ snoozefest on par with Eric Lustbader’s The Ninja.

Anyway, the novel passes itself off as a sequel to Robbins’s earlier bestseller The Betsy. It comes off more like a piece of fan fiction, though. And I guess with Jann Robbins posing as the author, maybe that’s just what it is – the ultimate piece of fan fiction, even published under the original author’s name. In fact it looks like sequels to earlier Robbins novels were Jann’s speciality, given that the first book she produced under the “Harold Robbins” mantle was 1994’s The Raiders, a sequel to Robbin’s first major hit The Carpetbaggers.

But man, if The Raiders is as boring as this, then avoid it like the plague. This novel is just so bad in so many ways. For one, there’s this pedantic need to fill us in on every damn year that passes between The Betsy’s end date of 1972 and The Stallion’s original publication date of 1996, making the book come off like a breathless recap of the years. This alone is different from the real Robbins books, which would just hopscotch between eras, never to the obsessive level of this. I mean, there are “chapters” for years in which absolutely zilch happens, just there so the author could chalk say “1986” off of her list.

The plot is one thing, but the characters are another. They have nothing in common with the people we met in The Betsy. Other than their names, that is. Angelo Perrino, the star and occasional narrator of the previous novel, is here transformed into a Harlequin Romance-style cipher who literally sleeps with every female character in the goddamn book. (And by the way, the entirety of The Stallion is in third-person, so there too goes Robbins’s old penchant for arbitrarily jumping into first-person.)

The character to receive the biggest overhaul is Cindy, who as you’ll recall was a racing car groupie in The Betsy, a coke-snorting, Harold Robbins-type gal who orgasmed at the sound of roaring engines, which she’d blast on genuine quadraphonic speakers. Within the first several pages of The Stallion Cindy is transformed into a completely different character; turns out the “racing groupie” schtick was just a fad, and Cindy’s really a wealthy socialite who just wants to marry Angelo, bear him tons of children, and run an art studio!! Throughout the novel she acts nothing like her character in The Betsy, and it sure doesn’t come off as “character growth;” it just comes off like a totally different character. Which it is.

But (Jann) Robbins isn’t content to stop there. Number Three, aka Loren Hardeman the Third, Angelo’s nemesis, also transforms within the first several pages (which, remember, take place right after The Betsy) into a spineless fop who runs home every night to perform cunnilingus on his new wife Roberta, after which she whips him, Loren of course getting off on the whole bit! You won’t be surprised to know that Roberta is of course a wholly new character, one who manipulates Loren while also working with Angelo on the side, a domineering shrew who is intended as a Jackie Collins-type of character but just comes off as boring.

In fact, female characters take up the brunt of the narrative here, likely due to the female author; they make the decisions, do the deals, and of course, screw Angelo. Betsy, Loren III’s daughter and the inspiration for the previous novel’s titular car, is a case in point; in Harold Robbins’s original novel she appeared sporadically in the narrative, usually as a dope-smoking teen. Yep, she too is overhauled, this time into a determined young woman with an unfailing business acumen who is, guess what, completely in love with Angelo and also manages to have a child by him. (Angelo has a ton of kids in this damn novel; Cindy is also transformed into a veritable baby-machine, churning them out nearly by the dozen.)

Oh yeah, there’s sort of a plot here. Angelo grudgingly goes back to work for the Hardemans (who, remember, had him nearly beaten to friggin’ death in the previous novel), first designing for them a new sports car, and then later the first electric car. That Loren III ordered Angelo’s death in the previous novel is just sort of brushed under the narrative carpet. The storyline is just as flat and boring as the characters, complete with yearly recaps of what’s going on in the automotive world, board room meetings, business room squabblings, and backroom deals.

Here the novel does seem like a genuine Harold Robbins production, as you learn to endure this shit because you know it will get you to the good stuff. And there’s lots of sex in The Stallion, but it’s so boring, so juvenile. Mostly innuendo, with (Jann) Robbins having the characters talk dirty to one another and then fading to black before the action starts. Compare this to the real Robbins, were the sex scenes were so outrageous and unexpected. Because, that’s exactly what the sex is in The Stallion: predictable.

Funnily enough, there’s also a heavy focus, at least in the early chapters, on ass licking. I mean, literal ass licking. But the sadomasochistic stuff with Roberta and Loren III is just boring and cliched, and all of the other scenes are just the same damn thing: some woman, usually Betsy, will make a deal with Angelo, to be capped off by a little friendly screwing, after which the woman will of course tell Angelo that he’s the best she ever had, and from then on the woman will pine for Angelo and do anything to be with him. Betsy will even follow him around the globe, surprising him in his hotel room in the middle of the night, while Angelo’s wife Cindy is back in the States having their umpteenth kid.

And given the pedantic need to fill us in on every damn year, those kids eventually do enter the tale; one of Angelo’s sons for example becomes a model, and (Jann) Robbins wastes more of our time with his boring story. She also wheel-spins with some of the other Perrino brood, as well as bringing us up to date (as if we were expecting postcards) with the rest of the Hardeman clan offspring. It’s all just so tepid and boring and unrelated to anything in the earlier Harold Robbins novel.

So does any of the book have much to do with The Betsy? Sort of. The first quarter of the novel comes off like straight-up fan fiction, devotedly and obsessively filling in all the gaps from the previous book. Like, how long did that old bastard Loren I live? His fate is the only part of The Stallion that seems to come from a true Harold Robbins novel, with his revelation to Betsy on the night of his hundreth birthday that he’s been taping people having sex in his oceanside resort, culminating in his reveal of a tape featuring Betsy herself and Angelo. Betsy does us readers a favor by smothering the old bastard with a pillow, and Number One’s death is written off as a heart attack. But this murder bears hardly any repercussions on the narrative, and the novel never again rises to such trashy heights.

And man, what happened to the drugs?? There is absolutely zero drug use in The Stallion, very strange given that it bears the Harold Robbins by-line. We’re talking here about an author who would deliver characters that would snort coke, smoke dope, and pop amyl nitrate capsules under their noses during sex – and that would just be on a slow day! There’s none of that here, the drugs reduced to alcohol and the occasional cigarette, usually from a post-licked Roberta. As I say, the spark is gone, all the bizarre charm of a true Harold Robbins novel is missing, neutered into your average piece of PC ‘90s dreck.

