Code Name: Gypsy Virgin

Code Name: Gypsy Virgin, by Max Nortic

No month stated, 1971  Midwood Books

A big thanks to Johny Malone, who recently left a comment on my review of Black Swan #2: The Cong Kiss, and suggested I read the source novel for that series, Code Name: Gypsy Virgin. His suggestion hit me at just the right time, and now I’ve read the book and by god I’m here to tell you about it! 

As I mentioned in my review of The Cong Kiss, author “J.J. Montague” of the Black Swan series was clearly the same person as the “Max Nortic” who wrote Code Name: Gypsy Virgin (and whose real name, as Johny so helpfully informed us, was James Keenan, of whom I can find nothing). This is because the plot of Code Name: Gypsy Virgin is the same as the plot of the first Black Swan novel, The Chinese Kiss: a hotstuff nympho secret agent takes a crash-course in lesbianism so she can take down a hotstuff nympho Commie secret agent who has “an obsession with cunnilingus.” 

I read The Cong Kiss nearly ten years ago, so memories of it are dim. Per my review I found it overly literary and stilted, and also per my review I’d given up reading Code Name: Gypsy Virgin not long before I read that Black Swan novel; I’d read it recently enough that I was able to detect the same writing styles, characters, and plots between the two books. I’m not sure why I stopped reading Gypsy Virgin at the time, because reading it all these years later I thought it was pretty great – perhaps proving once again that the more pulp you read, the more your brain rots. Well, brain rot is very popular now, as anyone who has a kid will know, so I’m fine with that. 

I went into the details in my review of The Cong Kiss, but simply put, Nortic/Keenan published Code Name: Gypsy Virgin via Midwood Books in 1971, focused on hotstuff brunette spy babe Erica Wilson, who had sex every Friday with a random pickup, exclusively focusing on well-hung guys, given her “obsession with big pricks;” even her apartment in Newport Beach was filled with phallic sculptures. 

Then in 1974 Keenan changed Erica Wilson’s name to Shauna Bishop, changed his by-line to “J.J. Montague,” and retitled Code Name: Gypsy Virgin as The Chinese Kiss, sellling it to Canyon Books and getting a series deal in the process. Yes, the exact same thing J.C. Conaway did when he switched publishers and turned Nookie into Jana Blake, and when Nelson DeMille switched publishers and turned Ryker into Keller. So, a pretty common practice in the wild and wooly world of ‘70s paperback publishing! 

So then, Erica Wilson in Gypsy Virgin is the same character as Shauna Bishop in the Black Swan series, just with a different name – her code name is different, too. Per the title of this Midwood publication, Erica’s codename is “Gypsy Virgin,” and Shauna’s codename is “Black Swan.” Regardless of her name, she is 24, a trained spy who has killed (but only in self-defense, we’re told), incredibly beautiful and built, the daughter of “a Polish janitor and a Swedish maid.” She is not patriotic and works only for the money, and has total control of her emotions – and, we’re informed, her, uh, womanly parts. 

She is also “obsessed with big pricks” and has littered her home on Newport Beach with phallic sculptures and paintings. She lives a quiet life of solitude, but every Friday she lets out her pent-up energy by spending the afternoon looking at her “vintage erotica books” and then going out at night to a bar to pick up a guy…and, somehow, she’s always able to get a guy with a huge dick. Perhaps she has X-ray vision which Nortic/Keenan has not informed us of. Her most recent lay was over ten inches long(!), and we’re informed Erica implored him to take her in the rear, so she could be “hurt.” Good grief! 

We know about these backdoor shenanigans because the agency Erica works, ICS, has bugged her home, something Erica is well aware of; Nortic deftly injects a ‘70s paranoia into the yarn, as Erica figures that everything she does and says is being watched by someone, and she’s always right. Code Name: Gypsy Virgin opens with our heroine being stymied out of her usual Friday tussle, much to her mounting chagrin, suddenly summoned by her agency for a top secret assignment – flown off to Baltimore where she will spend the next several days locked up in a room and learning to become sexually attracted to other women(!). 

Nortic displays a gift for dark humor with the sardonic Erica knowing she is being subjected to head-fuckery, being monitored in her private room and laden with aphrodisiacs in her food as she watches lectures on lesbianism on closed-circuit TV, complete with female models acting out lessons in cunnilingus. And plus there’s that stacked blonde beauty Shirley who brings Erica her food and looks at her with those limpid blue eyes...Erica knows she’s being brainwashed into going lez, and she also eventually knows there’s nothing she can do to stop it from happening. 

The reason behind all this is Erica’s latest assignment: Nitro Five, another hotstuff secret agent, but one who works for the Chinese. She is, however, Caucasian (hence the title of the retitled Shauna Bishop story is a bit confusing), and while the woman’s background is known – roughly the same age as Erica, a hardship life that saw her essentially raised into becoming a merciless field agent who uses her beauty and body to ensnare victims for the Chinese government – we also learn she has never been photographed. 

Nortic opens up the tale with chapters from Nitro Five’s perspective; or, Loraine, which is the name she happens to be going by as she sets her sights on a scientist who specializes in ultrasonics. Posing as a socialite in DC, Nitro Five corners the professor at a lecture, coming on to him and taking him back to her place where an explicit sex scene ensues, but as with the Black Swan books, the author brings a literate touch even to the sleaze. We also learn that Nitro Five is deadly, as she takes out a man who inadvertently snaps her photo via some sort of mind control; an eerie scene that has the man waking up, after a short visit from Nitro Five, receiving a phone call from her, and then, his mind panicked, jumping out of a tenth-floor window. 

