Black Magic Today

Black Magic Today, by June Johns

April, 1971  NEL Books

NEL Books sure came up with some covers, didn’t they? Hopefully Blogger won’t flag this one for “adult content” like they did the cover for Bloodletter. I picked this one up years ago, fortunately for a nice price, with the hope that it would focus on that late ‘60s/early ‘70s shaggy-haired occult revival scene I’ve always been interested in. As it turns out, Black Magic Today only occasionally captures this vibe. 

Instead, author June Johns, of whom I know nothing, turns in a digressive polemic on the dark arts; she sums up that only the “deviant” are ultimately drawn to black magic. “I am neither a witch nor a black magician,” she tells us in the intro, and then goes into chapters with titles like “What Is Magic?” We get the history of magic, from primitive superstition to “the astronaut of today who carries a rabbit foot as a mascot.” 

As mentioned, the book is pretty digressive throughout its 127 pages. We have “Magic Versus Religion,” with detours into Egyptian and Aztec beliefs, as well as a study of Druids. There’s also a feature on the Salem witch trials – many of the accused witches who claimed to have had sex with the devil. (“His member cold and painful…”) Johns notes the modern belief that these Medieval women were tricked by rascally warlocks who penetrated them with metal dildos or somesuch, fooling the women into thinking it was Satan’s, uh, “cold and painful member.” 

There’s an overview on how the Catholic Church created the devil, Johns noting that the Bible has no real figure one could compare to the concept of Satan. She further claims that black magic and devil worship were an outcome of the Inquisition, with the persecuted pushed into further realms of devilry. Of course soon enough we’re on the topic of Aleistar Crowley, which goes on for several pages. Only here, toward the end of the book, does Johns get into the “groovy era” stuff I was looking for, with overviews of news stories about this or that black magic atrocity in England or elsewhere. 

Black Magic Today is really more of a digressive overview on magic belief in general than the expose on post-Altamont depravity that I was hoping for. Since I don’t have much to say about the book, I’ll just pad out the review with some arbitrary excerpts:

Sabat #3: Cannibal Cult

Sabat #3: Cannibal Cult

November, 1982  New English Library

This third volume of Sabat is easily my least favorite yet; Guy N. Smith seems determined to make us hate his (anti)hero Mark Sabat – but then, is it Mark Sabat for the majority of Cannibal Cult? As we’ll recall the schtick of this series is that Sabat, an ex-SAS commando turned roving occult-themed action hero, is half-possessed by the soul of his evil brother Quentin, and Quentin is always trying to completely take over Mark Sabat. This actually seems to happen in the third volume, meaning the “Sabat” who features in the narrative isn’t Mark but Quentin. 

Or is it? Smith plays some trickery by, as usual, referring to Sabat as “Sabat” in the narrative…but occasionally will even have Sabat himself wonder who he is, Mark or Quentin. It’s kind of annoying, and another indication of how Smith really wants to play up the “anti” in antihero. Because Mark Sabat himself is a creep, so it isn’t like he’s a white hat hero. Actually he’s a creep on the level of Justin Perry, with that same obsessiveness over sex and violence, particularly the mixing of the two. Forever Sabat is suffering from an “erection” at the worst of times, like even when sitting on a stakeout to kill someone who is stalking his latest female acquaintance. The dude is constantly thinking of the women he’s screwed, or just has sex in general in mind – especially sado-sex – or about the women he's screwed who have died. I mean this dude and Justin Perry could have a beer together. 

Another schtick of the series is not showing Sabat in the best light. I tag Sabat as men’s adventure, and Brad Mengel includes the series in Serial Vigilantes, but really it isn’t men’s adventure, because Sabat displays none of the qualities one would expect of a hero in this genre. He only acts when pushed, and even then it’s never in much of a heroic light. He carries around a .38 revolver (which of course just screams “ex-SAS commando”) but he seldom uses it, and the narrative is filled with asides where Sabat pep-talks himself into springing into action. Humorously, he often reminds himself of how he’s “killed before,” so I mean this guy isn’t the most action-prone of heroes. He’s even less action-prone in Cannibal Cult, getting in one fight in the middle of the book and then walking around the astral plane for the big climax. 

But back to Sabat not being shown in a good light; Sabat is introduced, in what is another schtick of the series, while masturbating in his bed. I mean seriously, this dude has jerked off in every volume. And of course he’s thinking about past lays, particularly with women who are now dead…oh, and er, there was that time when he was young and another guy took advantage of him, but let’s just pass that bit by. Oh and I forgot the real opening is about how Louis Nevillon, the “Beast of France,” has been guillotined in France, a serial killer with cannibalistic proclivities. Well anyway, Sabat’s worried that this guy might not really be dead, so of course Sabat starts jacking off…then he feels dark forces assail him…then he passes out…and he wakes up several days later in the hospital, having collapsed from a sudden and magically-transmitted bout of the flu. Does this dude know how to play with himself or what?! 

I show the original NEL covers in my reviews, but I’m actually reading the Sabat novels in the Dead Meat anthology, published in the US by Creation Books in 1996. This trade paperback is littered with so many typos, misprints, and errors that even a Leisure or Belmont-Tower copyeditor in the ‘70s would’ve been embarrassed. Cannibal Cult suffers from the worst yet, with a chunk of the story missing – not sure how much, but Sabat insists he leave the hospital, starts walking in France or something, and next thing we know he’s talking to a young lady named Madeleine who claims to recognize Sabat from the stories about him in the paper. How much of the novel is missing here I don’t know, but Madeleine’s intro is certainly missing. It’s like a missing frame in a film. 

One thing Dead Meat does have going for it is it includes two Sabat short stories by Guy N. Smith; one of them, titled “Vampire Village,” is referenced here in Cannibal Cult (and the story is placed before this volume in the anthology). Not sure if the story is also mentioned in the original NEL edition, but here in my book Madeleine has read about Sabat fighting a “village of vampires” in France and now she wants Sabat to help her, she being a super-hot beauty with “small breasts” who is “fresh out of a convent.” 

Of course this doesn’t prevent Madeleine from throwing herself at Sabat in the hotel; she makes a big deal out of his being circumcised, but surely that couldn’t have been such a big deal in Europe in the early 1980s. But hell who knows. The important thing is that, once again, Guy N. Smith delivers a sex scene that focuses more on Sabat than it does the girl, again (perhaps intentionally) lending the series a homoerotic tenor, what with the frequent jack-offery and the dwelling on death which leads to “erections.” Pretty much like Justin Perry: The Assassin. I mean Sabat and Justin Perry were pretty much made for each other. Anyway, again the sex scene isn’t too explicit, with stuff like, “suddenly [Sabat] was exploding violently.” Damn, sounds like he might end up in the hospital again! 

Here's where Sabat makes his sole kill; Madeleine claims that a bad man is following her, and Sabat sits out in the cold night waiting for this dude. Thinking about his recent tussles with Madeleine and getting “erections,” of course. Then when the stalker shows up in the shadowy forest, Sabat strikes and kills the guy…only thinking later that he might’ve been hoodwinked. Then Madeleine takes him to a place in the French countryside that’s filled, to Sabat’s dismay, with “hippies.” 

Only, as Sabat will soon learns – these aren’t just hippies, they’re hippie cannibals, man. Smith really piles on the lurid bullshit here with the cult basically insisting that Sabat join the fold…by serving him a special “meat” his first night here, and Sabat trying his damnest to place the unusual flavor of it. Of course, it turns out to be the flesh of a child, recently killed in a car crash, and now that Sabat has eaten human flesh he is “one” of the cult…and will do absolutely nothing but serve them for the remainder of the novel. For the cannibal stuff has unleashed Quentin, or something, and now “Sabat” is really Quentin Sabat. 

But like I mentioned this isn’t a men’s adventure series, not really. For yet another child is soon cooked up and eaten by the cult, this one a “mongol” who is abucted in the countryside. Sabat, seeing the frightened boy, consoles himself that “nothing can be done” to help, given that the kid is mentally retarded and doesn’t even realize the danger he’s in…indeed, killing him off and eating him will be “for the best!” That’s our hero, folks! But this time not only does Sabat again have to eat the cooked flesh, he’s also given the honors of slicing up the victim and serving the cult! 

But Smith isn’t done debasing his protagonist. Madeleine, who is revealed to be the consort of the Beast of France, now relishes Sabat’s lust, forcing him to “dine at the Y” until she’s satiated…and only giving herself to him once he’s at the bursting point. It’s all just so weird and unseemly, especially given the clinical “British” pulp style Guy N. Smith employs. Throughout Sabat does nothing heroic, and is sent around France like an errand boy for the cannibal cult, even at one point guarding the corpse of Nevillon, the Beast of France. The cult you see hopes to bring Nevillon back to life – by eating his flesh, so that his spirit will be reborn in all of them. 

