20 Great Vintage Sleaze Reads

by Lynn Munroe

1. CROSSROADS OF LUST by Lawrence Block writing as Andrew Shaw. Midnight Reader 427, 1962.

Block was the first Andrew Shaw, and he has recently been republishing the books under his name. This is one that deserves to be available again. 

Many vintage sleaze paperbacks are all about "topic A" and nothing else. But several of the early Andrew Shaw titles, like this one, are hardboiled crime novels disguised as sleazy paperbacks. Block used this forum to hone his skills writing crime novels, and there is very little difference between his Andrew Shaw thrillers and the early Gold Medals published under his real name. This one is about an armored car robbery that goes wrong and gets bloody.

2. THE SADIST by Lawrence Block writing as Andrew Shaw. Nightstand 1629, 1962.

Block has already reprinted the best Andrew Shaw crime book, $20 Lust, under his original title Cinderella Sims. But this ice-cold chiller deserves to be republished too. 

The Sadist is a dark ride, a trip to the black night of men's souls in which the main character is no hero but is a sadistic hit man named Jack Garth. Garth loves his work, because it affords him an outlet for his dark side. He is a serial killer who gets by calling himself a "hit man". Garth takes the jobs no one else has the stomach for, like killing all the members of one Albany family. In one chapter that gave me night haunts, he forces the daughter to watch as he chops up her mom with an ax. This is a far cry from the usual sex and fun of the other Nightstands. In many ways ahead of its time, The Sadist is more like a modern gore movie. Later authors would be noticed for writing books with killer "anti-heroes" like this, but the only author I can think of who did so before Andrew Shaw was Jim Thompson with The Killer Inside Me.

3. THE SIN DRIFTER by Donald E. Westlake writing as Alan Marshall. Bedside 1218, 1962.

All four of the Bedside Alan Marshall books are fun reading and good examples of early Westlake. Traveling salesman Mike Mallory of the Wilmot-Dexter Peanut Butter Company has a seies of wacky trysts in this romp full of early 60s in-jokes. There's a couple named Wilma & Barney Stone, and Mike stops at the Bates Hotel, where he meets "two bottomless wells of giggling, bouncing, piston-hipped lust" named Cherry and Merry.

4. PASSION'S PLAYTHINGS - Westlake as Alan Marshall. Bedside 1208, 1961.

Walt McKay from Sodd, Ohio runs into plenty of action during his first visit to New York City. He finds himself on 42nd Street, joining the sex movie racket and meeting an unforgettable group of bizarre characters. Westlake often uses a storyteller's trick of involving you in the story by making "you" a part of the proceedings, as this quote from Passion's Playthings illustrates:

"..what's going to happen to this ordinary-looking guy in a few minutes is not something you would want to be involved in. You might think it's going to be fun, and maybe at first it will be, but the fun is going to evaporate faster than after-shave lotion, and the smell it will leave behind will not be nearly as pleasant. Walt is going to have an adventure, and remember, an adventure is some other guy in a hell of a situation."

5. CALL ME SINNER - Westlake as Alan Marshall. Nightstand 1581, 1961.

"Alan Marshall" became a house name used by many different writers, but Westlake was the first Marshall, and unlike many of his contemporaries he had no qualms about owning up to which of the books he had written. In chapter two of the second Dortmunder Gang story, Bank Shot, a box of sleazy paperbacks falls open and Westlake lists six of the titles. Except for one of his Edwin West titles (Strange Affair), they are all Alan Marshall books, and one of them is Call Me Sinner. This is his way of telling us he wrote this book. This book has the same first sentence as one of the Midwood Marshalls, Virgin's Summer, but the two stories go off on different tangents from there.

6. PASSION DOLL - Westlake as Alan Marshall. Sundown Reader 528, 1964.

Westlake was very adamant that he stopped writing these when the books appearing under his own name began to take off. I believe him, and I think he wrote Passion Doll in the early 1960s, but the publisher held it until 1964. I also think Westlake liked Passion Doll, because he mentioned it twice in his other books. It's another one of the books in the box in Bank Shot, and in one of the Parker hardcovers, as by Richard Stark, a drive-in movie is showing Man Hungry and Passion Doll (The Midwood Man Hungry is the third Alan Marshall book in Bank Shot, the other two are Off Limits and a Midwood called Apprentice Virgin). Passion Doll is reminiscent of other Westlakes, a road novel about a hitchhiking soldier and the runaway beauty queen who picks him up and takes him to motels.

7. OFF LIMITS - Westlake as Alan Marshall. Bedside 1202, 1961.

As noted above, Off Limits was one of the books named in Bank Shot. Westlake had served in the Air Force, and this story takes place on an Air Force Base. Richard Stark would return to this setting for The Green Eagle Score.

8. THE WARPED ONES - Westlake as Alan Marshall. Bedside 1211, 1961.

After his Air Force tour of duty, Westlake and his first wife got involved in the Greenwich Village off-off-Broadway theatre scene, and that is the setting of The Warped Ones. Westlake invented the bad play title "A Sound of Distant Drums" and Block quickly started using it too as they put jokes for each other in their manuscripts. That play is in this book.

9. THE SIN LOSERS - Westlake as Alan Marshall. Idle Hour 465, 1965.

Westlake is easily recognized by his breezy, conversational sense of humor. A friend of a friend of Westlake's once gave me a short list of Westlake's "adult" titles, and The Sin Losers was on that list. It is unmistakably his work, as this description of wedding night problems demonstrates:

"So then, she was stripped.... Now came the slipping and sliding process. They were both as slippery as eels by this time, and as nervous as inhabitants of Death Row, and though Hubert slid atop his wife with all the aplomb of a man for whom things like this are a common occurrence, happening every decade, the next stage of this fiasco found Hubert totally unable to find, anywhere on his wife's anatomy, the portion he had been led to believe was standard equipment on all women, and which was, in a way, the ultimate object of all this fooling around. He poked and pried and scrambled around like Ponce De Leon jabbing Florida all over with a stick in search of the Fountain of Youth , but, also like Ponce De Leon, all he seemed to be finding was more Florida."However, remember this is called THE SIN LOSERS, and everybody loses in the downer of an ending to this story.