The funniest thing is that “Harold” dedicates The Stallion to Jann – and if it’s true that she actually wrote this book herself, then that’s pretty damn hilarious. For in reality The Stallion is a total washout, a waste of your time. And it’s odd because it appears that none of the industry reviewers at the time of its publication seemed to realize that this was not the work of the man who’d given the world say The Adventurers; probably they did realize it, they just didn’t give a damn.

The Fifth Angel

book reviews, Men's Adventure Novels, Pocket Books, Trash Fiction Comments Off

Mar 042013

The Fifth Angel, by David Wiltse
January, 1986 Pocket Books

The cover of this mass market paperback edition references First Blood, but The Fifth Angel doesn’t hold a candle to Morrell’s classic novel (twelve years after reading First Blood I still find myself recalling scenes from it). But then, David Wiltse’s novel is more of a thriller/character study sort of thing, more given to dialog and introspection. What can’t be denied is that it has one hell of a premise:

It’s 1979 and Mark Stitzer, a ‘Nam-bred Special Forces badass, is part of a covert team which is being trained to sow terrorism in Moscow in the event of a nuclear assault on the US – in other words, a vengeance strike force. But while on a training mission Stitzer is buried alive for a few days and goes insane. Cut to 1984, and Stitzer has spent the past five years in an insane asylum. He escapes and heads for New York City, which he believes to be Moscow, ready to carry out his objective.

Given this description I envisioned scenes of a Rambo-type stalking around the inner-city streets of New York, blowing away mohawked punks who appeared in his blasted mind’s eye as Russian soldiers. But nothing of the sort occurs within the pages of The Fifth Angel. Unfortunately Wiltse is more concerned with delivering a “real” novel instead of the lurid aciton blitz I wanted. He’s also not concerned with delivering likable characters, either, particularly with our Rambo analogue Stitzer.

One thing that made Morrell’s novel great is that Rambo, despite being a killing machine, was still a character you cared and rooted for, even as he was blowing away redneck cops. Stitzer though is a homicidal maniac. This is of course Wiltse’s intent; his theme is that Stitzer has been trained to be a terrorist by the US military, and now he is loose upon the US itself. But Stitzer has none of the charisma of Rambo, none of his humanity. We never get a sense of who he was before he went insane, other than through the reflections of those he knew, and hence the novel loses the “fallen warrior” angle that could’ve made it so much stronger.

The other characters aren’t much better, mostly because they lack backbone or interest. Carl Thorne shoulders the brunt of the narrative, a young reporter who is Stitzer’s nephew. As the novel progresses we learn there is more to this; Stitzer basically raised Carl from the time he was twelve, after Carl’s parents were killed in a car wreck. Now Carl looks to Stitzer both as an uncle and a father, and still pays him monthly visits in the insane asylum.

I had a hard time figuring out Stitzer’s psychosis, and Wiltse leaves it vague. In fact, we don’t even learn what his training objective was until halfway through the novel. But Stitzer seems to think everyone he sees is a “copy,” and Wiltse infers that Stitzer is now so delusional that he thinks he is in Moscow, surrounded by duplicates of people he once knew and loved, who despite their perfect English and resemblance to his family and friends, are in fact Russians. And then later when he escapes, he clearly knows he’s in upstate New York and must get to New York City…yet somehow he still thinks of it as Moscow??

As I say, it really makes no sense, but I guess that’s a given when you’re dealing with the insane. At any rate this doesn’t stop Stitzer from coldblooded murder once he’s free, pulling stuff that firmly takes him out of the heroic realm. In the course of the narrative he kidnaps a guy, smashes out his teeth so as to fool CSI into thinking they’ve found Stitzer’s teeth, then kills the guy and feeds him to starving dogs. An even more unsettling moment comes when Stitzer, now living undercover in NYC with a lonely woman and her young son (why Stitzer’s doing this Wiltse doesn’t explain), murders both of them when the woman realizes that the man the police are searching for is Stitzer. As the novel progresses Stitzer murders more and more, even blowing up hundreds of people at a New York parade.

What’s frustrating is that throughout it all Carl Thorne can’t let go of his uncle/daddy issues and keeps wanting to stop the Feds from killing Stitzer. And to muddy the waters further, Carl is now sleeping with Stitzer’s ex-wife, aka Carl’s aunt. Not a blood relative, though; she’s only ten years or so older than Carl and married Stitzer long after Carl was being raised by his uncle. Still though this whole romantic triangle storyline is given too much focus in the narrative, Wiltse providing several sex scenes to take up more pages.

About the only interesting character is Stroup, the Trautman to Stitzer’s Rambo. Stroup was the major of Stitzer’s strike force and, to cue the old cliché, “taught him everything he knows.” Retired, Stroup comes in to help the Feds track Stitzer down, telling them they don’t have a chance in hell – they’ll never find him and he’ll kill hundreds, seeing his mission through. Stroup’s a mean bastard and is the only one who appears concerned with stopping the threat that Stitzer poses.

There are precious few action scenes; not until the end does Stitzer, launching an attack on a parade, get hold of a gun, which he uses to blast away a few cops and Feds. Most of his attacks occur “off-camera,” Stitzer planting bombs or poisoning water supplies. But all of this is generally relayed in backstory, and very rarely do we get to see Stitzer at work. The story is mostly told through Carl’s viewpoint, and hence is overlaid with his rampant introspection, doubts, and guilt.

A generally gripping story, with perhaps Stroup hunting after Stitzer, is therefore lost. Proof of this is given with the few scenes from Stroup’s point of view, in particular where he appropriates a shotgun, saws it down to lethal size, and goes out on the streets of NYC to hunt his prey. But again, there are precious few of these scenes, and the eventual Stitzer/Stroup confrontation loses power due to its being relayed from Carl’s wimpy point of view.

Wiltse’s writing is okay, good with the introspection and backstory and florid detail. He is however a wanton POV-hopper, sometimes jumping perspective between characters in the same damn paragraph. This always results in a demerit on my scorecard. He is however good at building tension and suspense; the scene where Stitzer kidnaps a poor security guard and slowly starves him is particularly nightmarish.

But still, I felt that a better novel lurked within this premise. Perhaps the biggest success of The Fifth Angel is that it made me want to re-read First Blood, which I plan to do posthaste.

Also worth noting is that the dust jacket of the original 1985 hardcover edition of The Fifth Angel features a blurb from none other than Burt Hirschfeld.

The Betsy

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Oct 012012

The Betsy, by Harold Robbins
July, 1972 Pocket Books

Here’s another now-forgotten Harold Robbins novel that was a massive bestseller in its day. In fact if The Betsy is remembered at all today, it’s for the 1977 film version starring Tommy Lee Jones and Laurence Olivier…which itself is pretty much forgotten.