Sabat’s so lame, it isn’t even him who stops the cult. First a French cop shows up, one who has been hunting the cult, but Sabat – whom the cult members believe now to be Quentin – has been ordered to kill him. Our hero struggles with whether he should help or harm this French cop, who happens to be an old acquaintance. And then in the finale, Sabat is possessed – for the second friggin’ time in the novel – by the spirit of an ancient “Witchfinder,” one who took down this cannibal cult in ancient times. Smith further amps up the supernatural horror element with Nevillon’s severed head magically rejoining the body, so the Beast of France truly walks the earth again. 

Really though, Cannibal Cult wasn’t much fun. The cannibal stuff was a bit too much, as was Smith’s insistence on making Sabat seem a fool. I mean this guy isn’t good for anything except playing with himself. Fortunately there was only one more volume. Actually I should’ve also read that “Vampire Village” story and reviewed it here, but I was so annoyed with Cannibal Cult that I couldn’t even be bothered with it, even though the story was only about 5 pages long.

Sabat #2: The Blood Merchants

Sabat #2: The Blood Merchants, by Guy N. Smith 

May, 1982  New English Library 

So I pretty much forgot all about the Sabat series; it was over a decade ago that I read the first volume. Literally all I could remember about it was the part where the titular “hero” ran over some random pedestrian and chalked it up to the whims of fate. Oh, and I also seemed to recall a lot of self-pleasuring courtesy said hero. And pipe smoking. Other than that the first one was a blur, so I had to refer to my review to familiarize myself with this series, which ran for four volumes and attempted to meld men’s adventure with horror. 

There’s no indication how long after the first volume this one occurs, but Sabat does make passing mention to its events. Also, unless I’m mistaken, we have no indication where exactly this series occurs. Just somewhere in England is all I know. We do have a recurring character in Sgt. Clive McKay, a cop who was also in SAS with Sabat back in the day and who comes to him with any sort of “supernatural” situation the police have encountered. Such is the case this time; the book opens in true horror novel fashion with a sequence of one-off characters meeting their gory fates at the hands of skinhead punks – skinhead punks who seem to be vampires! But we do get a lot of stuff from the perspectives of these characters, most of them poor young women who are attacked out of the darkness by “sallow-faced punks” with “corpse-like appearances.” 

Meanwhile Sabat’s busy playing with himself. No joke, this is exactly what he’s doing when he gets the call from Sgt. McKay. Smith injects a bunch of “subtle” foreshadowing here, with Sabat thinking about the hot babe who got him kicked out of the SAS three years ago – Catronia, wife of Sabat’s commanding officer at the time. Catronia was into whips and chains and the like, and Sabat we’re reminded really gets off on that, and when his affair with the blonde torture artist was uncovered he was drummed right out of the SAS. All this backstory was relayed in the first volume, but here it’s really brought to the fore, to the point that even a first-time novel reader can see where it’s going. 

Sabat grudgingly postpones his self-pleasuring and ventures with McKay to the morgue, where he checks out a few apparent vampire victims. They’ve got drained blood, two dots on their throats, and everything. Sabat does what any other gung-ho men’s adventure hero would do: he calls up an old acquaintance, a “brothel keeper” in her early 50s named Ilona, and asks her to pose as pseudo-vampire bait. Ilona we are told is still pretty hot, and plus she too is into whips and chains and the like (indeed she even reminds Sabat of Catronia), and she and Sabat were an item at one time – not that anything comes of it in this particular installment. Instead Ilona waltzes around in the darkness of whatever the hell city this series takes place in, and Sabat scores on his first night out – one of the pseudo vampires swoops out of the darkness for Ilona, and Sabat just barely fights him off in time. 

Here we see that these aren’t real vampires; the punks all wield “syringe-guns.” They jam the sharp end into a victim’s throat and depress a plunger and the thing sucks out a few liters of blood. Sabat takes the captured punk back to Ilona’s S&M basement and proceeds to beat the shit out of him. Sabat we’ll recall has a definite dark side and gets off on the thought of killing his enemies. He at least gets the info that the punk and his brothers are all worshippers of Lilith, which freaks Sabat right out – Lilith being one of the darker entities, one with a fondness for human sacrifice. But this is pretty much all the punk will say, so Sabat gleefully kills him, using the bastard’s own syringe-gun on him. But this will be the extent of “action” in the novel, save for a part later where three more punks attack Sabat in his home, and he uses his fancy SAS combat training to wipe them out; he particularly likes this “uppercut from a crouched position” move. 

We soon learn that Sabat wasn’t exagerrating: the Disciples of Lilith are pretty evil. This is demonstrated in a horrific sequence in which a young woman finds her newborn baby is missing – and the Disciples of Lilith, assembled around Lilith herself, drink its blood! In addition the Disciples have taken over a fascist movement, and further they are led by a “New Fuhrer” who is in league with Lilith, the demoness here on Earth. Sabat gets the scoop on all this during an astral voyage (he makes several voyages to the astral plane this time), where he’s informed by various spirits that Lilith has possessed a human woman – perhaps a woman Sabat might even know. But our self-pleasuring hero isn’t very sharp, for despite being told this he doesn’t put two and two together…not even after he’s astrally transported to a house somewhere and looks inside and sees a hot blonde in stockings in there, and it’s none other than Catronia! 

But no, Sabat wakes up and, “for some reason” feels the urge to call Catronia up for the first time in three years. He does so, and she’s eager to see him, and it’s all Sabat can do to contain himself for the rest of the day. But at no point does he think back to that message he was conveyed in the astral realm and think to himself, “hmmm, maybe those spirits were trying to tell me something about Catronia!” Instead, he heads over to her place in blissful ignorance and engages her in one of those sex scenes where something seems to be happening but the prose isn’t very clear about what. And of course Sabat ends up in one of Catronia’s torture devices, where he is “shocked” to discover that – brace yourselves for this – Catronia is really Lilith! I mean who could’ve guessed it?? 

It gets worse, though, as Catronia is able to hypnotize Sabat, same as she has all her punk followers, and now he too is a Disciple of Lilith. It makes for a strange read when the hero of a “horror-action” novel is possessed…Sabat just sort of walks through the next few chapters in a daze, fully part of the left-hand path but otherwise still normal (comparitavely speaking). It makes for a weird narrative vibe as Sabat himself doesn’t see anything wrong…he still goes home, talks to McKay, and etc, but his soul belongs to Lilith. Even here he visits the astral realm in his sleep, and there’s a creepy part where he encounters the spirit of a murdered friend. Instead of offering solace Sabat spurns this person, pretty much saying this is what you get for fighting Lilith. Speaking of which, the goddess herself appears in this sequence, saving Sabat from some spirits that attack him for being a spawn of Lilith. 

After this Sabat is doubly indebted to Lilith, and reports willfully to Catronia and the New Fuhrer (who of course turns out to be Catronia’s husband, aka Sabat’s former SAS officer). Even as the Disciples begin to raise bloody hell around the globe, our hero does nothing. True to form, he only becomes heroic when his own ass is on the line. This happens in an otherwise goofy bit where some punk tries to assassinate Sabat – a punk who was sent out earlier in the book to kill Sabat, and hasn’t gotten the memo that Sabat’s now one of Lilith’s followers. It all just seems like a Monty Python skit as this punk tries to kill Sabat, screaming that Lilith has ordered him to do so, and Sabat keeps screaming that those orders have been countermanded. Of course Sabat finally manages to save his hide, in the process coming free of Lilith’s mind control. Now finally Sabat as we know him is back. 

But really the series is more horror than’s men’s adventure; the final battle takes place almost entirely on the astral realm, or at least outside the physical realm, with Sabat launching off a series of spells that bind Catronia and her husband. Further, he summons a trio of angels who are dedicated to hunting down Lilith and disposing of her, and these three show up as police officers to round up Catronia at novel’s end. Sabat at least doles out a little physical punishment to Catronia’s husband, who we learn will ultimately spend the rest of his days in an insane asylum – crazy now that Lilith has left him. The punk Disciples all return to their former punk selves, save for the fact that they have no idea what these syringe guns are they’re holding. As for Catronia, we see her comeuppance in yet another trip to the astral realm, where Sabat sees that Lilith aka Catronia is to be chained and whipped for eternity. Indeed Sabat is asked to whip her himself as the novel concludes. 