However, remember this is called THE SIN LOSERS, and everybody loses in the downer of an ending to this story.

10. BEAST OF SHAME - David Case writing as Don Holliday. Pillar Book 847, 1964.

Case was the second Don Holliday, and he has many fans in the vintage sleaze world. His original title for this was Lust Werewolf, and that is too perfect to stick, they called it Beast of Shame. Case was interested in writing horror (he later wrote the movie tie-in for And Now the Screaming Starts), and finding himself with a sleazebook assignment he chose to write this dark delicious sleaze/horror crossover. Perhaps the only book from this publisher with an actual werewolf as one of the main characters, Beast of Shame is about a guy who runs around eating women. Literally.

11. THE LUSTFUL ONES - William Knoles writing as Clyde Allison. Nightstand 1525, 1960.

When I interviewed William Knoles' wife for an article on Clyde Allison, she told me he used to come home frustrated after a day at his job at Scott Meredith Literary Agency, reading the manuscripts they were providing to Nightstand Books. "I'm sure I could write a better one", he'd say. But then, unlike a lot of guys who come home complaining about their work, he wrote one. His first novel for Nightstand, The Lustful Ones, stands out from the pack as one of their supremely best-written books. The poignancy and deeply felt emotions of the characters ring true and resonant with the reader. It is unexpected, especially from this kind of paperback. For example, there's a scene in The Lustful Ones - it's a standard sleazebook scene - where our amorous prowling hero realizes he can totally boink this nubile, vulnerable young lady whose emotional defenses have been destroyed. But then he doesn't, because even though he'd have his fun, it would only break her more . Personal integrity like that comes as such a surprise after reading all the sex scenes and mindless bed romps in all these books that it's almost shocking. Chris Eckhoff, the extraordinary Brooklyn paperback dealer, once called The Lustful Ones "a masterpiece" in his book catalog. He was right on the money.

12. SIN SONG by William Knoles writing as John Dexter. Nightstand 1562, 1961.

"John Dexter" was one of the house names everybody shared at Nightstand, and the editors would randomly assign manuscripts from their regular writers to these house names. Knoles called this The Girl You Love to Hate, and as you read it, you recognize it's a Clyde Allison book. There's even a character in it from another Clyde Allison book, Hollywood director Hudson Ford from The Sex Riddle. Sin Song is about a promoter who takes a backwoods hick singer and turns her into a female Elvis. It's a biting satire on American pop culture and the music business. The more she sneers and misbehaves, the more popular she gets. It's a story about celebrity that's ahead of its time.

13. THE SEX SPREE by William Knoles writing as Clyde Allison. Midnight Reader 439, 1962.

Clyde Allison became famous for his hilarious James Bond parodies, the 0008 books. But a lot of his other, lesser-known titles are just as good, like this carefree spree about a guy named Dave Bender who goes on a 30-day bender. In a satire on the then-fairly-new world of instant credit, Dave realizes that since his credit card won't be due for 30 days, he has a month to live large, go wild, travel the world and make whooppee like crazy before he has to admit he can't pay for any of it.

14. THE GLASS MISTRESS by Evan Hunter writing as Dean Hudson. 

Midnight Reader 464, 1962. Hunter / Hudson had this notion that a man who was a skid row bum could simultaneously be a huge success in whatever field of work he chose. It's a ludicrous notion, but it's the basis for his Curt Cannon books like I Like 'Em Tough and it is the idea behind The Glass Mistress, which is about an actor who is both a drunken bum and a world-class lover. I always wanted to ask him, have you ever smelled a wino? How can he possibly succeed with the ladies as a famous lover and famous actor? The actor's true mistress, however, is his glass of booze.

15. THE SIN VELDT by John Dexter. Leisure Book 1152, 1966.


Sir Cecil Aubrey's circus, with its leopard-skin-wearing strongman Zondrik and the voluptuous Darvi, journey into deepest Africa in search of a Great White Ape. Zondrik (whose real name, we learn, is Algernon P. Fothingsgap) is not exactly Tarzan, and the Ape, who is afraid of biplanes and the Empire State Building , is not exactly King Kong. Along the way, every jungle adventure, safari movie and giant ape story is sent up as the circus folk journey from Mombasa to a Hollywood movie studio, where a giant ape movie called MIGHTY SAM YOUNG is made.

16. HER by J.X. Williams. Leisure Book 1218, 1967.


Rumors abound that Her was written by "a famous science-fiction author", but to date that name has not yet been revealed, and Earl Kemp, the science-fiction fan who edited this book, has forgotten just who submitted it. Her is one of the grand spoofs this publisher did from time to time. This one is a send-up of jungle adventures like She by H. Rider Haggard. Rugged he-man Steve Mitchell and his stalwart companion Colonel Fothingsgap (whose name suggests that this J.X. Williams also wrote The Sin Veldt as John Dexter) venture into darkest Africa , where they encounter Tarzan & Jane and an ancient goddess known as Her. They take Her to New York City , and on our tour of Manhattan, Steve wanders into a 42nd Street bookstore and asks, "Got anything by John Dexter?"

17. PASSION CACHE by Harry Whittington writing as J.X. Williams. Sundown Reader 580, 1965.


If you like Gold Medal crime thrillers by Whittington, Gil Brewer, and Charles Williams, you will want to seek out Whittington's pseudonymous sleaze books like Passion Cache. A burned out man is driving down a dark California road when he comes upon a half-naked blonde with a dead millionaire husband. He makes the classic mistake of stopping to help, winds up in bed with her (“She'd offered me a package deal, a quarter of a million dollars and enough wild loving to put me in a wheelchair.” ) and is soon in jail for her husband's murder. One of the characters in Passion Cache dies very slowly, and in Whittington's skillful hands we ache with anguish as we read about this death. We die a little. He is that good.