But anyway, if you’ve read one Robbins you’ve read them all, and this one follows the same template: alpha male protagonist screws his way through a book filled with interminable business meetings, bland dialog, and a careless and casual plot, combined with a freewheeling approach toward time, jumping from one decade to another with little rhyme or reason.

But I’ve learned that one doesn’t read Robbins for story or narrative. No, you read his novels for the dirty parts, and luckily The Betsy is filled with them. True, they taper off after a while, and none of them match the sadomasochistic weirdness of Goodbye, Janette, but what’s here certainly packs a punch, and gets weird too, as I will eventually demonstrate.

The main plot concerns Angelo Perino, aforementioned alpha male, who as we meet him late in 1969 is a race car driver who, due to his most recent crash, has had to have his face repaired. Angelo is contacted by Number One, aka Loren Hardeman I, founder of Bethlehem Motors, and the Henry Ford to Angelo’s Lee Iaccoca. Wheelchair-bound Number One is “retired” in Florida, leaving the running of his company to Number Three, aka Loren Hardeman the Third. (There’s also the second Loren, Number One’s son, and lazy Robbins will actually just write “Loren” at times through the novel and you have no idea which one he’s referring to!)

Number One has been inspired to release a brand new car, and further he wants to name it “The Betsy,” after his nubile 18 year-old great granddaughter. Sounds simple, but in reality this is just the setup for endless, endless scenes where board members at Bethlehem Motors will get together and talk about the impracticalities of this initiative, given the incipient energy crisis. And besides, Loren III wants to get out of the car business and focus on the company’s more-profitable ventures in appliances and whatnot.

So Angelo goes about putting together a team to create a new car, one that will be powered by a friggin’ turbine engine. He and Loren III butt heads, and Number One will occasionally step in; that is, when he isn’t flashing back at random points in the narrative to his own life, reliving this or that event which in the hands of a better author would set up ramifications in the “present” narrative, but in the hands of Robbins just come off as extranneous elements.

I mean, hell, there’s a very lurid part where we learn that Number One slept with his own son’s wife and conceived a child with her, and yet the ensuing daughter has absolutely zero effect on the events of the novel, and indeed Robbins introduces her into the narrative almost casually after detailing the lurid nature of her conception, quickly casting her aside. Why it never occurred to him to make the child a son -- more particularly Loren III himself – was beyond me.

Because as it stands, the major theme of The Betsy is the battle between father and son. In the sections in the 1920s and 1930s, Number One fights against his son (Number Two), to whom he has granted presidency of Bethlehem Motors. After returing from a years-long trip to Europe (after the death of his wife and after he’s impregnated his own son’s wife), Number One finds that Junior has basically given control of the company to a fascist security chief…who also happens to be Number Two’s lover. This initiates a whole new round of warfare between Number One and his son.

And then in the “present” portion of the tale, in the early 1970s, Number One, now nearly a hundred, carries on the battle with Loren III. It’s very wearying and very repetitive, not to mention confusing. Hell, even Robbins got confused – there’s a part toward the end where Loren III talks about the latest round of fighting with “my dad,” when it should be “granddad,” but Robbins himself was obviously confusing the similar characters and their similar situations. Do you think he cared? Doubtful. Like most other Robbins novels I’ve read, The Betsy comes off like a first draft, hastily banged out in some posh hotel on the French Riviera in between snorts of cocaine.

Ah, but the sex scenes. When it comes to them, Robbins excels. I’m an “in the tradition of” kind of guy, meaning that I usually enjoy novels that are taglined as being “in the tradition of” a bestselling novel, mostly because those books are more extreme and lurid. But this is not true when it comes to Harold Robbins, who always went further than any of his followers. By the time The Betsy was released, the world of publishing was loose enough that Robbins could get away with some seriously sleazy shit.

Take for example this little hummdinger, which takes place between Angelo Perino and “the Hertz girl,” ie some young and attractive girl he picks up at Hertz rental. And, mind you, this occurs immediately after a graphic sex scene in which the girl implores Angelo to let her swallow his…well, you know:

She was still holding me, playing with me. “Do you have to pee?” she asked.

“Now that you mention it, I do.” I started out of the bed.

She followed me into the bathroom. “Let me hold it for you.”

I looked at her. “Be my guest.”

She stood behind me and aimed it at the bowl, but it was awkward and splashed over the seat.

“Just what I thought,” I said. “Women don’t know anything about taking a piss.”

“Let me try,” she said and climbed into the bathtub next to the toilet bowl. Then she held it. This time her aim was true.

I looked at her face. There was an expression of rapt concentration there that I had never seen before. A fascination that was almost childish. She turned her face up to me. Almost as if she were in a spell she put her free hand in the path of the stream. Abruptly she turned it to her.

I stopped in surprise.

She pulled angrily at my cock. “Don’t stop!” she cried. “It’s beautiful. Bathe me in it.”

“Different strokes for different folks,” I said. If that was what she wanted, who was I to say no?

This novel was a damn bestseller!! It really blows my mind. Today stuff like this probably would only see print through some “Erotica” house that caters to the most kinkiest of kinks. But in the ‘70s, this could be printed in a novel that sold millions and millions of copies. And though it’s the most extreme example, there are countless more such scenes throughout The Betsy, though none of it reaches the insane heights of Goodbye, Janette. But then, it seems to me that Robbins got more extreme as he got older, which I guess is one thing you could at least respect him for. (He does slack off on the drugs here, though; while everyone smokes and drinks, only one character indulges in anything illegal – Betsy herself, who in true hippie-girl fashion enjoys smoking dope.)

And as usual these bizarre and outrageous sex scenes are the only things that keep you reading, enduring the endless and banal business room meetings filled with extranneous dialog, in the hopes that, after suffering enough, you will be rewarded like some Pavlovian dog with another oddball and graphic sex scene. And sometimes you are. But not nearly enough. The good does not outweigh the bad in The Betsy, and by the time Angelo and Number One are unveiling the titular car you’ve long since stopped giving a damn.

“Spiced with girls,” taglined the Saturday Review in its review of The Betsy, and the novel certainly is. In fact the female characters are more memorable than the males, and there are more of them. Unfortunately though they’re all sort of clones of one another. For example, there’s Cindy, Angelo’s casual girlfriend, who gets off on the sound of racing engines. Cue several scenes where Cindy orgasms while listening to a tape of Angelo racing, even setting up playback in quadraphonic! I mean, that’s weird and memorable, right? But then…the Hertz girl is the same! She too orgasms at the sound of racing engines, which gives Robbins opportunity to go into some pretty gross detail on how, uh, soiled she gets after riding with Angelo as he races along a street.