Overall The Blood Merchants is a fairly fast-moving novel, filled with a lot of italicized narrative and one-off characters meeting their grisly fates. It also has that clinical tone you know and love from British pulp. I can’t say I enjoyed it more than the previous volume, mostly because I can’t remember the previous volume. But I’ll try to get to the next one a whole bunch sooner.

Special People

Special People, by Hugh Barron
April, 1978  NEL Books

Okay, now that we’ve all taken a moment to appreciate that cover photo… Seriously though, this British paperback original has long been a mystery to me. As every schoolkid knows, “Hugh Barron” was a pseudonym used by Burt Hirschfeld early in his career; he seems to have dropped it upon the success of his 1970 blockbuster Fire Island, which was published under his own name. But then there’s this 1978 “Hugh Barron” book, only published in England; we know it’s by Hirschfeld, as it was reprinted in hardcover in 1988 – again only in the UK – under Hirschfeld’s name.

I picked this one up many years ago, before the blog, shortly after I learned of Hirschfeld’s work – probably around 2009, after I discovered Cindy On Fire at a used bookstore. I’m glad I did, as it appears Special People has become pretty scarce. I’ve often wondered what the story was behind it, but put off reading it because, per the back cover copy, it was about a football player, and I’m just not into football – and also, the back cover only refers to “football,” not specifying for British readers that it’s American football, not soccer. And there was also that 1978 date that put me off; I prefer my trash fiction from the late ‘60s to mid ‘70s. But now that I’ve actually read the book, I can confirm two things: it’s not much about football at all, and it was clearly written in the late ‘60s, probably 1969.

The ostensible protagonist, Cotton Tate, is indeed a famous running back for fictional football team the Truckers (apparently based out of New York), but there’s only one “football scene” late in the novel, and the narrative is more concerned with the large cast of characters that congregates around Cotton’s nightclub in the fashionable East Side of Manhattan. There’s a bunch of them, too, meaning that Cotton himself is lost in the shuffle; his subplot has it that he’s in debt to a mobster type, and is being requested to fumble plays and the like so as to affect the point spread. He borrowed the money to get his club, The Nubiles, and he’s desperate to maintain his lifestyle – secretly 37, which we’re told is ancient for a pro footballer, Cotton has a wife and kids back home but lives on his own, picking up women left and right. As described he seems to a Joe Namath type, only with “orange” hair.

Cotton’s a bastard for sure, a real love ‘em and leave ‘em type who walks over lesser mortals. The only part where we get to see any humanity is a brief bit where he visits home and we see that his young son looks up to him – and that his wife is quite happy with Cotton out prowling around, as she prefers sleeping alone! But regardless of whether he’s a hero or antihero, Cotton Tate doesn’t show up much, hence the subplot of him being in danger with the football commission and such doesn’t resonate with the reader. The sprawl of supporting characters is just too large, and the reader is left wanting a center, something to hold it all together. Only Cotton’s club, The Nubiles, performs in this capacity, with the titular “special people” being the screwed-up regulars who frequent the place, which is on First Avenue in the Sixties.

There are a lot of them, but Hirschfeld does his usual admirable job of juggling the large cast of characters; in this way the novel comes off like a prototype of Fire Island. First we have Deke Mann, a former PR guy in his 30s who now works as a writer for a TV talk show. While he starts off as a minor character – and an increasingly annoying one at that – Deke turns out to be pretty much the protagonist of the tale, as the narrative focuses on his sort of redemption through love. But for the majority of the tale his plot revolves around his increasing plunge into despair; divorced, with a young son he only sees once a week, Deke gets drunk a lot and starts fights he knows he can’t win, apparently looking to be beaten up. Eventually he starts stalking one of the female characters in the book – a pursuit that eventually pans out for him, #metoo be damned!

Kate is that female character, a hotstuff young babe with a heart of gold who lives with a small-chested wildchild named Libby. Kate initially falls in love with Cotton; she’s just one of his many one-night stands, but to her it seems to be something else, and she pursues him, only to be crushed. From here she ends up dating Cotton’s lawyer(!?), another doomed romance. Meanwhile Deke meets Kate in the Nubiles, falls for her, and starts making a nuissance of himself; there’s a bizarre sequence where he sees Kate looking at an expensive dress in a store window, and he goes in and buys it for her, even though he’s only ever said hello to her. She of course turns down the “nice gesture,” thereby setting off an also-bizarre subplot where Deke keeps carrying around the damn dress and trying to give it to her. Only when Kate realizes that this slouchy dude with the “angry eyes” and a propensity for stalking is really a sweetheart does she accept the gift.

Speaking of Libby, she’s another character who starts off as minor but gradually gets a little more focus. Her storyline seems to be a precursor of Cindy On Fire, in that she starts off as a partygirl bimbo but descends into drug-induced madness; there’s even a part where she literally runs from an orgy, same as Cindy would in her novel a few years later. She’s the daughter of some famous actress or something, just a total jet-setting nympho without a care in the world; one of the many subplots has it that the Nubiles bartender lets his mobster pals know when certain girls are at the club, and the mobsters send over guys to loot their apartments while they’re gone. When this happens to Libby and Kate’s apartment, Libby laughs it off. Her heart is broken by that same bartender, though, which leads her into a spiral of sex and drugs and swinging and whatnot, with her subplot mirroring Deke’s in that she finally finds redemption through love and understanding and all that jazz.

The novel seems to occur in a bland continnuum, Hirscheld for once failing to bring his world to life. There are hardly any topical references to the era, other than some of the outlandishly mod outfits Cotton Tate wears. This brings me to the matter of dating the manuscript. An early reference to Jimi Hendrix means Special People couldn’t have been written earlier than 1967, as that’s when Jimi came into the spotlight. There are also a few references to The Beatles which help pinpoint the date: we’re told someone says a lyric from “the new Beatles song,” and later someone mentions “All You Need Is Love,” implying that this might’ve been the earlier-referenced song. But late in the novel Libby, in a drug frenzy, hallucinates that the Blue Meanies are chasing her(!!!), and this would have to date the novel to late 1968, when The Yellow Submarine was released in the US. Another factor that makes me think the novel was written in early 1969 is a minor character states there are “no black quarterbacks” in football, a statement which was no longer true by 1969.

The Jimi mention occurs in one of my favorite parts of the book, if for no other reason than it’s a sad premonition of the average mentality of some of today’s “special people.” Deke ends up hooking up with some lady in her 30s at the Nubiles; she’s a proto social justice warrior, ranting and raving that America is a racist society founded on a lie. She also proudly announces that she’s had sex with several black men, just to prove that she herself isn’t a racist. (Little does she realize that this too will one day be considered racist.) She takes Deke back to her place, where Deke is shocked to discover the woman has left her seven year-old daughter alone (Hirschfeld masterfully calls out the hypocrisies of his characters with just a few subtle asides). She plays Jimi on the stereo – I guess because he’s black and all, but it’s not like Jimi really ever made “being black” a major part of his identity – and eventually she and Deke have some off-page sex (the majority of the sex is off-page, with the few on-page instances relayed in Hirscheld’s usual metaphorical prose of “cresting waves” and the like).

Unfortunately, there’s not much meat to the tale – it’s just a bunch of screwed-up characters congregating at a vaguely-descibed Manhattan nightclub. There are other characters besides the ones I’ve mentioned, like an older lady who looks young who sleeps around with a host of Nubles personages, all so as to gather “research” for the trashy novel her husband wants to write! This part could be its own novel, as the lady eventually is fashioned into a Jackie Susann type who will be positioned as the true author of the trashy tome. But nothing much comes of this subplot, like so many of the other subplots, save for a memorable bit where the lady is raped by a pair of over-eager football players…a situation the lady soon begins to enjoy!

As mentioned the football stuff isn’t that integral to the plot, other than Cotton’s woes with the commission – woes which are quickly dispensed thanks to a call to his lawyer. But it’s hard to give much of a shit about the guy because he’s presented as such an arrogant demigod of perfection, which is probably the same as what could be said about any real-life football star. He learns though that he’s gotten over his head with the mobsters who loaned him the money to buy the Nubiles, thus he will still have to affect the point spreads and etc to skew the betting numbers, but there’s no resolution to the storyline as the novel just sort of ends, so far as Cotton’s story goes: we see him playing a big game, giving his best, then we jump over to Deke and Kate, who have decided to leave New York and head off into a happily after ever.