18. BLOOD LUST ORGY by Harry Whittington writing as John Dexter. Nightstand 1780, 1966.


Another hardboiled Whittington that grabs ahold of you is Blood Lust Orgy, which Harry also published as "The Crooked Window" in the November 1965 issue of Shell Scott Mystery Magazine. An ordinary guy takes his girlfriend shopping at a big department store at the mall. He waits in the car. She never comes back out. Ever. Nobody in the store remembers her, and he is just beginning to question his sanity when the police find a corpse in his closet. Now we are beginning to question his sanity. But hold on, there are more twists and turns ahead. Blood Lust Orgy is a hardboiled murder mystery disguised as a John Dexter Nightstand.

19. JAZZMAN IN NUDETOWN by Bob Tralins. Gaslight 101, 1964.

The first 18 books on this list were all published by the same man, William Hamling. There were other vintage sleaze publishers, however, and it is only sporting to end this list with a couple of them. Jazzman in Nudetown is a wild read about a sax player named Jock Midnight who is on the road, dining on booze and Alka Seltzer, when he is picked up by two busty Amazons who seem to have escaped from a Bill Ward drawing or a Russ Meyer movie. 

Just when you think their wild sexplay will make up the whole story, the always-resourceful pro Tralins turns this into a searing novel about race relations in the Deep South. With the late Mr Tralins' unique use of language ("I'd been gadzooked by two swinging cats!"), this is one I've never forgotten.

20. SEX A GO GO by Russ Trainer. Exotik Book W-22, 1966.

I used to have a book customer who worked in the offices of Rhino Records in L.A. She told me that on Friday afternoons, to end the work week, the office staff enjoyed reading aloud another chapter of this outrageous, kinky and bizarre sleazebook. Ostensibly the adventures of a rock'n'roll band called The Irresponsibles, Sex A Go Go is really a thinly-veiled pastiche about Beatlemania. In case you aren't paying attention, the group's drummer is Bimbo Sweet, a short hop from Ringo Starr. And then there is the Beatles-takeoff cover art by Norm Saunders. "A swinging story for all you hot cats!". Unlike some of the titles on this list, Sex A Go Go actually is a dirty book, with weird chapters on such old favorites as midget sex, double amputee stump sex and bestiality. And then it just gets kinky. Russ Trainer would later publish Cameo Books, where he did books by Dean & Gerda Koontz like Bounce Girl. He recycled some of his own books under pen names, and Sex A Go Go was reprinted there as Hot Rock by Gloria Bell.

Tomorrow: In our final post of "Sleaze Week at bare•bones," Lynn Munroe provides a checklist of every Andrew Shaw novel.

Lynn Munroe: The bare•bones interview

by Peter Enfantino

John Scoleri and I have known Lynn Munroe for years as one of the regular dealers at Tom Lesser's annual Paperback Collector's Show in Mission Hills, CA every Spring. Lynn always has an amazing selection of incredibly rare books and magazines, and walking by his table is always a treat. You'll find rare Donald Westlakes (Lynn was incredibly gracious last year and gifted me with a copy of Westlake's uber-scarce Comfort Station (Signet, 1973), a parody of Arthur Hailey's novel, Hotel, published under the psuedonym of J. Morgan Cunningham. One of the "holy grails" of contemporary paperback collecting, it now holds a very special place on my bookshelf. When I decided to do a "sleaze week" at bare•bones, the first man I thought of was Lynn. As bad as that sounds, it's actually a compliment. I don't think there are many other dealers who know so much about the softcore paperback than Lynn Munroe. The following interview backs up my assumption pretty well, I think.

PE: When did you first become a rare book dealer?

LM: I come from a family of readers. There have always been book scouts, and in the 1980s I was one of them in Los Angeles. One day I found a first edition, no dust jacket, of The Instant Enemy by Ross Macdonald at a thrift store for $2. I owned a banged-up ex-library copy with a nice looking jacket, so I married that jacket to the thrift store copy. I sold it to a bookstore in Westwood for $25. I was feeling pretty good about the $23 profit, but by chance I happened to stop in at that bookstore a couple days later, and when I walked in they were selling that Instant Enemy for $250. That's when I decided to eliminate the middle man and become a bookseller. I used the book business to underwrite my reading. I'd buy a book, read it, sell it and use the money to buy something else I wanted to read. I did mail order catalogs and book shows. My specialty was hardboiled mystery. I was collecting James M. Cain and read that three of his first editions were paperback originals. I couldn't find them at the local bookstores, but I heard about an annual Paperback Show in Burbank so I went, and I walked in, and I was hooked. I met the guys running the show, Tom Lesser and Paul Payne, and I became a vintage paperback dealer. I started selling books at that show every year, and met other die-hard collectors and dealers.

PE: When did you start getting serious about sleaze novels?

LM: A lot of the mystery writers I liked, such as Lawrence Block and Donald E. Westlake, got their start writing what we now call "vintage sleaze," so I began to chase after those books and that then became a part of what I deal in. There were plenty of mail order mystery booksellers in those pre-internet days, and I wanted to have some way to stand out from the pack, so I created catalogs from a collector's viewpoint instead of a general store viewpoint. I would take one subject and do a whole catalog on just that. For example, one of my early catalogs was on Lion Books. But after the success of early catalogs on Westlake and James M. Cain, I started to concentrate more and more on individual authors with each checklist. I would attempt to collect as much as I could find by that list's subject, showcase the different editions of their books, and create a bibliography. My college major was History, not teaching history but library research. I never used that training in my day job, but I used it every day as a bibliographer. My catalogs were a success, but printing and mailing costs were prohibitive. When the internet boomed, 98% of the mail order book dealers went online. The other 2% went out of business.

PE: You uncovered quite a few mysteries in your time, How do you do it?