But as I say, these quirky characters and outrageous sex scenes are all that keep you reading. And again as usual, the architecture is all there – Robbins easily could’ve turned in a good novel here, even keeping the dirty parts. The battle between the young generation and the old has always interested me, and it’s a story Robbins weaves throughout, with Number One in a generations-long battle with his own progeny. But there are so many missteps and wastes of time that it’s all lost in the mire of characters and subplots…subplots that have no setup or impact. It still boggles my mind that Robbins failed to make Number Three the illegitimate (and unknowing) son of Number One. But that’s just one example of many.

What’s crazy is that Robbins can write when he wants to, as he proves in each of his books. And, following the pattern of many of his novels, this one is told in a variety of styles, bookended with narratives from Angelo’s first-person perspective before jumping into third-person for the majority of the tale. And the way Robbins hopscotches across decades is almost surreal, or at the very least brazen…which again makes it unfortunate that there’s such little payoff. He does try to tie up the novel by bringing to light the mysterious fate of Number Two, but does himself no favors by only introducing the mystery late in the tale, and not really bothering to explore it. But then, that’s another hallmark of Robbins: hasty wrap-ups.

Robbins published a sequel in 1995, The Stallion, but rumor has it the novel was actually written by his wife Jann. I’ve got the book and will eventually get to it.

The Baroness: The Unpublished Volumes

Baroness, Donald Moffitt, Men's Adventure Novels, Paul Kenyon, Pocket Books Comments Off

Aug 272012

Now that I've finished the Baroness series, I wish there were more volumes to read. While I've never loved the books, they've all been entertaining, and the series definitely has an appeal. A long-lasting appeal, at that, with the Baroness Yahoo Group still going strong. Through the efforts of one particular member of that group, ppsantos, we've learned that Donald Moffitt was in fact the only author of the eight volumes in the series, but also that he wrote two more books, both which went unpublished (at least in English, but more on that later). We've also learned that Robert Vardeman was contracted to write an installment.

Reading through the various messages on the Baroness Yahoo Group, I've pieced together the below list of what these missing three novels would have been about, and also what order I think they would have been published.

#9: Death Is A Copycat -- This one was written by Donald Moffitt. According to some letters Moffitt wrote ppsantos over the past few years (and found in the Photos section of the Baroness Group), Moffitt became ill after turning in #8: Black Gold, and was unable to write for a while. In the meantime series honcho Lyle Kenyon Engel contracted Robert Vardeman to write an installment. In fact, Vardeman's installment might have been slated as #9 in the series, but what makes me suspect otherwise is that Death Is A Copycat was actually published, whereas Vardeman's novel never was. Anyway, this particular volume would have featured Triskelion, a three-legged villain (!) who threatened "to cause chaos by duplicating the world's currency."

As stated, this volume was published, but only in France, where the Baroness series was titled Penny. This installment appeared as the ninth and final volume of the Penny series, with the title Photo-Phobi. A poster on the Baroness Group named Hans Henrik actually read the book, and was kind enough to post a summary of it:

In Death is a Copy Cat Penelope battles a French tycoon, who has made his fortune by inventing the perfect photocopier. The tycoon intends to use his machines for counterfeiting the leading currencies of the world and create financial chaos, which would give him world domination.

This adventure certanly depicts the Baroness as we know her. She is taking care of the bad guys by breaking necks, crushing throats, smashing in heads, or strangling them. Many more are shot or killed with greandes.

Her sex-life is as usual quite imaginitive. She has sex in a barrel of vintage wine with the french duke she met at the end of the book Black Gold. But in this story she confines herself to just one lover.

The manuscript of Moffitt's original still exists, wedged away somewhere in his attic. Whether it will ever see light of day is anyone's guess.

#10: Quicktime Death -- This volume was the only one in the series not written by Donald Moffitt. It was written by Robert Vardeman, a writer I've not yet read, but I know he had his hand in many different series, including Nick Carter. All that's known about Quicktime Death is that it has something to do with "a drug that enhances reaction time." I can only suspect then that at some point in the novel the Baroness engages in high-speed sex. Again, this might have been slated to be the ninth volume of the series; no one is certain. One thing that is known is that it would have preceded the volume below, as on the Baroness Group Vardeman himself commented that, when he turned in Quicktime Death, Engel told him that "the next volume" would be about a black hole. Like Moffitt, Vardeman still has his copy of the manuscript.

#11: A Black Hole To Die In -- Of all the unpublished volumes, this one interests me the most. In this installment "the Baroness goes into space to save Earth from a mini-black hole that both the Chinese and the Russians are trying to capture." Given Moffitt's later focus on science fiction, this volume has a lot of potential, and I hope it might someday be published, whether as an ebook or as a real book. It's currently sitting up in Moffitt's attic, alongside the manuscript for Death Is A Copycat.

So will these missing three volumes ever be released? I'm not holding my breath. The series was the property of Book Creations, owned by Lyle Kenyon Engel, who passed away in 1986. His wife passed away in 1994. That left only Engel's son, George, who was stated to be 47 in a 1982 interview with the family. Book Creations was once an immense fiction factory, employing 40-60 staff writers and cranking out paperback bestsellers. It seems that all publications ceased around 1999, and now George Engel is the last member of the company. By all accounts, he is unresponsive to emails and letters, especially those asking that he consider epublishing the Baroness novels.

A part of me says the authors should just damn the torpedoes and self-publish their manuscripts, given Engel's unresponsiveness, but I'm betting that as soon as that happened, Engel would get real interested, real fast, and call in the lawyers. As another poster on the Baroness Group suggested, the smart thing to do would be to approach the guy with a business proposal, buying the rights to all of the Book Creations action series (The Baroness, John Eagle Expeditor, The Butcher, Nick Carter, etc) and releasing them as ebooks. I bet some serious money could be made from that, but I'm a lazy man, and I do enough business proposals at work.

The picture up top by the way is by series cover artist Hector Garrido; this one's labelled as the sketch for an an untitled/unpublished manuscript, so many suspect it might've been the cover for one of these unpublished novels. It moreso looks to me like it's an early draft of the cover for #1: The Ecstasy Connection. I say this because it features the obese villain Petronius Sim as well as the electronic brain the Baroness was hooked into in that intial volume, which was my favorite in the series.