The most interesting thing about Special People remains the question on why it was only published in the UK, even again under Hirschfeld’s own name. Perhaps Pyramid, the main publisher of his “Hugh Barron” work, just rejected it, as it must be said the novel isn’t very good. I mean it’s not bad, it’s just that it simmers for a couple hundred pages and never even reaches a low boil. And you don’t care about any of the characters. But then there’s the possibility Hirschfeld himself wasn’t happy with it, and maybe it’s what he was writing when Fire Island hit the bestseller list and thus he decided to postpone his “Hugh Barron” material. But then that again raises the question of why the novel was still published in the UK.

I guess we’ll never know. Otherwise though Special People isn’t up to the caliber of the other “Hugh Barron” books, all of which had great period details and more-gripping plots. However this one certainly had the best cover of them all! Now let’s get back to appreciating it…

Kingpin

Kingpin, by Hugh Miller
October, 1975  New English Library

Sporting one of the greatest covers in the history of mankind, Kingpin was first published in hardcover by NEL in 1974 (with an altogether lame cover, below). It’s a sequel to Miller’s novel The Open City, published by NEL in hardcover in ’73 and paperback in ’74. I picked up the paperback editions of each book several years ago, right around when I started the blog. I intended to read The Open City first, but it appears to be a crime thriller set in Glasgow, and I just can’t seem to drum up the enthusiasm to read it.

Because it truly would be an undertaking – both it and Kingpin are quite long, the latter coming in at 236 pages of small, dense print. Interestingly, we get double quotation marks for the dialog instead of the standard single quotation marks used in England, but otherwise Miller’s prose is very English at times, more focused on probing the psyches of his characters than delivering the unbridled sleaze of an American trash fiction writer. That’s not to say Kingpin isn’t sleazy at times – it’s pretty explicit for a British novel – but it is pretty slow-going and tells a lot more than it shows. But it does occasionally get down and dirty, most often when relating the frequent sexual experiences of the titular “kingpin,” a right bastard of a DJ named Dave Cole.

While Kingpin is ostensibly a sequel to The Open City, returning protagonist Michael McBain is at most a supporting character. The first quarter of the novel wraps up unfinished business from the previous book; Michael runs a sort of Playboy Magazine publishing empire in Glasgow, and it’s over a year after he exacted his revenge on some underworld boss who had Michael’s brother killed. But in the exacting of that vengeange Michael’s beautiful sister, Jean, was paralyzed, her spine or something sliced up by a straight razor – the same razor Michael then used to slash up the underworld boss, who is now a “raving madman” in some asylum.

Then Michael gets a call from an acquaintance in London, and ventures over to hear about this new project a consortium of entreprenneurs would like Michael to consider: they’re heading up a million-pound discotheque in the West End, and want Michael to handle the publicity, as well as the hiring of DJs and female staff. I had a tough time figuring out if the disco meant “disco” in the current accepted meaning of the term, ie the Saturday Night Fever-esque coke-fueled disco sleaze of the late ‘70s. However, the book was published in ’74, meaning it was presumably written in ’73 or so, and of course in that period a “disco” was something else – the term I believe wasn’t even used for clubs here in the US at the time – so we mostly have mentions of “pop” songs, rather than dance songs.

Not that any of this matters much, but personally I demand exactness when it comes to music in fiction – I want to know the names of the bands, the sound of their music. Unfortunately Miller can’t be bothered with these details. We learn that 25 year-old Dave Cole is mega-successful in the pop world; he’s a DJ (ie a performing DJ, not a radio DJ), but he’s so powerful he can make or break groups, and he’s done production work as well. We get to see him in action a few times, DJing a few gigs, and we’re often told the names and songs of the groups (all of them fictional), but not much else, other than Cole’s hyperbolic DJ chatter; ie, “Here’s a gut-groover from Mudflap,” and the like. Miller does come up with some colorful names; in the book we also get Drophead Daisy, Black Pigeon (with “Sad Soul Sister”), and Big Billy (an “underground progressive rock” group, with the track “Rubber Gloves”). Too bad this is all we get to know about any of them.

There’s a lot of plotting and counterplotting; Jean, Michael’s wheelchair-bound sister, is a bit of a bitch, and has refashioned herself Nietszche-like after what she went through in the previous book. She’s now determined to do anything possible to get her way; for example when she learns that her young live-in nurse/best friend Charlotte plans to get married and leave her, Jean pretends to nearly drown in the bathtub, leaving Jean so guilt-ridden that she calls off her plans and insists on staying with Jean. But Jean saves her most elaborate plotting for Michael, whom she blames for her current crippled condition; if he hadn’t ruffled some underworld feathers, she would still be able to walk. 

But Michael is oblivious to this, thus offers Jean the opportunity to head up the promotions for the new disco, which will be named Source Sounds. He feels that getting her out of Glasgow and into London will be good for her, not knowing that Jean relishes the idea of using the new business venture to wreck Michael’s life. Let me give you a bummer of a spoiler right now – we get intermittent details on what the disco will look like, how ultra-modern and ultra-fab it will be, but my friends believe it or not, the book ends before the disco even opens! So we must be content with this verbalized description, courtesy one of the backers when selling the idea to Michael: 

The book really picks up when Dave Cole enters the narrative. We meet him as he is DJing an event, being scoped out by a pretty young brunette with a “pseudo-Afro;” Cole for his part has long blonde hair that runs past his shoulders and is given to wearing outrageous “pop” fashions, like denim suits and such. Here we get a taste of Cole’s nut-jobbery; he considers taking the brunette home, but first she must be put in her place, with Cole letting her know without shadow of a doubt that he’s a god and she’s a mere mortal – to this end he calls her out to the assembled throngs, encouraging the men to ambush her and force her to join the dancing masses. Then during a set break he goes to a bar around the corner and takes umbrage when the bartender tells him to scram, because guys with long hair aren’t welcome. Instead of leaving Cole beats the shit out of the guy with his judo moves…and a few sentences after he’s delivered this savage beating, we’re told via the narrative that Cole is a “sensitive man!”

It’s all about control with Cole – and Miller does refer to him by his last name, whereas Michael McBain is “Michael.” This further lends the impression that Cole is more of an anti-hero, though really he comes off like an antogonist. He takes the brunette, Beverly, home, and proceeds to treat her like crap, but at least we get a glimpse of Cole’s ultra-modern pad. But he’s one of those “pop world figures” who claims not to like pop, and plays classical on his state-of-the-art stereo; Miller by the way doesn’t get as geeky as I’d like with the occasional hardware mentions. For example we’re told Cole runs two turntables when he DJs, and that Source Sounds will have top of the line gear, but it’s not enough to satisfy a vintage gearhead like myself.

Anyway this is what will be the first of a few somewhat-explicit sex scenes; Cole feels Beverly up and then insists she put on a corset. Then he flips her over, ties her up, and takes her from behind – all without any preamble or warning. “You’re a kinky bastard, aren’t you?” the girl asks…before casually revealing that she’s done this sort of thing before! Cole really is kinky…when he meets Jean McBain later he lusts over the idea of sex with a girl in a wheelchair, something he’s fantasized about – and something he achieves, scoring with Jean in equally-explicit fashion in the last quarter of the book.

Michael McBain might’ve been the main protagonist of the previous book (I assume), but as mentioned he’s reduced to supporting status this time; we learn he’s married, to a beautiful blonde actress named Phyllis Stanley, but the couple is separated. She too comes to London, following Michael, but soon becomes infatuated with Cole. At a party in which Source Sounds is announced, Michael sets Cole on Phyllis, hoping to keep her from causing a scene. Instead Cole takes her back to her place for some more rough sex (“I’m going to fuck your insides out,” he helpfully informs her), after which Phyllis develops what will become a sort of fatal attraction for Cole.

This is what takes up the brunt of the narrative, rather than the more-interesting stuff about Source Sounds. That, and Cole’s increasing psychosis. He gets in frequent fights, beating opponents to burger with little provocation. We also learn quite randomly that he’s into heroin – he claims early on that he has “a psychological addition to LSD,” but we never see him use it. Instead he bashes people up, in one instance maiming some victim for life, then goes home covered in blood and shoots up. Phyllis begins to suspect Cole is behind the savage beating she’s read about in the paper, and confronts Cole with it, but this subplot pans out with Phyllis herself overdosing on sleeping pills.

Unbelievably, Miller uses the “accidental overdose” gambit twice; the novel rushes to a climax with Jean’s revenge coming to fruition: she’s gotten Cole to fall in love with her and has convinced him to give up the DJ world and become a fulltime artist(!?), with her representing him. Thus Cole quits Source Sounds – this after he’s made life hell for Michael and the other financial backers, mostly at Jean’s urging – and Michael is made to look a fool in front of the board, and is asked to resign. Then Michael is contacted by the cops, as Phyllis left a note with her lawyer, one that was only to be opened if she died in mysterious circumstances. The note implicates Cole in the savage beating of that guy…and Michael heads over for a reckoning with the DJ (spoiler alert)…to find Cole dead of an accidental heroin overdose.