LM: It was a combination of luck, applying my college training to the book research, and knowing who to talk to. It is a collaborative effort. When I started there were a number of men already doing that kind of detective work. One of the greatest is a University librarian named Victor Berch. He was a tremendous help to me and many others, and he showed me how to obtain copyright records from the Library of Congress.

PE: Would other collectors tip you off?

LM: I got many tips and names to look for from other book dealers interested in the same thing. I was just the guy who wrote everything down, but I couldn't have done it without a network of help. Collectors provided a wealth of information too, not just dealers.

PE: How did you recognize an author's work?

LM: Concentrating on one author at a time allowed me to become familiar with each author's sense of style. We began to look for clues. A group of us began to notice in-jokes and clues in Lawrence Block's pen name books as Andrew Shaw (he was contracted to provide a book each month), so we assumed Block was the author. We quickly learned that he was instructing his ghost writers to put the jokes into their manuscripts too, to amuse his buddies. Publishers and agents have always used ghost writers, but Block, Westlake & company enlisted friends to write their pseudonym books for the monthly quota. Since these were friendly ghosts and not strangers, I suggested calling them "Caspers," but that idea did not stick. So yes, usually I was tipped off.

PE: You made a lot of these discoveries long before the internet. Has that made it too easy to discover who's really who?

LM: The internet has changed us into a global community. It's faster and easier to share information and theories now. It's not too easy, just more fun.

PE: Did you contact the various authors once you discovered their pseudonyms?

LM: If the author was deceased, I tried to contact family members. So when I did the Clyde Allison checklist (now available online), I talked to his wife. When they were still living, I would try to get their side of the story.

PE: Did they welcome you with open arms and give all the information freely or was there a sense that you were visiting a place they didn't want you to go?

LM: Most of them were reluctant to talk about that era, just like a movie star not wanting to talk about some softcore porn movie they made when they were young and starving. There were exceptions—Robert Silverberg would always answer every question. Don Westlake surprised me with his open candor. Some, like Hal Dresner, would begrudgingly answer up to a point. Lawrence Block was initially closed about it, he has changed over the years and is now reprinting the best of his early work under his real name. John Jakes refused to reply. I sent him a box of J.X. Williams books and I never saw them again. Jack Pearl refused to talk about it, then he passed away and his widow refused to talk about it. There are different levels of refusal to discuss pseudonyms—Dean Koontz will have his lawyers threaten to sue you. Evan Hunter denied everything. I asked him if he was Dean Hudson and he got this look on his face and said, "Never heard of him." Then I asked him if he was John Abbott and he got the exact same look on his face and said, "Never heard of him" completely the same way. This was back in the early 90s, before John Abbott was added to his long list of pen names.

PE: As a dealer, how is it, with ebay and abebooks, that you are still able to find new stock?

LM: eBay and abe have only widened the places to find stock. When I started out a book might be scarce locally and available somewhere else, but we might never know about it. The internet made it immediately available anywhere.

PE: Are there really pockets of premium books still out there waiting to be found?

LM: Those pockets of undiscovered stock grow smaller each year. Those of us who still look have hope that there are still books out there somewhere. But they are definitely few and far between.

PE: Can you give us a snapshot, a sense of what paperback fandom was like in the "old days" of the 70s and 80s when there were only a few of you guys out there and had to travel from show to show or depend on a mail order catalog for business?

LM: It was more of a hobby then, less a business. Each region had a at least one guy who hit all the local used bookshops. The paperback shows were a great place to see rare books, and meet other people who shared your obsessions. In those days there were printed fanzines, and lots of mail order dealers, and many more little independent old bookstores than there are today. It was fun, but it was more about collecting, and in that way not too different from other collectors who do shows and meet for whatever their hobby might be—stamps, Star Trek, or whatever. Perhaps the biggest difference is that there were countless bookstores selling vintage paperbacks then, often for pennies. That part of it has disappeared.

PE: Can the market be sustained? I don't get the sense that new collectors of this kind of material are entering the market at the saem rate they're leaving (RIP).

LM: I remember hearing the theory that we were all old men and it was going to die out in the early 90s. It's been twenty years now and vintage paperback collecting is still happening.

But indications are you're right, it will inevitably, eventually die away as the collectors do. It appears to be true that there aren't that many new collectors joining up. Part of this is built into the lifespan of the era that started with the first Pocket Book in 1939 and the men and women who collected those books. But another part of it is much broader, related to sweeping changes in society itself. We have watched record albums and then record stores disappear. We are watching printed newspapers disappear. And slowly now, printed books are beginning to diminish. The ebooks are on the threshold of announcing their one billionth reader. So I don't think they are printing as many paperbacks today that people will want to collect in the years ahead. Hard Case Crime is an exception, although the last rumor I heard about them was they were looking for a new publishing company because the old one wasn't going to be doing printed books anymore.

PE: So the collectible books of today are the landfill of tomorrow?

LM: I don't think the vintage books that manage to survive will end up in a landfill. There are libraries that appreciate their worth, and there will always be a band of reader/collectors who will cherish the very idea of books, like the people we meet at the end of Fahrenheit 451 and The Book of Eli. I believe the books will continue to circulate after you and I are gone, and vintage paperbacks and vintage sleaze books are one chapter of that story.

I mentioned Earl Kemp's e-zine eI in my column yesterday, but I should reiterate its glory. You will lose yourself for hours in Earl's world. Lynn Munroe has had several pieces "published" on eI. His groundbreaking look at Ed McBain/Evan Hunter as Dean Hudson is here.

And here is Lynn's website. His catalogs are something to behold. Tons of fascinating information about collectible paperbacks and their authors.

Tomorrow: In the third part of our look at the world of sleaze paperbacks, Lynn Monroe gives you 20 titles you may not have heard of but might want to read.

Hellcats and Honeygirls: When Sleaze Meets Art

by Peter Enfantino

Vince had been fifteen when he had first discovered how easy it was for him to get a girl to go the limit with him. He'd made another discovery at the same time, He discovered why it was that people spent so much of their time thinking about sex and talking about sex and planning for sex and having sex and chasing after sex. It was because sex was the greatest thing since rings with secret compartments. Girls, he had discovered, had secret compartments, too, and they contained a map to paradise. It was farewell Captain Marvel, a new marvel has been found.