The Baroness #8: Black Gold

Baroness, book reviews, Donald Moffitt, Men's Adventure Novels, Paul Kenyon, Pocket Books Comments Off

Aug 022012

The Baroness #8: Black Gold, by Paul Kenyon
February, 1975 Pocket Books

Here endeth the sex-filled saga of the Baroness, in what by far is the rarest and most overpriced volume of the series. I wish I could say that Black Gold ends the series with a bang, but this turned out to be the worst entry of all: underwhelming, tepid, and boring, even worse than #2: Diamonds Are For Dying. In other words, it's not worth the inflated price online booksellers list it for.

The biggest problem with Black Gold is the lack of action, or even interest; hardly anything happens throughout the novel. Instead the reader must endure endless pages which describe oil carriers and oil rigs, not to mention pages and pages and pages of "Scottish" dialog ("I dinna hae the key!" and so forth), as if some faux-Irvine Welsh has taken over the series. It's really an uphill battle getting through all of this, and I suspect Paul Kenyon (aka Donald Moffitt) was losing his interest in the series.

As usual though the threat is a good one: a terrorist group calling itself SPOILER has unleashed an experimental chemical which destroys oil. Each of these books always opens with a scene in which we witness the devastation wrought by the latest threat, and in these parts Moffitt always shines (though not a single one of them has topped the opening of #1: The Ecstasy Connection, which featured people around the world dying of orgasms). Here we see parts of Europe collapsing as oil-powered vehicles just stop working, thus rendering entire armies impotent. SPOILER threatens more attacks if their demands aren't met: they want half of various oil company profits.

Enter the Baroness, who is in England, where she's doing a series of cosmetic ads for the AngelFace line. As coincidence would have it, the Baroness's latest flame is a rakish Englishman named Tony Cavendish who runs an oil business. Tony's about to head over to Scotland where he will stay in the castle of Lord Angus Bane, who happens to have won the Nobel Prize for his research into chemicals and oil and etc. The reader can already see where this is going, and indeed after a lot of page-filler where the Baroness and her vast team tracks various suspects, the Baroness settles on Bane as being a likely culprit behind SPOILER.

Here the rot sets in. Moffit brings the novel to a standstill with endless scenes of characters who speak in "Scottish" dialog, while nothing else of much importance takes place. The Baroness meanwhile researches, keeping in touch via the usual spy-fy means with her team, most of whom are themselves in Scotland. She also learns more about the mysterious Lord Bane, who is rarely seen on his estate and who allows a group of equally-mysterious Germans to stay there, ostensibly because they go hunting on his grounds. There's also reports of a local sea monster, the "Crombie beastie," as well as a Japanese team of scientists who are trying to capture it.

But honestly, nothing happens. It's just wheel-spinning of the worst sort. The Baroness even suspects her boyfriend Tony, due to his affiliation with those mysterious Germans, not that it stops her from the occasional uber-graphic sex scene with him. Things don't even pick up after an attempt is made on the Baroness's life while she's out driving Tony's car for a look at the "beastie;" surviving a major crash after her car is squirted with that oil-eating chemical, she tapes up her bruises and just continues to snoop around.

Gradually Moffitt brings the series back to the form we expect from previous volumes, but even then it's too little, too late. There's a nice part where the Baroness thinks she's found the castle's legendary ghost, only to discover it's one of Bane's men, who slinks around in between the chambers to snoop; the Baroness breaks his neck and sends the corpse off into the sea via a bra that turns into a balloon(!). Another good sequence has the Baroness and her teammate Fiona watch as the "Crombie beastie," which turns out to be an experimental sub, attacks that Japanese crew; a team of frogmen emerge from the sub, gleefully killing the scientists one by one.

At length the Baroness catches up with the reader and knows that Bane is behind SPOILER. But before that we have to endure more boring stuff, like an overlong sequence where the ever-arrogant Baroness challenges Bane in the annual Highland Games, calling in big Joe Skytop to out-toss some Bane employee in the treetrunk toss, and Tom Sumo to outfight Bane's top swordsman in a sword fight. It's so boring, mostly because you know the Baroness's team is going to be victorious, yet Moffitt blithely writes on for pages and pages, documenting each tree-toss and sword stroke, until the matches finally end...just as you knew they would, with the Baroness's team victorious.

This leads into a mini-"Most Dangerous Game" sequence where the Baroness is hunted by those Germans; there's some dark comedy at work, here, as the Germans keep trying to "accidentally" kill the Baroness before finally dropping all pretense and coming after her. Of course, the Baroness makes short work of them and escapes. This in itself is one of the highlights of the novel, with the Baroness inflating a life-size balloon replica of herself as a decoy! Nevertheless she's captured as is expected, only to awaken and find herself nude to the waist, hanging upside down over a pot of boiling oil.

Part of the Bane clan's ancient notoriety was the boiling of their enemies, and since she's pissed them off so righteously they're going to boil the Baroness the slow way. Thanks though to her nifty plastic spy-fy belt, which turns into a sword when heated, she's able to cut her way out and then hack up the torturer. Here follows another of those series trademarks where the Baroness, nude and covered in oil, waltzes through the castle and hacks people apart.

One scene that had me scratching my head was her swordfight with that aforementioned swordsmaster; somehow the Baroness is able to cut him in half, from groin to breastbone, and it just doesn't seem possible the way Moffitt describes it (he has her slicing up with the sword "like a golf club" into her opponent, who is sitting down at the time). But then, after we just saw our heroine escape a boiling cauldron with her belt-cum-sword, I guess reality has little import.

Meanwhile the Baroness's team is raising hell in Bane's castle, and here we have actual action series stuff, with gunfights and explosions. But the finale itself is rushed, which makes you wonder about all of that page-filling banality that came before; Bane escapes in his sub, and the Baroness and Tony fly out in a helicopter to Tony's oil rig to intercept it. It all leads to the Baroness, in a wetsuit, swimming down to some impossible depth so she can plant a bomb on the sub, thus destroying it and the last of Bane's oil-eating virus.

It's all over in about three pages, and just leaves the reader unsatisfied. If more time had been spent on the finale (or at least the action), and less on the wheel-spinning, then Black Gold would have made for a much better read. But then, even the villains this time are a step down; Bane is downright boring, not nearly as colorful or bizarre as some of the previous villains. Again, it all reeks of an author either bored with his series or just rushing to meet a deadline.