And with this Kingpin comes to a close; Jean has burned bridges with both Michael and Charlotte, assuming her plan of revenge was a success, but we learn in passing narrative that she’s returned to Glasgow in defeat. Charlotte heads off for Paris, where presumably she was headed before The Open City begain, and Michael…I don’t know, I guess plans to return to his “filthy magazine empire” in Glasgow. I’m not sure if Miller wrote any more novels about these characters, nor am I sure I’ll ever actually read The Open City.

Here's the lame cover for the original hardcover – about as half-assed a cover photo as I’ve ever seen:

The Slime Beast

The Slime Beast, by Guy N. Smith
July, 1979  New English Library
(Original edition April, 1976)

Guy N. Smith delivers just the sort of creature feature horror novel I like – a breezy, fun, gore and sex-filled tale that doesn’t overstay its welcome. At 110 pages, The Slime Beast gets right to the good stuff, introducing its titular creature within the first few pages and jumping straight to the gore – that is, after Smith has treated us to a little sleaze. Indeed the novel disproves my blanket (mis)judgment of British pulp as being prudish in the sex department, as it’s actually a bit more explicit than many of its American counterparts. 

Smith seems to have taken The Creature From The Black Lagoon for inspiration, only ramping up the sex and sadism. Indeed the “Slime Beast” is basically described exactly like the Gill-Man, only with the added element of slime, which drips from the creature’s armor-like scales. Unlike the Gill-Man, this creature isn’t shy about killing, and doesn’t pine for any human women – though we do gradually learn the tidbit that it develops a taste for women’s breasts! At any rate it enjoys ripping its human prey apart, sucking out the guts, and then cracking open the skulls for a brain chaser. Smith isn’t shy with the gory details during the Slime Beast’s kills, though in true creature feature fashion the thing isn’t constantly on-screen (as it were).

Rather the focus goes to our human characters: Professor Lowson, a complete bastard of an archeologist who seeks the mythical hidden treasure of King John; Liz Beck, his sexy 22 year-old virginal niece; and Gavin Royle, a long-haired junior archeologist who serves here as Lowson’s sort-of apprentice. They’ve come to “The Wash,” aka the boggy “wilds of the East coast marshes,” to dig for King John’s treasure. This immediately affronts the locals, redneck yokels the lot of them; Lowson proves he isn’t your typical bookworm creature feature-type scientist when he flat-out punches one of the locals who comes to complain.

Smith as mentioned doesn’t waste time; the trio find the Slime Beast on their first night out, uncovering some strange metal buried in fresh mud and gradually digging up the slime-covered form of the creature. The smell is so bad that it causes them to puke (the two men even barf directly onto the Slime Beast, which I thought was funny). They figure the thing is dead and leave it there, Lowson sure that he can become rich and famous from this bizarre discovery. Liz by the way is the one who coins the name “Slime Beast,” which is my one problem with the novel; I think it should be the “Slime Creature.” I guess “beast” is more of a British thing. But as a red-blooded American, I think “creature” is a more accurate term for a reptillian monster…to me, “beast” denotes a shaggier, hairier sort of thing.

Despite being unettled by the discovery of the creature, Liz and Gavin still take the opportunity to zip their sleeping bags together and engage in some casual sex when Professor Lowson retires to his own room in the blockhouse they’re camping in. Here Smith shows that British pulp isn’t as prudish as I long assumed, with Gavin admiring Liz’s “small firm breasts” before getting on with the show: “Gently, very gently, he eased himself into her.” (“You’re not a virgin anymore,” he helpfully informs her.) Meanwhile during all the naughtiness the Slime Beast has awakened and is stalking around the Wash, initially trying to break into the blockhouse but turned back at the sight of fire thanks to a quick-thinking Gavin.

The monster’s first victim is a redneck bird-watcher who, the cops inform our heroes the next morning, was found “mutilated and dismembered.” The man’s guts and brains are gone, and there was a slime trail in the corpse’s wake, though strangely the slime disappeared in the sunlight. There’s no time-wasting with disbelieving cops and whatnot; posthaste we have angry locals storming the blockhouse, only to be scared off by a hunter named Mallard, who himself has seen the Slime Beast. 

One of the novel’s most memorable sequences has a topless Liz being chased by a horny, depraved Mallard, with the Slime Beast chasing after both of them. The sequence ends exactly as expected, with the Beast feasting on Mallard’s guts and brains in humorously graphic detail, a sickened Liz watching from behind the safety of some shrubs. Not that this trauma prevents more sex with Gavin that night! This time Liz insists that Gavin fully consumate the act and not just, uh, make a deposit on her thighs. (“Give it to me properly, Gavin, like every woman wants her man!”)

Smith doesn’t limit his horror sequences to a human perspective. We also have goofy, brief scenes from the perspectives of dogs and even geese, as the animals find themselves running afoul of the Slime Beast. The killing of the dog is seen by most of the townspeople, who watch from their windows as the Slime Beast stalks down the main street and rips the animal apart, feasting on its guts. They all open up on it with their hunting rifles, but the Slime Beast can’t be killed, it seems. Even when the Army is called in, the machine guns of the soldiers have little effect on the creature. 

Meanwhile Professor Lowson is determined to capture the Slime Beast. While Liz and Gavin head off to buy a “flame-gun,” Lowson gets himself some heavy netting from a fisherman and wades through the marshes each night, hoping to catch himself the Beast, which he figures to be from outer space. Throughout it all Smith delivers several effective horror fiction moments, from the traditional “going down into a darkened basement” bit to the Slime Beast ripping apart a man and a woman while they’re having a little outdoors sex (where the Slime Beast develops his taste for breasts, by the way).

Rather than a slam-bang finish with the Army coordinating an assault on the monster, Smith instead goes back to his three protagonists. Lowson succeeds in his goal of capturing the Beast, which is wounded, but this doesn’t work out so well for the professor. It’s up to Gavin and Liz to save the day with their flame-gun, and Smith doesn’t even waste any time with a lame wrap-up, ending the tale there. The book is for the most part just a streamlined bit of horror-pulp, and makes the reader realize how overwritten the vast majority of horror novels are.

Smith recently published a sequel, Spawn of the Slime Beast, which again features Gavin and Liz – and we learn that Liz really did get pregnant that night, as now the two of them, with their adult child, encounter a new Slime Beast in the present day. I think I’ll be seeking that book out for sure.

Here’s the first edition, which gives the Slime Beast more of a demonic appearance:

Fun City

Fun City, by Hugh Barron
August, 1968  Pyramid Books

Burt Hirschfeld poses as “Hugh Barron” in another of his paperback originals for Pyramid Books; this one, while not perfect, might be my favorite Barron yet. I was in the mood for a piece of trash fiction set in the swinging psychedelic ‘60s, and for the most part Fun City fit the bill perfectly. Unfortunately though just as much of it is inconsequential “city politics” boredom that seems lifted from the earlier Tilt!.

In fact, parts of Fun City are almost identical to Tilt!, though I enjoyed this book a lot more. While Tilt! started off promisingly in the acid rock clubs of California before becoming mired in a belabored “evils of politics” storyline, Fun City at least still remembers to give us the good stuff, with many scenes featuring the ‘60s jetset in all its vapid glory. Hirschfeld well captures the over-the-top pretensions of the era, from arrogantly serious “artists” to would-be fashion kingpins. And I love how the back cover informs us that this “caustic novel” is “as vivid as an LSD trip”!

Our hero is Eddie Watson, a very traditional Hirschfeld protagonist. He’s a bitter, 38-year-old alchoholic who was once a trailblazing journalist. But then his paper folded and Eddie spiralled into a period of drunkeness. He’s got an on-again, off-again girlfriend named Molly Purdy who is of course pretty and well-endowed (practically every single woman in Fun City is stated as having big boobs, by the way). But Molly, who works as a reporter herself, has finally gotten sick of Eddie’s uselessness. She loves him and pines for him, but he refuses to see his potential and wallows instead in self-pity. That being said, she doesn’t mind throwing him a free lay every once in a while. 