-From So Willing by Sheldon Lord and Alan Marshall (Midwood, 1960)

Located somewhere between mainstream fiction and hardcore lies the titillation of sleaze. Inviting the reader in with covers adorned by bare flesh and erotic poses, the sleaze paperback was a unique field, one populated by several well-known and highly respected authors. Generally, these novels featured lots of sex, descriptions which may have been daring at the time but now come off almost laughable:

I was on the bed. Allison was standing next to the bed staring down at me. Then Allison was embracing me, the slippery velvet of her perspired body pulsating against me. Mouth on my mouth. Silken lips against mine. Hands and fingers stroking, clasping, fondling. Lips touching, brushing, sliding over my body. Agonizingly exquisite tongue seeking, caressing. I in the torturous ache of ecstasy, in the rapture of transport, then, quickly, knotted up with tension...release and flowing out and, "Allison, Allison, Allison, I love you. My precious darling. Allison, Allison, Allison..."

-From These Curious Pleasures by Sloane Britain (Midwood, 1961)

Not exactly Penthouse Forum but you (and the reader of 1961) get the idea. A man's equipment was a "throbbing lance" or a "flesh-colored rocket" and a woman would "open up her Tunnel of Love" or let a man "lay in her garden of delight." It's all fairly innocent now but serious business back then, as detailed in "Softcore Publishing: The East Coast Scene" written by Jay Gertzman and found in the pages of the indispensable Sin-A-Rama, edited by Brittany A. Daley (Feral House, 2005). Gertzman explores the fascinating world of the sleaze merchants and the legal trouble they encountered (I guess since the government had cleaned up comic books and sex and violence were still rampant in the streets, the paperback was the obvious next step) while his Sin-A-Rama compatriot Stephen J. Gertz gives us the "West Coast Blue" side of the story. Pretty scary stuff when you think that the objects of the legal system in this case were not heroin or cocaine but Suburban Sexpot and Sin on Wheels.

You can find exhaustive and behind-the-scenes history and horror stories in both Sin-A-Rama and in the online e-zine eI, edited by Earl Kemp and found here.

Kemp has been producing eI since January 2002 and filling it with the kinds of stories only someone who worked in this field could tell. Kemp read and purchased manuscripts for some of the most popular sleaze publishers and actually spent time in prison for his crime. Beware when visting eI: it's addictive and you'll want to read them all in one shot!

One of the authors that Kemp edited was Donald Westlake. This would have been after he had established himself as a top crime writer under his own name and the Richard Stark pseudonym. In addition to Westlake there are several other authors who have now been "outed" as sleaze writers: Robert Silverberg, Evan Hunter/Ed McBain, Harry Whittington, and Lawrence Block. Block and Westlake wrote three softcore novels together and, just as with most of the vintage sex novels of the early 1960s, all three are highly collectible and pretty expensive if you can find them.

To our rescue comes Subterranean Press with their latest release, Hellcats and Honeygirls, a collection of those three collaborative novels between two of the best crime writers of all time. For less than the cost of one of those vintage pbs, you can read all three. Of course, you may be one of those collectors who buys a book for its cover and then slaps it in a bag before shelving it (where it might just as well disappear for all the good it does), never to crack that VF spine. This book won't be your cup of tea. This is for the curious reader. Could there be value in a sex romp? Well, the answer, if Hellcats is any indicator, is that there's plenty of quality behind some of those cheesy covers (and book dealer Lynn Munroe will tell you exactly where to find it in Wednesday's column!).

Hellcats and Honeygirls opens with A Girl Called Honey. Honor Mercy Bane, raised in a uber-religious household in Kentucky, is tossed out on her ass one day after her parents catch her screwing a local school teacher. Forced to fend for herself, she turns to prostitution and finds she's good at it and the pay's not bad. Into her life comes Richie Parsons, AWOL from the Air Force, and as paranoid as a junkie, first as a john and then as her lover. The two jump from town to town, always after Richie imagines the Air Force is on his tail, and the life eventually begins to drag on Honey (as her clients know her). A wealthy client falls in love with her and arranges a plan to edge out Richie and keep Honey all for himself. That plan goes awry and leads to some dark places you'd never imagine between shags in the sheets.

Much lighter than the previous novel (and, believe me, after that climax—no pun intended—you'll need light), So Willing chronicles the escapades of Vince, not much more than a boy but knowing what he wants, and his various missteps in the puruit of a real life honest-to-gosh virgin. It seems that even in 1960, that prized commodity was rare. Vince thinks he knows the "look" of a virgin but his choices are always hilariously anything but:

"This is the first time," she whispered.

"I know."

"My sister," she explained, whispering in his ear, "always told me to never do it with a boy from my own school or my own town, because that way I'd get a bad reputation. She said I should only go for boys from other towns. I've never done it before. You're the first boy from our school that I've ever done this with." The full import didn't hit him for a couple of seconds, and then he practically yelped. She wasn't a virgin!

In the third and final novel, Sin Hellcat, Madison Avenue ad man Harvey Christopher becomes bored of his mundane life, of his frigid wife Helen, and the pressures of a job he's only working to keep up with the neighbors' lifestyle. He meets up with old flame, Jodi, once a college conquest, now a highly paid prostitute and the two have a nighttime romp. Harvey doesn't remember a second of it but that's okay since Big Al, an associate of Jodi's, has all the proof in some glossies he'll be sending to Helen unless Harvey does a job for the pair. Unlike most men caught with their junk in a wringer, Harvey couldn't care less if he's "exposed," and tells Al so much. Much to the surprise of Toni and Al however, Harvey wants to know what the ransom would be. From here, the book takes an unexpected and amusing turn.