Honestly, the cult fame of this series baffles me. Having read every volume, I wouldn't even place the Baroness in my top ten of favorite men's adventure series, let alone top five. There are so many other series more deserving of a cult following, like John Eagle Expeditor, TNT, Phoenix, and especially Doomsday Warrior. But then, I get the feeling that a lot of the fans of this series haven't actually read any of the novels; they just like the idea of it.

From the Baroness Yahoo Group we know that Donald Moffitt became ill shortly after turning in Black Gold, and so was unable to write for a while. By the time he came back, with two written manuscripts ready to go, series owner Lyle Kenyon Engel told him that publisher Pocket Books was no longer interested. I think Black Gold offers a little indication why; it's no surprise that sales weren't good enough to continue publishing the series. What's sad though is that the Baroness started off so great with The Ecstasy Connection; such a shame, then, that it ended so ignobly.

As mentioned there were a few more novels written for this series, but never published; I'll focus on them in my next Baroness post.

The Smuggler #3: Murder In Blue

book reviews, Men's Adventure Novels, Paul Petersen, Pocket Books, Smuggler Comments Off

Jul 022012

The Smuggler #3: Murder In Blue, by Paul Petersen
November, 1974 Pocket Books

The Smuggler series continues to search for a consistent theme and tone as this third volume, as uneventful for the most part as the previous two, starts off like a James Bond-esque bit of international espionage before veering into an inner-city heroin-busting storyline straight out of Narc, before finally wrapping up in an overlong sequence about a Mayan cult, complete with supernatural stuff along the lines of the Mind Masters series.

Murder In Blue is not at all similar to its predecessor, Fools of the Trade. Also, there's some funny stuff going on here. Fools of the Trade featured our hero Eric "The Smuggler" Saveman rescuing a fellow ZED agent from a sadistic freak in the Caribbean. That volume ended with Saveman and the rescued agent, Kane, discussing their next mission, which would involve taking on poachers in Africa.

But here's the thing: Murder In Blue opens with Savemen in Russia, not Africa, smuggling out some intel and taking on the KGB. Once he returns to the US Saveman reflects on his past "three" adventures, Petersen serving up readers new to the series with recaps of what has gone on before -- and Saveman reflects on that poaching operation in Africa, a mission which apparently his father ("Doc" Saveman) also took part in.

On his official website, Paul Petersen states that there were 8 volumes in the Smuggler series. However only 7 were published. It seems obvious then that the original third volume featured Saveman in Africa fighting poachers; the way it is recapped here makes it clear that it was a full novel on its own, and besides, the finale of Fools of the Trade clearly set up the storyline. So what happened? Did Pocket Books just screw up and skip that volume, accidentally publishing Murder In Blue, which was supposed to be the fourth volume, as volume #3 instead?

That's one possibility, but I think there's another -- I think some behind-the-scenes manuevering was going on. Petersen's name is still on the cover, but Murder In Blue does not appear to be written by the same person behind the previous two novels. Fools of the Trade in particular was a clunky horror that traded off between red-herring plots, super-explicit sex, and sadistic torture-porn that was pretty damn shocking. Murder In Blue on the other hand is for the most part deftly handled in the narrative portion, with little of the clunkiness previously seen. Sure, it jumps all over the place story-wise, but still, there's none of the bizarre "touches" of Fools of the Trade (other than a sex scene midway through which, while being pretty explicit, still isn't as "Penthouse Letters" as the stuff in volume #2).

As I've mentioned, the copyright page states that this series was written in collaboration with someone named David Oliphant, and I'd still love to know how the writing duties were shared. Did he and Petersen switch off on volumes? Was Oliphant the "mastermind" behind Fools of the Trade? Or was the originally-planned third volume about hunting poachers in Africa just as bad as Fools of the Trade, and so Pocket Books hired some new ghostwriter in to "save" Saveman with a wholly-new installment?

It really doesn't matter, though, as I'm giving the series more thought than it deserves. While Murder In Blue is, as far as writing goes, better than its predecessors, the series as a whole just ain't up to snuff. Saveman is too perfect and the plots just aren't very gripping. And the plot-hopping mentioned above doesn't help much. The novel cannot make up its mind what it wants to be: the opening portion in Russia is entertaining, and again much slicker and more "mature" than those previous two books, with Saveman escaping the KGB by hiding in the wheel-well of a commercial plane.

But then the Narc-esque portion of the storyline is plodding, with Saveman on "vacation" in LA, where he wants to get to the bottom of a series of cult murders taking place. Mutilated bodies, painted blue and shot full of arrows, are turning up, and soon enough Saveman deduces that a heroin ring is behind it. This sequence is only saved by the presence of Amy Gazer, Saveman's old high school girlfriend, who runs a clinic. A raven-haired and voluptious beauty, Amy is sort of my ideal gal: fully part of the '70s New Age movement, she lives in a rolling estate where she sits lotus-style on a shag carpet and meditates, smokes dope, and consults her occult-themed library.

Saveman -- a smuggler, remember -- actually partakes of drugs this time out, a first for the series. After being shot up by a hallucinogen by escaping members of the cult, Saveman steers his car to Amy's place (she just appears in the narrative without much setup, by the way) and she instantly seduces him, a pretty steamy scene ensuing. Rather than the pages-long stuff in say the Baroness, which eventually bores the reader with its endless barrage of anatomical euphemisms, the scene here actually succeeds in generating a little heat.

After that, though, the storyline just gets boring. The third half of the novel features Saveman, Amy, and a professor deep in the Yucatan, searching for a Mayan temple in which the cult will stage their next big sacrifice. Here Petersen (or whoever wrote this) takes the opportunity to shoehorn in endless detail about Mayan history and customs, courtesy the blathering professor. Seriously, you can skip large portions of the narrative here. It's an obvious page-filling gambit.

Ironically the Mayan stuff is similar to another novel I recently read, John Eagle Expeditor #6: The Glyphs of Gold, which as you'll no doubt expect was much, much better. But here Petersen instills a supernatural element to the series which just doesn't jibe: Amy and the professor are caught, Amy stripped down and drugged, fated to become the cult leader's bride. A lurid scene ensues where, as part of the marriage ceremony, a group of priests masturbate on Amy(!) and then the leader takes her on an altar, his "engorged manhood" (which we are endlessly reminded is fucking huge) so incredible to Amy's drugged eyes that she basically just starts drooling with lust, giving herself completely to the Mayan cause.