Speaking of sex, there’s a bit of it in Fun City, from orgies to romantic couplings to even gay sex, but Hirschfeld is in his lyrical mode this time. The sex scenes are written almost identically to the Hirschfeld-esque sex material Dean Koontz capably spoofed in Writing Popular Fiction. For example, here’s what passes for a sex scene later in the book, as Eddie engages with another lovely young lady who pines for him:

All the swelling desire. The pendulous need from out of some foreign and mysterious place, a call that drew them together in a tidal wave natural and harmonious, all rhythms easy, swinging. Time ceased and there was only the twilight of loving, the stroke of flesh against flesh, of membranes softer than soft, the wetness deep and sensuous, drawing endlessly on reservoirs so long untapped…

All right! I’m not sure what exactly is going on, but it sure sounds hot!!

Through Molly Eddie is brought into the world of New York politics. Eddie is fascinated by Charles Harrison, an altruistic millionaire known for his charities and acts of good will around the world. Harrison’s having a party in his deluxe Manhattan penthouse and Molly’s invited. There Eddie meets the man himself, a graying-haired paragon of manly virtue who likes Eddie’s cynicism and indeed is familiar with Eddie’s work for the paper. Harrison tells Eddie that he loves New York and plans to run for Mayor. He offers Eddie the job of becoming his campaign manager.

Meanwhile Hirschfeld takes us into the swinging jetset via Lilly Harrison, hot-to-trot young wife of Charles. She has a body to kill for and enjoys showing it off with the latest mod fashions. She’s vivacious and obsessed with being famous and comes off way too much like a vapid, modern-day Reality TV star. Eddie wonders why Charles is even with her, but gradually we’ll see there’s a strange bond which unites the couple. For Charles Harrison, you won’t be surprised at all to learn, has several skeletons in his own closet, from switch-hitting to group sex, not to mention ties to various underworld figures. This is revealed rather early on, but our hero Eddie doesn’t discover it until near novel’s end.

Lilly, apparently Hirschfeld’s attempt at writing a Jacqueline Susann-type antiheroine, is ultimately too listlessly self-involved to be very memorable; not to use the word yet again, but “vapid” is the perfect description for her. She yearns to be world-famous, but she’s such a cipher that you neither care for her nor despise her. She lacks the catty cruelty you’d expect from a character like this. Rather, the character who more closely captures this antiheroine nature would be Hester Quinn, basically the Eddie to Lilly’s Charles, a “birdlike” celebrity hanger-on who knows all the hip people in Manhattan and serves as Lilly’s adviser on how to become a mover and shaker in the jetset world. This includes wearing revealing clothes and having sex with random famous men.

Center stage in these jetset portions is Marcello, Hester’s Italian “discovery” who plans to take the fashion world by storm. Flamingly gay, Marcello storms and struts through the novel, stealing every scene despite being a walking cliché. (He’s also, we eventually learn, really just a dude named Victor Mellulo, from Wheeling, West Virginia!) Hirschfeld provides several scenes in which the jetset cavort at the latest Marcello happening, from an art exhibit to a fashion show to a Warhol-esque porn film he’s directed – one which leads to an orgy among the audience. Molly, bringing to mind the heroine of a later Hirschfeld novel, literally runs away from this orgy.

And that again is the problem with Fun City. Hirschfeld seeks to capture the “psychedelic salons and beauty-bugged bedrooms” of the “swinging, go-go world of New York City” (per the back cover copy), but he sabotages it with his cynical characters. Eddie hates this world of artifice, Molly distrusts it. And those who do live in it, like Lilly, Marcello, and Hester, are so cipher-like in their narcissim that the reader is unable to vicariously enjoy it through them. The “acid-rock” nightclubs and mod fashion happenings are capably brought to life, as are the mostly-nude, sexually-voracious gals who flock to this underworld in their “psychedelic blue” lipstick, but it’s all undermined by protagonists who yearn for the straight-laced world of yesteryear.

This was the same thing that bogged down Tilt!, by the way, as well as the “politics” material. In Fun City as well we read seemingly-endless sequences in which Charles Harrison will filibuster this or that New York bigwig. Not only is it rendered moot given that these are one-off characters he meets with, but his speechifying about how to make New York great again comes off as so much padding. Clearly this is Hirschfeld’s attempt at eventually pulling the rug out from under us, as Charles is later revealed to be just as “sick” as his wife Lilly; in the course of the novel he cruises a gay area and picks up some dude (later beating him in his shame), then later on he picks up a pair of young girls and takes them back to their place for some nondescript lovin’.

But Hirschfeld does bring to life psychedelic New York City. There’s an enjoyable part where Eddie sees Lilly go off with some new stud and rushes after her, drafting Hester to lead him to her, Marcello tagging along. They go to the Lower East Side, first stopping in the headshop of The Czar, then head on over to a hippie “crash pad” where legions of teenagers have sex on the scuzzy, garbage-strewn floors. Hirschfeld really goes for it in this scene, which culminates with Eddie finding Lilly in an LSD daze, meditating in the lotus position while her latest stud, a playboy named Tolan, whips some other girl who has displeased him.

We also get a lot of Hirschfeld’s typical soap opera-style melodrama: Molly as mentioned constantly spurns Eddie, only to later welcome him back to her apartment with open legs. And Eddie promises to quit the booze and devote himself to both her and Harrison’s campaign. Instead he blows off dates with Molly and gets drunk a bunch of times. After the latest Molly breakup Eddie happens to meet a young social worker named Sarah Jane Parker (yep, she’s busty too!). In a complete disregard for character depth, Hirschfeld has this gal openly throwing herself at Eddie soon after meeting him, offering to make him a meal in her apartment.

Eddie I forgot to mention is an annoying asshole. He eats the meal, has a drink, and tells the girl she’s practically a slut! She’s only in her twenties and he feels she should straighten up and stop bringing strange men back to her place. He leaves without even taking her up on her open offer for sex…then “coincidentally” meets her again during a too-long scene where Harrison filibusts at a school in Harlem. In the ensuing riot (started by Black Panthers), Eddie runs into Sarah again. The two eventually become an item (the “sex scene” above is between Eddie and Sarah), but Molly is still on the sidelines. She’s found out how corrupt Harrison is – he’s almost penniless and indebted to the mob, who funds his campaign – and Molly intends to tap into wealth via Eddie.

The finale of Fun City plays out on an unexpected sequence of turnarounds; Eddie, hearing the truth of Harrison’s underworld activities, hunts the man down in a gay bar. For his troubles Eddie is almost beaten to death by a gang of gay stooges at Harrison’s command(!). Eddie manages to escape them, stealing the gun of one and shooting him before escaping. But he finds no salvation in Molly; when Eddie refuses to play ball and go back to Harrison – Molly wants Eddie to keep working for the man so they can strike it rich when he wins the election – she grabs Eddie’s gun, puts it on him, and calls Harrison to come get him!

After yet another escape Eddie finds true salvation with Sarah, still treating her like shit as he eats breakfast with her, his pistol at hand. The final face-to-face with Harrison isn’t exciting at all, playing more on a suspense angle than the Sharpshooter capoff I wanted. Eddie has gotten hold of some photos of Lilly in compromising positions, and uses these as blackmail to get Harrison to call of his dogs and to drop out of the race. After which it’s back to Sarah, who tells Eddie they should leave the city together. And Eddie has finally gotten an idea for a novel; he’s going to write about these very events, which will make for a surefire bestseller(!?).

Hirschfeld’s writing has the same positives and negatives as ever. He keeps the story moving, brings us into this world, and makes us care for the characters. But at the same time the plot is a bit plodding and the politicking becomes grating. Also Hirschfeld’s affected style is firmly in place – you know, how he takes a sentence, expands upon it greatly, going on and on with it, getting to the heart of it, the core, working it up into a theme, a construction of depth and meaning. Polishing it. Elaborating it. Hammering it out, over and over again, endlessly, infinitely. Until the reader. Cannot take it. Anymore. (You get the drift….)

The core of later Hirschfeld novels can be found here; the entire “psychedelic hippie hell” section in the Lower East Side for example would return in Father Pig, where Hirschfeld made it seem even more hellish. And as mentioned there are many paralells with Cindy On Fire. One thing missing this time is the Hollywood starlet character ususally typical of the “Hugh Barron” books.

Anyway, despite the affected style and the sometimes-plodding pace, Fun City is really vintage Burt Hirschfeld, and did the job of providing the piece of go-go ‘60s pulp fiction I was hoping for.

Here’s the cover of the NEL edition:

And here’s the cover of the Dell edition from 1984, published under Hirschfeld’s name (interestingly, the back cover copy of this one spins it as a hardboiled yarn):

Bonnie

Bonnie, by Hugh Barron
November, 1970  NEL Books
(Original US edition, 1965)

One of the more obscure Burt Hirschfeld novels, Bonnie is also the most fun, and certainly the most sleazy and pulpy. Originally published under the house name “Oscar Bessie,” Bonnie is all about a horny young woman who becomes “the princess of the motorcycle gangs.”