The strange fruit of the bunch, A Girl Called Honey, is closer in tone to the work that appeared under the writers' real names. There's not much humor to be wrung from the hellish snapshots provided of the life of a whore and her slacker boyfriend. Sans softcore sex, this could easily have been a Lion or Gold Medal mainstream novel. So Willing and Sin Hellcat benefit from the writing skills of two masters but are very much different in tone. Prostitution, adultery, and massive numbers of sexual partners are vices to be made light of, not vocations that lead to murder and drug addiction.

Subterranean should be thanked and supported for releasing these unknown relics in a nice, affordable format.

Reading these novels is what has spurred me to take on a multi-part look at the sleaze paperbacks. I've been collecting vintage paperbacks for over 35 years but never ventured in to this territory. I don't buy too many books that I don't intend to read and paying $40 for something that is, ostensibly, just a nice piece of good girl art (GGA) wrapped around something that wouldn't hold my interest for more than five or ten pages is a waste of dough. What impressed me the most about Hellcats is that all three novels were very readable and didn't revolve around constant screwing. Sure, all three had their scenes of carnal carnage, but there was a story to be told. So, how many more novels are there out there like this trilogy? How many undiscovered gold nuggets amongst the pap? Why would these successful authors write a great story, pepper it with sex scenes and sell it to a market that can't possibly reach as wide an exposure as their usual outlets? Do these authors write the books differently, saving their "best material" for their mainstream books?

Hopefully, in the next few days we'll find out together.

NEXT UP: An interview with sleaze dealer/historian Lynn Munroe.

Richard Matheson - The Original Stories: The Science Fiction Digests Part 3

by John Scoleri

In the first seven parts of this ongoing series, I looked at Richard Matheson's short fiction appearances in Playboy, the Sci-Fi Pulps, the Mystery Digests, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Gauntlet Chapbooks and the first and second batch of Science Fiction Digests. We return now with the third part of the Science Fiction digests Matheson contributed to, which will make up the next four installments of this ongoing series.

The Original Stories - Part 8: Galaxy Science Fiction and Marvel Science Stories

The bulk of Matheson's short stories originally appeared in science fiction digests like those featured in this installment.

"Third From the Sun"
Galaxy
October 1950, Vol. 1 No. 1

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Born of Man and Woman, Third From the Sun, Duel: Terror Stories, Collected Stories TP v1

Editorial Comment: Escaping a known danger is highly advisable... if you can know the unknown danger ahead!

Illustration by Callé

Notes: Matheson's second short story was published in this, the premiere issue of Galaxy. "Third From the Sun" was adapted by Rod Serling for the first season of The Twilight Zone.

"The Waker Dreams"
Galaxy
December 1950, Vol. 1 No.3

Subsequent appearances (as "When the Waker Sleeps"): Collected Stories HC, Shock III, Duel: Terror Stories, Collected Stories TP v1

Editorial Comment: There's nothing like exciting fantasy to escape boredom. The problem is to know whether it's actually a fantasy.

Illustration by Paul Piérre

Notes: Matheson tells Stanley Wiater in Collected Stories TP v1 the story evolved out of a discussion with Galaxy editor H.L. Gold regarding H.G. Welles novel When the Sleeper Wakes.

"Lover When You're Near Me"
Galaxy
May 1952, Vol. 4 No. 2

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Born of Man and Woman, Third From the Sun, Duel: Terror Stories, Collected Stories TP v1

Editorial Comment: What a past! The climate was grand, the service a dream—maybe too much of one. Was that why no man was allowed to stay there longer  than six months?

Illustration by Willer

Notes: Once again, Matheson notes to Wiater that editor Gold provided him with the idea for this story, giving a sci-fi angle to a classic supernatural tale, "How Love Came To Professor Guildea."

"Shipshape Home"
Galaxy
July 1952, Vol. 4 No.4

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Born of Man and Woman, Third From the Sun, Duel: Terror Stories, Collected Stories TP v1

Editorial Comment: When you start seeing things, remember this: the things you are seeing may be seeing you!

Illustration by Emsh

Notes: The story was adapted (Matheson's first adaptation, according to Matthew Bradley's Richard Matheson On Screen) for television as Young Couples Only, starring Peter Lorre.

"One For the Books"
Galaxy
September 1955, Vol. 10 No. 6

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock!, Duel: Terror Stories, Collected Stories TP v2

Editorial Comment: When he woke up that morning a weird thing happened... he could speak fluent French!

Illustration by Dick Francis

Notes: Matheson adapted "One For the Books" for Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories.

"The Thing"
Marvel Science Stories
May 1951, Vol. 3 No. 3

Subsequent appearances: Collected Stories HC, Shock Waves, Collected Stories TP v1

Editorial Comment: They knew it was against the Policy to see The Thing, but then so was eating roast beef, and drinking coffee, and smoking cigars.

Illustration by V. Napoli

Notes: This issue also contains a special feature on 'The Dianetics Question,' with essays by L. Ron Hubbard (pro), Lester del Rey (con), and Theodore Sturgeon (center).

"Mountains of the Mind" 
Marvel Science Stories
May 1951, Vol. 3 No. 3

Subsequent appearances: Matheson Uncollected v2

Editorial Comment: It was probably Iowa, he said. Where all man's ideas came from...

Illustration by F.R. Paul

Notes: Long uncollected, "Mountains of the Mind" is yet another of Matheson's Fort College stories. For reasons unknown, it is listed as an unfinished novel in the recently released Matheson Uncollected Volume 2.

There's more to come! Stay tuned for future installments of Richard Matheson - The Original Stories.

 

The Complete Guide to Manhunt Part 8

by Peter Enfantino

Continuing an issue by issue examination of the greatest crime digest of all time.

Vol. 1 No. 8 August 1953

The Collector Comes After Payday by Fletcher Flora

(5500 words) ****

Brutalized his entire life by a sadistic drunkard father, Frankie is resigned to a life of bad luck, until one night, pushed too far, Frankie murders his father and begins a life filled with good luck. Money and women suddenly become easy as wishing for it, but Frankie soon tires of it and wants more. Flora tells the story of Frankie with dirt and grime, illustrating just what a heel this guy becomes. We, as the witness to the transformation, see Frankie go from sympathetic victim to the brutalizer his father was, climaxing with Frankie getting just what his father got.