Then Saveman shows up -- after the leader's had his way with Amy, by the way -- with an old Mayan priest who magically becomes younger and starts flying around, shooting blue balls of energy at the cult leader! I mean, what the hell's going on?? After which the priest tells Saveman that Amy's "gone," that she's not dead but not living, and must stay with the Maya -- oh, and she's probably pregnant with the cult leader's child. And Saveman basically shrugs and just leaves her there, high-tailing it back home to reunite with his dad and his superiors at ZED, so he can regale them with stories about how weird his "vacation" was.

Seriously, this was some weird stuff...but all of it was relayed in a clinical fashion, the style and narrative a lot more polished and professional than in the previous book. Now that I think of it, the style of Smuggler #1 might have been similar to this, so maybe Petersen and Oliphant just traded off on each volume? Who cares, I guess.

Paperback 541: The Case of the Careless Kitten / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 724)

1950, cats, Erle Stanley Gardner, Paulus Lesser, Photo Cover, Pocket Books, Sold Comments Off

Jun 202012

Paperback 541: Pocket Books 724 (1st ptg, 1950)

Title: The Case of the Careless Kitten
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: "Front cover photograph by Paulus Lesser"

Yours for: SOLD! (6/20/12)

Best things about this cover:

"Hey, what's up? My name's Gary. I'm here to read for the role of 'Careless Kitten.' So ... do I stand here, or ... what? Oh, too close? Sorry."
Perry Mason solves 'The Case of the World's Least Meme-able Cat'
Seriously, this cover makes me laugh more than most covers I own. What the hell is happening? I love this cat. He's like the vintage paperback Anti-Cover. "No semi-naked ladies to see here, fella. MOVE along ..."
This was one of maybe 30 *more* ESG / AA Fair books I got from a generous reader. That makes 60-70 total. I'm gonna start reading the Perry Mason stuff in order ... if I like it, I'll keep going (at his worst, Gardner is competent, so I think I'm going to like it).

Best things about this back cover:

When Helen Kendal lost the second "L" in her last name, she knew just where to turn.
That's a human "corpse," I assume. Because one murdered kitten may be my limit.
When I want to add spice to my hot dish, I collect a scalp. Of course.

Page 123~

Della Street went on rapidly. "It's that way when someone near to you passes away. It's a shock. Your brother must have been smart, Mr. Lunk."

"Despite what his name suggests," she added.

~RP

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Empress of Desire

book reviews, historical fiction, Pocket Books, Toga Porn Comments Off

Jun 132012

Empress of Desire, by Jack Mertes
March, 1982 Pocket Books

Here's a sentence I don't get to write every day, but I got burned out on toga porn. A couple years ago I went through a fit of madness, trying to find these trashy works of historical fiction, the majority of which were long forgotten. (I listed all of the ones I'd found on two Amazon Listmania lists, which can now be found on my Toga Porn Mania post.) I read a lot of them at the time, but unfortunately it was before I started this blog...back then I'd post reviews on Amazon, where they'd just collect dust, due to the obscurity of the books.

Anyway, I've been meaning to read Empress of Desire for a few years now. This is a late-model release in the genre, which had mostly dried up by the late 1970s. But it's a big fat paperback original which promises a trashy excursion back into the days of Imperial Rome, detailing the sex-filled maneuverings of Poppaea Sabina as she plots to ensnare emperor Nero and marry him, thus becoming empress of Rome.

Poppaea in my mind will always be the ultra-sexy Claudette Colbert (my favorite actress, by the way), as she appeared in the role in Cecil B. DeMille's 1932 sex-and-sin extravaganza The Sign of the Cross:

And that's not even a shot from her infamous (and topless) milk bath scene!

Ironically, even though Claudette only appears in about a quarter of the film, her portrayal of Poppaea is more memorable than the one Jack Mertes presents. Claudette's Poppaea is a powerhouse of erotic force who dominates every character (not to mention scene); Mertes's Poppaea is more of a shrill harpie who, if her wiles don't work, throws tantrums to get what she wants. But then, the Poppaea of the film is already empress of Rome. Mertes shows the torrid path she took to get there, though he does take a few liberties with history. Not that it matters - this is fiction, after all.

The majority of the novel is given over to Poppaea's scheming to first meet Nero, and then seduce him. Really though Empress of Desire is in the vein of the sex-filled Romance novels that were all the rage in the late 1970s, with a duplicitous and headstrong female character who thinks she wants power, but it turns out that all she's really been searching for is a good orgasm. There's also the obligatory love-hate relationship, in this case with a gruff horse-breeder named Tigellinus (an actual historical figure, but changed here), whom Poppaea just hates and hates...that is, when she isn't jumping his bones or planning to give up her dreams and marry him.

But Poppaea's sexual antics aren't limited to Tigellinus. Over the course of Empress of Desire she beds a veritable army of men, Mertes never shirking on the good stuff -- though, humorously enough, he likes to employ euphemisms that were all the rage with early 20th century Loeb Classical Library translators: mound of Venus, love-spear, etc. So while it doesn't get full-on Baroness hardcore, the book still packs a hefty punch. Just to give you an idea, Poppaea seduces (then poisons) her present husband while carrying on an affair with the porcine Otho, whom she later marries -- all in a bid to meet Nero. Along the way she manages frequent encounters with Tigellinus, even at one point hooking up with a Gallic barbarian. And all of this is before we even get to Nero!

Mertes though has this super-strange tendency to always specify that the men stink. It's really weird and disconcerting, mainly because it's mentioned in every sex scene. The men either reek of garlic, cheap wine, or just a general funk, and it gets pretty old after a while. Even pampered Nero, we learn, has an unsavory smell about him. Maybe Mertes's theme is that men just stink in general, who knows. But after you've read for the umpteenth time about Tigellinus reeking of garlic as he hops on Poppaea, you've pretty much had enough.

Another strange quirk of Mertes is his occasional attempt to gross us out. There's a sequence where Otho, as a way to teach her a lesson, has Poppaea thrown into the Mamertine prison. After enduring this squalid existence for a few days, Poppaea is freed during a slave revolt. (Here is where she bumps uglies with the aforementioned barbarian, right on the street!) After which Poppaea passes out; it turns out she has contracted some plague from the prison, and over the next several pages Mertes delights in telling us all about Poppaea's vomitous spewings and so forth. Later on there's an even more nauseating sequence where Poppaea gives herself an abortion. I mean, not that I'm squeamish or anything, it's' just that these scenes don't seem to fit into the trashy decadence of the novel itself.