If ever there was a Hirschfeld novel that should’ve been an AIP biker movie, this is the one. Curiously, it was never reprinted under Hirschfeld’s name in the US (more of which below), and it only appeared under his “Hugh Barron” pseudonym in the UK. The “Oscar Bessie” edition was published by Domino Books, a sleaze imprint of Lancer, however be aware the novel isn’t explicit, really, and not just due to the year it was published (1965); Hirschfeld is very much in his metaphorical mode this time out, with climaxes compared to cresting waves and etc.

Bonnie shares almost the exact same template as a later Hirschfeld novel, Cindy On Fire. Like Cindy Ashe, Bonnie Dixon is 19, beautiful, blonde, and bored. Living in Bayville, an area of Long Island, Bonnie like the later Cindy is saddled with a loser of a fiance, super-square Bob Horner. The dude doesn’t even believe in premarital sex! The novel opens with yet another of his refusals, as Bonnie implores Bob to take her one night after a date. Throwing a fit when she’s turned down for the umpteenth time, Bonnie runs away from Bob’s car, whips off her clothes, and runs nude along a deserted stretch of the beach.

After spying on a couple having sex, Bonnie swims nude in the ocean. When she lays back on the sand she’s almost raped by a pair of bikers. She’s only saved by the appearance of their leader, a muscular, good-looking dude who wields a riding crop. This is Mike Shaw, leader of the Apaches “motorcycle club.” The two would-be rapists are Leo and Buster. Mike gives Bonnie a ride home, and she’s so excited she can’t sleep that night and must pleasure herself (again, written in a very metaphorical style).

Bonnie, increasingly distant from her parents and Bob Horner, runs into the Apaches again, and tells them she wants to join. But she doesn’t just want to be a “squaw;” she wants to be a full-fledged member, with her own bike. First though she must pass the “Ordeals” all new Apaches must face. The first ordeal is a mugging in a park, Bonnie distracting a pair of random dudes while a few Apaches swoop in and attach them, and then Bonnie must join in the fight. She enjoys it so much she nearly beats the victims to a pulp.

The next ordeal is a brutal fight with another female Apache, while the rest of the gang watches. It takes place in an old farmhouse the Apaches have taken for themselves, and Bonnie is able to overcome her more-powerful opponent, using her wits and her speed. This leads immediately into the final ordeal, which first has Bonnie bathed by “handmaidens,” and then, nude, put up on an auction block! The Apaches bid for her, and the winner gets Bonnie for the night.

Hirschfeld, realizing he was required to write a sleazy tale, goes all the way – a female Apache bids for Bonnie at an exorbitant cost. This is Paula Hart, gorgeous redhead with a shitkicker bod. Paula takes Bonnie to a separate room and has her put on thigh-high boots and hands her a whip. Yes, friends, Hirschfeld really goes for it, here – Paula gets off on being whipped, and urges Bonnie to lash the hell out of her, after which Paula crawls on her hands and knees to an exhausted Bonnie and starts dining at the Y…friends, I never knew ol’ Burt had it in him!

Three weeks later and Bonnie’s such a diehard Apache she threatens to usurp Mike’s position as leader. She has her own crew now, in particular Paula, Leo, and Buster, and she and Mike are on the verge of open warfare. Not that this stops Bonnie from occasionally screwing Mike. Hirschfeld also intimates that Bonnie’s screwed most of the Apaches, but wisely, for such a short novel (124 pages), he limits the narrative to just a few named characters. Strangely, Bonnie is still engaged to Bob Horner, who not only still refuses to have sex with her, but apparently is oblivious about her secret life as an Apache.

Now our antihero needs her own motorcycle. One thing I should mention is that Bonnie is pretty scant so far as biker stuff goes – I mean, motorcycle models aren’t mentioned, and there’s maybe two or three parts where people even ride their bikes. It’s more about Bonnie’s need for constant thrills, and the increasing levels of sadism and danger she compels her fellow Apaches to. It’s also your typical morality play-type tale, about the dangers of peering too far into the abyss.

Anyway, Mike Shaw pokes fun at Bonnie that she could just ask her loaded parents for the money to buy a bike. But Bonnie’s plan wins yet more favor from the Apaches – she’s going to rob her own parents. Once again employing Paula, Leo, and Buster, Bonnie and her three followers dress “completely in black leather, including full-face wind masks and leather helmets” and head for Bonnie’s home. There they break in, threaten Bonnie’s parents with knives, tie them up, and raid the safe.

But before Bonnie can even buy a bike, she goes back to the farmhouse, where new Apaches are being inducted…and bids on the new girl for herself! This is buxom, vixenish Leah, who is game for a little lesbian fun with Bonnie, though again it doesn’t drop into outright sleaze. I mean, to be sure, there’s lots of dirty stuff going on, but it’s written so “poetically” that it never descends into porn. Bonnie has outbid Mike for Leah, which furthers the potential Apache rift, something compounded when Bonnie gets her own chopper and starts leading around her own little crew.

The Apaches are at war with the Monarchs, a gang from a few towns over that greatly outnumbers the Apaches. Mike has never been able to defeat them. Bonnie knows that if she comes up with a strategy to destroy them, she’ll immediately become the leader of the Apaches. Her plan is as usual mean-spirited and crazy; she breaks into a beach house, hides weapons in it, and invites the Monarchs over for a big party.

Having the “squaws” and other female members “be nice” to the Monarchs (including the memorable image of Leah standing over three satiated and unconscious Monarchs), Bonnie gets the other gang nice and drunk while she and the Apaches stay sober. Then, after Bonnie’s had (unfulfilling) sex with the Monarch “war chief,” she blows a whistle and the battle begins. The Apaches beat the shit out of the Monarchs, trashing the beach house in the process.

A recurring element – same as in Cindy On Fire -- is that Bonnie cannot achieve satisfaction in anything, especially sex. Constantly spurred to greater lengths, she ends up screwing Mike Shaw yet again, and then racing with him on the night roads at top speed. When a cop gives chase, Mike attempts to lead him to his death, but Bonnie panics and crashes herself, saving the cop’s life. She’s sprung from jail, and it’s even worse because her parents and Bob Horner are even more understanding and etc.

But it’s worse with the Apaches – Bonnie goes to the farmhouse to discover that she’s now persona non grata, thanks to her saving a cop’s life. She has to murder someone to make amends with the gang, or they’ll kill her. When Bonnie refuses to kill a bum that night at a park, she runs from Mike and Paula, almost killing the former with the wrench she was supposed to use on the bum. Bonnie, just like Cindy Ashe, ends up running to the man she’s treated like shit since page one – her fiance, Bob Horner.

Humorously enough, Hirschfeld only bothers to inform us here in the eleventh hour that Bob was formerly a collegiate wrestler, and is still a big and muscular guy! (The image previously presented to us clearly made him out to be a 90-pound weakling.) The couple goes to the beach, where Bonnie unloads her story to a noncommittal Bob. Then, right on cue, Mike, Paula, Leo, and Buster show up, staging an ambush right where this whole story began.

Would you be surprised that Bob Horner makes short work of the three men? Better yet is Bonnie’s fight with Paula, who comes at her with a knife. This is a pretty vicious catfight, which ends with Bonnie finishing Paula off with “a perfect karate chop” to the throat. Then Bob, suddenly the man, hops on one of the choppers, tells Bonnie to get behind him, and blasts off! Then he insists they swim nude…and have sex right there on the beach!

And of course, just like Cindy Ashe who too was reunited at long last with the man she’d treated like shit, only to find he was the perfect match for her, Bonnie Dixon finally knows true satisfaction and happiness with Bob Horner. As mentioned, it’s a morality play, or whatever you all it, only one filled with leather-clad biker chicks and lesbian sex and occasional mentions of “pot parties.” In other words, it’s pretty great.

Maybe the one thing holding Bonnie back from true greatness is, again, Hirschfeld’s ornate style, which admittedly isn’t as busy here as it is in some of his other books. And also you have to admire how much he packs into so few pages. Given that Bonnie was never reprinted under his own name, you have to wonder if Hirschfeld maybe disowned it, but I think there might be another story there.

Bonnie was first published by Domino, as mentioned a Lancer imprint; this NEL reprint is copyright Lancer Books. When Hirschfeld reprinted his “Hugh Barron” books in the ‘80s, Bonnie was not included – but then, all of the other Hugh Barron novels had originally been printed by Pyramid Books. Lancer had been out of business since September 1973. So what I’m trying to say is, maybe Bonnie was never reprinted in the ‘80s because Hirschfeld couldn’t secure the rights to it.