Still Life by Evan Hunter

(4000 words) **

Homicide detectives Hannigan and Knowles investigate the rape-murder of a beautiful sixteen year-old who, by the account of those who knew her, was a saint and a virgin. As the cops dig deeper, they discover that the girl was neither. With its clipped dialogue and straightforward narrative, this would have been a perfect script for Jack Webb’s Dragnet show. One of Hunter’s lesser crime stories.

The Little Lamb by Fredric Brown

(3500 words) *

Hans is missing his wife Lamb, who’s gone down into the village. He’s afraid she’s seeing a rival artist on the side, so he grabs his gun, visits the rival painter, and zzzzzzzzzz...

Certainly one of the most acclaimed fantasists of the twentieth century, Fredric Brown was also very adept at mystery and crime stories and novels. Among his most famous crime novels are The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947); Night of the Jabberwock (1950); The Lenient Beast (1956); and my personal favorite, The Screaming Mimi (1949), a classic obsession tale that was made into a decent noir flick in 1958 (directed by Gerd Oswald and starring Anita Ekberg and Gypsy Rose Lee). In the 1980s, publisher Dennis McMillan began an impressive series of reprint volumes titled "Fredric Brown in the Detective Pulps", collecting hordes of long-forgotten Brown crime stories from the crumbling pages of New Detective, Phantom Detective, Dime Mystery, and dozens more. Unfortunately, these were done in low print runs, went out of print, and are now very collectible. A little more accessible may be Mostly Murder (Pennant PB 1954), 18 stories that, according to Bill Pronzini, make the argument that “Brown was a better short-story writer than a novelist.”

Slay Belle by Frank Kane

(4000 words) * illo: Tom O'Sullivan

One of Johnny Liddell’s men is murdered and the trail leads to the woman he was protecting. Sub-par Liddell feels like a small piece of a larger story. Of course, the reader’s lucky it’s a short snore and not a long snoozer.

The Crime of My Wife by Robert Turner

(3000 words) **

Earl breaks it to his new bride, Norma, that he’s a confidence man and his new angle is to pimp her out to rich married men. Earl will take incriminating pictures and blackmail the men and all Norma has to do is look pretty and spread her legs. Norma tries it and decides that she doesn’t need Earl anymore.

The End of Fear by Craig Rice

(7000 words) ** illo: Rus Anderson

John J. Malone helps an heiress accused of murder. Rice’s long, slow story might have fit better in the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Less Perfect by Frances Carfi Matranga

(1000 words) **

As a woman poses nude for artists, her crippled husband sits and simmers until he can’t take it anymore.

Two O’Clock Blonde by James M. Cain

(2500 words) * illo: Tom O'Sullivan

Serious bachelor Jack Hull attempts to get a date with the voluptuous Mademoiselle Zita and inadvertently hooks up with her maid Maria instead. Turns out Maria is running a scam with her hubby Bill and Jack is their latest mark. A little manhandling of Maria by Jack, but other than that this could very well be James M. Cain’s version of Three's Company, but not as funny.

The Ripper by Richard Ellington

(4000 words) *

PI Steve Drake investigates the mutilation murder of a young showgirl. While interviewing one of the girl’s colleagues, he stumbles into the path of what Drake believes is the original Jack the Ripper, or maybe not, or yes, maybe. But then, who knows? “The Ripper” could very well be the worst of the two dozen plus Jack the Ripper stories I’ve read (and I’ve read some bad ones), with an ending so absurd and contrived, it cries out for an Ed Wood adaptation to screen. If you’ve just got to have a “Jack” fix, look past this “Ripper” and seek out the collections Ripper (edited by Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper, published by Tor pbs in 1988) and The Harlot Killer (edited by Allan Barnard, published by Dell in 1953), which together feature 32 “Jack” tales, with only one story overlapping (that being the classic Robert Bloch, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper”) or the full-length novel, Terror Over London (Gold Medal, 1957), by Gardner F. Fox.

Kayo by Roy Carroll

(1000 words) ***

A good little bit about a punchy ex-boxer who kills a man who’d been taunting him. A fragment, but a well-written fragment.

Rhapsody in Blood by Harold Q. Masur

(9000 words) ** illo: Tom O'Sullivan

The most boring PI/ lawyer in crime literature, Scott Jordan (or maybe the second most boring next to Craig Rice’s John J. Malone) is hired by Phil Elliott to handle his impending divorce. Elliott’s wife is loaded but she’ll be giving him trouble rather than a handout. Things turn dicey when Elliott’s accused of passing phony money. “Rhapsody” actually holds the reader’s interest (itself a miracle considering how I’ve felt about Masur’s Jordan stories) until the obligatory expository. This one lasts four pages and the revelations Jordan declares could only have been cooked up by a screenwriter.

Throwback by Donald Hamilton

(3000 words) ****

Thirty years before The Day After, Donald Hamilton tells the tale of survivors of the final war. After bombs drop on their idyllic life, George and Ellen Hardin must fight to survive among a band of roamers. A unique non-genre story (there is murder and fighting in the story, but they are incidental to “the big picture”), “Throwback” is not just a good science fiction cautionary, but also a well-written story of a married couple trying to beat the odds and continue what life they have left despite heartbreaking loss (their children were in town when the bombs fell, she’s pregnant with a third). Donald Hamilton is best known as the creator of Matt Helm, possibly the most popular American literary assassin of all time, star of over two dozen novels with titles such as The Revengers, The Detonators, The Ambushers and Death of a Citizen. The latter is Hamilton at his peak and perhaps one of the finest crime novels of the 1960s. Matt Helm was “glamorized” in a series of Dean Martin movies, each entry worse than the previous. It's extremely odd that the editor of Manhunt would purchase this story as it seems more of a fit in Amazing, Imagination, F&SF or one of the other top science fiction digests of the day.