For Mertes proves himself a master of trashy decadence. There are some great scenes here, from when Poppaea rents out a room in a whorehouse in the hopes of fooling Nero into thinking she's the house's prized courtesan, to Poppaea and Nero's later plotting to kill off Nero's family. Mertes generally does a good job bringing to life the torrid world of Imperial Rome, though not with quite the mastery that Sylvia Fraser displayed in her 1982 The Emperor's Virgin (one of those toga porns I read before I started this blog -- and it was a good one). But there are many scenes here that capture the exotic glory of Rome, even an overlong sequence in the Circus Maximus.

Empress of Desire could almost be seen as a psuedo-sequel to Jack Oleck's Messalina. Poppaea's mother killed herself as a result of Messalina's scheming, and Poppaea grew up consumed with vengeance. Poppaea's story is unusual because you know this woman deserved to gain her revenge, but fate robbed her of it -- everyone who deserved comeuppance was dead by the time she reached adulthood. So instead, Poppaea just became as cruel, vindictive, and calculative as Messalina herself; there are many scenes in the novel where she goes into conniptions when someone actually compares her to Messalina.

So, Poppaea sets her sights on Nero, because she wants the power of being empress. She quickly ensnares him, Poppaea's beauty such that Nero is overwhelmed (Mertes skirts over the popular notion -- as intimated by Charles Laughton in The Sign of the Cross -- that Nero was gay), and soon enough she has the emperor eating out of the palm of her hand. Nero, constantly dominated by women throughout the novel, plots the deaths of various people at the behest of Poppaea, who sees all of them as obstacles in her path to becoming empress.

Top target is Agrippina, Nero's mother. Like Poppaea, Agrippina suffered a miserable childhood in which most of her family was murdered, insinuating herself into politics as an adult. And she sees Poppaea using the same wooing tricks on Nero that Agrippina herself used on emperor Claudius. Mertes delivers some awesome soap opera-esque catfights between Poppaea and Agrippina, complete with delicious putdowns and the like. Agrippina is losing her firm hold on Nero, even resorting to incestual propositions in a desperate attempt to keep him in tow.

But those who know their history know that Agrippina's time is limited, and Mertes enacts her famous murder toward the end of the tale, having Tigellinus witness it. (Empress of Desire by the way also takes place around the same time as Lance Horner's Rogue Roman, but in that novel at least Agrippina was busy counter-plotting against her son.)

The title of the novel is misleading in that Poppaea doesn't actually become empress until the last page. Mertes leaves Poppaea's fate unmentioned, and indeed serves up foreshadowing in the narrative that he doesn't follow through on, leaving it up to interested readers to seek out Tacitus or Suetonius. For example, he intimates that Poppea may one day regret having Nero ban her former husband Otho, but never tells us why -- namely, because upon Nero's death Otho himself became emperor for a brief time, and actually ordered the death of Tigellinus (who in the novel as in history becomes the leader of the Praetorian guard). As for Poppaea's fate, which again Mertes doesn't cover, she was killed (accidentally?) by Nero, who either kicked her or fell on her while she was pregnant.

Given that he ends the tale so early in Poppaea's life, Mertes doesn't even get to the well-known stuff. We don't get to see the infamous "Great Fire" of Rome, Nero's Golden House, or any of the other sordid events as recounted by the ancient historians. It makes me wonder if Empress of Desire was planned as the first volume in perhaps a trilogy about Poppaea -- as it is, the novel ends with the fate of all the characters still in question.

In a final note, Mertes thanks several people on the opening page, and closes his acknowledgements with the statement, "This is only the beginning!" Ironically enough, this appears to be the only novel Mertes published. So I guess it was the beginning and the end.

Paperback 533: End Zone / Don DeLillo (Pocket Books 78282)

1973, Cincinnati Enquirer, Don DeLillo, Football, God, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Photo Cover, Pocket Books, Shirtless man Comments Off

May 312012

Paperback 533: Pocket Books 78282 (1st ptg, 1973)

Title: End Zone
Author: Don DeLillo
Cover artist: photo

Yours for: $8

Best things about this cover:

Way outside my normal collection timeframe, but the cover (and author) caught my eye—seemed memorable / remarkable—like the last thing you see before you get strangled (to death, presumably).
I like that it's a novel about football, but the cover only barely suggests this (title, font, "New Gladiators").
That's the opposite of "Fear Hand"—most mid-century covers have a victim POV, with woman reacting to some kind of impending attack. Here, the attacker (in a context that can be only dimly imagined).

Best things about this back cover:

Dang, high praise for a novel I've never heard of.
"Is God a Football Fan?" is a pretty good tagline.
So much for your Nostradamian powers, Cincinnati Enquirer.

Page 123~

"Gary Harkness. Good name. Promotable. I like it. I even love it."
"Thanks."
"Relax and call me Wally."
"Right," I said.

If anyone ever says "Relax and call me Wally," you're gonna want to end the conversation quickly and get out of there.

~RP

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Paperback 520: Tales of the South Pacific / James A. Michener (Pocket Books 516)

1950, Fergus Hoffman, Grand Rapids Herald, Harvey Kidder, James Michener, KC Clapp, Military, Pacific Islanders, Pocket Books, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Will Davidson, WWII-era content Comments Off

Apr 252012

Paperback 520: Pocket Books 516 (16th-18th ptg, 1950)

Title: Tales of the South Pacific
Author: James A. Michener
Cover artist: Harvey Kidder

Yours for: $5

Best things about this cover:

"I ... uh ... I forget why I came in here."
"My eyes are up here" doesn't really work when you're topless.
I liked the Kangaroo better when it had a joey in its pouch. This "book boner" incarnation is disturbing.

Best things about this back cover:

Whoa, someone's got a military fetish. I'm looking at you, K.C. Clapp.
"Balinese lasses" is not the kind of phrase you are likely to see ... ever. Unless there are Balinese in Ireland.
"Bali laughs" is so terrible I literally laughed.

Page 123~

As in a trance, Cable sucked in his breath audibly. The girl smiled, and at that moment Cable heard a hissing noise. He turned around, frightened. But it was only bloody Mary. She had her peach-basket hat in her left hand. Stains of betel juice were drenching the ravines of her mouth, which was grinning, broadly. Her broken teeth showed through, black, black as night. She winked her right eye heavily and asked, "You like?" Then she turned and fled down the path.

Ah, natives. So droll. So quaint. So exotic. Just a moment of local color before our hero has sex with an underage prostitute ... who is a virgin ... who will cry immediately after. You know, the way men do. "The regrets and moral questionings would come later."

~RP

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