Who knows. At any rate Bonnie is pretty fun. Here’s the cover of that original Domino/Lancer edition, from 1965, which not only gets it wrong by making Bonnie a brunette, but also by making her look like a drag queen:

Jackboot Girls

Jackboot Girls, by Leslie McManus
March, 1971  New English Library

I’ve wanted to read this slim novel for a long time, but the cost has always been prohibitive – like, $60 damn dollars. But in one of those weird flukes I recently found a copy listed online for a mere $1.50.  Justin Marriott has told me that the book would no doubt suck, given that Leslie McManus is a psuedonym of Canadian-born UK hack James Moffat, whose writing is considered terrible even by bad writing connoisseurs.

But the concept! Jackboot Girls is about an all-female squad of bi-sexual and gorgeous German women who are banded together by Heinrich Himmler to form the SS Wolverines, their duty to interrogate male and female prisoners via sex and sadomasochism! And their main uniform is black satin lingerie! And their standard-issue weapon is a whip! A-and their leader is a beautiful blonde lesbian named Helga Schwartz who enjoys having casual sex with her equally-beautiful chief lieutenant Frieda Weber!

I mean, this has the makings of the greatest novel ever written, right?? I’ve gone on the record with my warped fascination for depraved female villains in pulp fiction: Margot Anstruther, Sabrina, Nila Dennis, and especially Ilsa Tausen; all of them were pretty great. But really the epitome of the depraved female villain would have to be the Nazi She-Devils of pulp, in particular the busty jackbooted blondes quite often seen on the covers of men’s adventure mags of the ‘50s and ‘60s, whipping some captured US soldier who stares out at the readers with a look that sort of says, “You know, I’m enjoying this!”

So then an entire novel devoted to these pulpy she-devils would by default have to be great. And damn it all, Jackboot Girls had the potential to be great. If it just wasn’t for Moffat’s lousy writing. To be sure, we’re not talking like atrocious writing here, like Tracker or anything. It’s just that the writing is so ponderous and pretentious.  Manning Lee Stokes would even consider this writing to be overly stuffy. And on top of that the book has that clinical and antiseptic tone I’ve encountered in all of the British pulp I’ve yet read, which further serves to neuter what could’ve been a twisted classic.

Anyway, on to the novel itself. “Novella” moreso, as it’s a slim 108 pages. Tiny print, though, with hardly any white space, so it’s not a quick read. (Plus Moffat’s writing does its best to slow the reader down.) And really it’s not even a “novel” at all – another problem I have with this book is there’s no major plot or character arcs. Instead it comes off like a series of disconnected chapters in which Helga and her Wolverines will torture and/or sleep with their prisoners or each other. (I’ll admit, that sentence doesn’t sound like a valid criticism, but after a while you start to wish there was some meaning to the tale.)

We open before the war has begun, and Helga Schwartz is summoned by some SS guys. They tell her she’s to use her lesbian charms to seduce a female prisoner, and Helga gets the job done, happy to do it. She’s a stonecold Nazi and devoted to the cause, certain that Hitler will conquer the world. After this first successful interrogation Helga’s summoned to Himmler’s presence; he is creating a new all-female SS faction for her, The Wolverines. Moffat keeps intimating that, with her staunch lesbianism, Helga has “thrown down the gauntlet” as far as Himmler’s concerned; one day he might demand that she sleep with him. But this is just one of many subplots that Moffat fails to elaborate on or complete.

But first Himmler puts her to another test. One thing that can be said for Moffat is that he’s not afraid to get lurid and sick; Himmler takes Helga into a dank cell where the woman Helga just “interrogated” is tied up, having been beaten and no doubt raped by several Germans. Himmler hands Helga a gun and tells her to blow the woman away. Helga does without question, and sicko Himmler laughs that the girl was in fact innocent. But this is just the first of many warped scenes in Jackboot Girls, so at least there is some good here…seriously, the warped stuff is about all the novel has going for it.

Instead of moving on with the story, Moffat jumps forward in the very next chapter to a few years later; the Wolverines, we learn in backstory, are now infamous for their successful track record, and their lascivious nature is legendary among the Nazi high command. Moffat switches over to pretty young Frieda Weber, several years younger than Helga’s 38 but just as devoted to the cause. However unlike Helga, Frieda doesn’t mind having the occasional sex with men. Here Moffat gets into a story that ultimately goes nowhere in which Frieda tries to get valued intel from a German Jew, who offers in exchange for an exit visa to set up a famous “Liberator”, ie a member of the internal faction of German citizens who work against the Nazis.

That taken care of, Moffat ranges back and forth from Helga to Frieda, and the reader thinks this is going to become the twisted love story of a pair of lesbian Nazi She-Devils. (Again, the makings of a Great Work, here…) But then Moffat jumps track again, now focusing on a group of Liberators, including a young German girl who has fallen in love with her male co-Liberator…the same man who saucy Liberator leader Elke also has deigns on…cue yet another sex scene between two characters new to the narrative. And this subplot too evaporates like the morning dew; Moffat doesn’t even bother to tell us what happens to these characters, a total dropped ball because Elke is set up as the perfect match for Helga; you expect these two insatiable ladies will have an encounter, but it never happens.

Meanwhile Moffat hurtles on – after a chapter about a Wolverine named Lizabet who gets off on toruture, we dive straight into a four-way torture session as three other Wolverines (Ilsa, Lisa, and Eva) combine salacious forces upon a captured Canadian soldier. Remember, these four characters are wholly new to the text and we know nothing about them and will never see them again, yet Moffat devotes a very long chapter to the twisted shenanigans as the girls first try to make the soldier, Eddy Morash, think they’re English, but then they drop all pretense and take turns screwing him for seventeen whopping hours, by the end of which the poor old guy is “chafed” and wallowing in self-hatred because he’s finally given away the info the gals wanted. And again, the “sex scenes” are so opaquely described that you have no idea what’s going on.

One thing I can say about Jackboot Girls is that the longer it goes on the more depraved it gets, sort of the reverse of the average novel. Now suddenly it’s toward the end of the war and Helga and Frieda are summoned to the decadent castle of Herman Goerring. Supposedly they’re here to root out a mole within the Luftwaffe but instead this becomes another chapter-long sexcapade, with Helga forced into having sex with a Luftwaffe officer by a lecherous Goerring (and Helga nearly puking at the thought that she must have sex with a man), while Frieda meanwhile engages some pretty young girl into lesbian sex while a roomful of Luftwaffe soldiers watch on. After which Frieda orders an officer to blow the girl’s brains out (apparently the girl was the mole, though how Frieda divined this isn’t really explained),and then she tells the shocked and sickened officer that she’s going to have sex with him now, like it or not!

Next chapter, the war is suddenly about to end. Helga and gals are assembled in the Black Forest, where they cast aside their Wolverine uniforms (described as SS uniforms, but I pictured them as leather s&m getups, of course) and plan to break up and escape. SS officers will be sought by the Allies, and obviously none of them wants to be caught. I realized at this point that I was paying more attention to the story than Moffat was; very early in the novel we learned that Helga was a devoted Nazi, and believed fully that Hitler would conquer the world. So I figured now that the end was near, maybe we’d see a little character growth, maybe Helga would realize she was wrong. Nope. She just doffs her suit and says goodbye to the gals – not even a goodbye kiss for Frieda.

Moffat at least closes strong. Helga attempts to escape on foot but immediately runs into an American GI, who prompty takes her to a cabin for sex. Moffat again forgets himself, stating that it’s been “years” since Helga has had to endure a man…meanwhile she just had one in the previous chapter, which was set shortly before Germany’s fall. After escaping she moves on…only to run into an entire squad of American GIs, and after their sergeant has raped her the other men line up to take their turn. This is the worst fate Helga could endure, though ironically you do feel bad for her, despite the horrors she has committed upon innocent people. At any rate the ending is memorable.

So while it wasn’t the novel I hoped for, Jackboot Girls at least attempted to go far out into depravity and sensationalism. It’s just that the stuffy writing and weak plotting sunk it. As I read the novel I couldn’t help but think how much better it would’ve been if another author had written it. But if you are looking for a novel about Nazi She-Devils, it’s certainly recommended; strangely enough, it appears that no pulp authors really took advantage of these characters, so Jackboot Girls is really all there is so far as novels go.

Fiction-wise, the Nazi She-Devils made their biggest impact on the men’s adventure mags of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and I will be doing a men’s mag roundup post on this theme in the near future.