The Innocent One by Richard Marsten

(1500 words) ***

Miguel stands, tending to his field, as men from the village pass, commenting on Miguel’s hot-blooded wife, Maria. A sharp first line becomes a grinning last line.

This issue's "Mugged and Printed" features James M. Cain, Fredric Brown, Richard Ellington, and Harold Q. Masur.

Also in this issue, Vincent H. Gaddis' "Crime Cavalcade" and "Portrait of a Killer" by Dan Sontup. This installment features a look at Robert W. Buchanan, M.D.

Vol. 1 No. 9 September 1953

The Death of Me by Evan Hunter

(9500 words) ** illo: Tom O'Sullivan

Matt Cordell is surprised when he picks up the morning paper (which is stuffed inside his shoes) and finds out he’s been murdered. In between trips to his favorite dive for a few belts, he attempts to discover who’s behind the obvious mix-up. By the fifth entry in the Cordell series, you can tell that Hunter is pretty much dried up (even though his protagonist very definitely is not). Ho-hum plotlines and padded descriptions mar these later entries.

Fair Game by Fletcher Flora

(3500 words) ***

Ray Butler, strongarm for mayor Dixie Cannon, is burning bridges all around him. He’s roughing up anyone who stands in the corrupt mayor’s path to wealth and power while at the same time keeping the Cannon’s wife company when her husband’s off running the town. When Cannon finally puts two and two together, Ray finds he’s out on his own.

What Am I Doing? by William Vance

(4500 words) **1/2

Detective Dick Sanders is a cop facing what might these days be considered a mid-life crisis: his wife is irritable and pregnant, which leads him into the arms of wealthy and lonely babe Kit Cord. Deciding he has to have his new playtoy at any cost, Sanders plots to set up Kit’s husband, a successful MD, by planting drugs in the doctor’s car. After his son is born however, he sees the light and reconsiders. A rare happy ending in the Manhunt universe. William Vance was a mainstay in 1950s western pulps, writing dozens of oaters for such titles as Dime Western, 10-Story Western,and .44 Western. He also wrote a few crime stories for Pursuit, Terror Detective, and The Saint. Vance wrote just two stories for Manhunt.

Accident Report by Richard Marsten

(4000 words) **

When a street cop is run down, two detectives attempt to find a needle in a haystack and apprehend the killer.

Bonus Cop by Richard Deming

(9000 words) **

For most of his career, Homicide Captain Michael Train has been a cop on the take. Taking bribes, ignoring the prostitutes, and looking the other way when it comes to syndicate murder. Then one of his own cops is gunned down, a young man Train had thought of as his son, and the Captain goes on a rampage.

The Motive by Erskine Caldwell

(2500 words) ** illo: Tom O'Sullivan

Every few months, Kathy meets up with Van for a weekend of wild lust. Van’s married and Kathy’s biological clock is ticking. She’s decided to marry another man but Van won’t have any of that. The author of God's Little Acre and Tobacco Road fills seven pages with “I’m getting married” and “No, you’re not.”

Chase by Night by Jack M. Bagby

(2500 words) **

Steve’s wife Nancy is attacked by three punks in a hot rod. Steve decides that jail’s not good enough for these punks and doles out his own brand of justice.

The Millionth Murder by Ray Bradbury

(6500 words) ** illo: Don Rico

An American couple, vacationing in South America, discover the United States and Europe have been destroyed and they could very well be the last white people left on earth. This leaves them in a precarious position since the locals, after years of bad treatment by tourists, are uprising and would like nothing more than to see the couple gutted and hoisted.

Ray Bradbury, who has found success in just about any genre he’s written in, be it science fiction, horror, fantasy or mystery, dips his toes into the political fiction arena and leaves this reader wanting less rather than more. “The Millionth Murder” doesn’t just remind us that we are “the Ugly Americans,” it smears it in our faces.

Bradbury wrote a screenplay based on “The Millionth Murder” in the late 1950s, retitled “And the Rock Cried Out,” that remains unproduced. Oliver Stone should give Bradbury’s agent a call. Highly recommended is A Memory of Murder (Dell, 1984), a paperback collecting 15 of Bradury's crime pulp stories. At a very young age I read "The Trunk Lady," from the September 1944 issue of Detective Tales and had nightmares for weeks.

The Molested by Hunt Collins

(1000 words) * illo: Don Rico

A woman is molested on a subway train. A note-joke that’s not very funny. Not a good issue for Collins/Marsten/Hunter.

Life Can be Horrible by Craig Rice

(6000 words) *

Chicago lawyer John J. Malone has his work cut out for him. Two dimwits come to his office and tell him a sob story: they’d been hired by an estranged wife to break into her house and steal her $10,000 from the husband who’s hidden it from her. When they enter the house, they find no money and a very dead husband. Since the men are the sons of a good friend, Malone takes their case. He’s amazed when, only a short time later, he’s approached by the wife to accompany her to her home. When they get there, they find the $10,000 and no corpse.

It’s a wonder, since Malone has all the trappings of a PI, that Rice chose to make her character a lawyer. No lawyer would do the foolish things Malone does and certainly no lawyer would ever give the deadly dull expository that ends this yawner.

The Scrapbook by Jonathon Craig

(3000 wds) ***

Charlie Stevens is known to his co-workers as the slightly creepy, but pretty much harmless old maintenance man. Behind the façade, Charlie is a serial killer. The psycho elements will be old hat to today’s reader, but Craig throws in a curve you have to admire: Charlie murders then rapes his victims. That’s a twist not seen much in 1953.

This issue's "Mugged and Printed" features Erskine Caldwell, Ray Bradbury,Evan Hunter, and Richard Deming.

Also in this issue, Vincent H. Gaddis' "Crime Cavalcade" and Dan Sontup's "Portrait of a Killer: Chester Jordan.