Like with a lot of these sleaze novels, Keenan/Nortic writes a worthy novel, to the point that the extensively-detailed sex scenes become a nuissance…something I rarely complain about. But as we know, sleaze writers were expected to deliver sleaze, and Nortic does throughout, with a focus on girl-on-girl. He varies it up with occasional scenes of straight sex, in particular with the ultrasonics professor, who is seduced by both Nitro Five and Gypsy Virgin, in sex scenes that are pretty similar, the good doctor under the effects of cantharides (aka Spanish Fly) and unable to orgasm, even after superhuman bouts of sex, all of which is detailed. Erica’s success at getting him off is pretty crazy, involving her fondness for those backdoor shenanigans. 

The author works in a grim Cold War storyline that concerns Gypsy Virgin being assigned to find out how Nitro Five assassinates from afar and to also try to get her to defect; meanwhile, Nitro Five’s assignment is to lure an ultrasonics scientist into defecting to China, seducing both him and his virginal teenaged daughter in the process. These characters all engage in sex either together or in groups, the longest sequence featuring both female agents making use of the professor’s daughter in an all-girl three-way that would press a lot of readers’ buttons, given that the girl is underaged. 

But then there is a strange focus on adolescent girls, par for the course in the grimy world of ‘70s sleaze paperbacks, I guess. Nitro Five is obsessed with adolescent Chinese girls and there is a lot of stuff about the excitement of deflowering the professor’s virgin daughter. Even Erica, who we’ll recall just got into the sapphic scenario courtesy agency programming, finds her heart pounding in excitement at the thought of sharing the girl with Nitro Five. 

What’s crazy is that, as proven with The Cong Kiss, the author is quite capable, delivering a narrative style that is more refined than scuzzy. He has a definite knack for dialog and for characterization, and the sex scenes are more erotic than repugnant, as is too often the case in a lot of these dirty books. I find it interesting that he did not write mainstream trash under his own name, but we do know from this Pulpetti post by my man Juri that Keenan was quite prolific as “Max Nortic.” 

I don’t have a copy of The Chinese Kiss, but it would be interesting to read it, for the ending certainly had to be changed. Code Name: Gypsy Virgin has a mega-downer ending that to be honest isn’t very surprising, as novel maintains a mean-tempered vibe throughout. 

SPOILERS: Well basically, Nitro Five’s grim backstory has it that she was taken in as a child and abused thoroughly by her trainers in Peking as they molded her into a remorseless killer, and this same fate awaits the professor’s daughter and Erica/Gypsy Virgin; Nitro Five has traded the two of them as well as the Professor in exchange for her own freedom (as an extra dig of the knife, we learn that Erica’s agency was in on the exchange from the start), and the novel ends with the villainess going off to her Happily Ever After while our heroine (and a teenaged girl) are shipped off to be raped, abused, and trained into becoming remorseless spies by the Chinese. End spoilers! 

So then, clearly this was changed when Erica Wilson became Shauna Bishop, and I’d be curious to know how it was changed. Not much pickup was provided in the second Black Swan, The Cong Kiss, which as we’ll recall was a flashback story to Shauna/Erica’s first mission, four years ago, so I guess I’ll just have to wonder unless I get really stupid some day and pay the exorbitant prices for a copy of The Chinese Kiss, which isn’t very likely. 

Anyway, a big thanks to Johny Malone for suggesting I read this, and also to Tiziano Agnelli, who recently left a comment on my review of The Cong Kiss to confirm that JJ Montague/Max Nortic was in reality a writer named James Keenan!

Black Swan #2: The Cong Kiss

Black Swan #2: The Cong Kiss, by J.J. Montague
No month stated, 1974  Canyon Books

Running to three volumes and published by Canyon Books, the same outfit that gave us the early volumes of Hitman and, uh, The Illusionist, Black Swan is ostensibly about a horny female spy, much along the lines of the vastly superior The Baroness. However this is one of those series that is woefully overpriced on the used books marketplace, so I’ve only been able to acquire this second volume – sort of.

For, as I read The Cong Kiss, my Sleaze Senses started tingling. Within the first few pages, in which we are introduced to series protagonist Shauna Bishop, a “latent nymphomaniac” brunette spy babe who lives in Newport Beach and who allows herself to have sex with one random guy per week, I was stricken by a feeling of déjà vu. I was certain I’d read something identical to this, and not too long ago.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, folks – the other year I picked up a 1971 paperback titled Code Name: Gypsy Virgin, credited to Max Nortic and published by sleaze imprint Midwood Books. This was one I’d started reading but given up on midway through. I got my copy back out and thumbed through it. Just as I expected, the style was identical, with even some of the exact same words and phrases throughout, particularly when it came to the introduction of the lusty heroine.

The plot of Code Name: Gypsy Virgin was about a “latent nymphomaniac” brunette spy babe named Erica Wilson who allowed herself to have sex with one random guy per week, and who was eventually called out on an assignment in which she had to give vent to her sapphic impulses. The style of the book was more literary than pulpy, with random bursts of hardcore sleaze throughout. Doing some research, it appears that the plot of The Chinese Kiss (ie the first installment of Black Swan, published in 1974), was the same as that in Code Name: Gypsy Virgin: Shauna Bishop had to go lesbian for her assignment.

So then it seems pretty clear that some unknown author published Code Name: Gypsy Virgin as “Max Nortic” for Midwood, and then a few years later went back to his manuscript, changed “Erica Wilson” to “Shauna Bishop,” and sold the book to Canyon – and this time also got a deal for a series. No idea if “J.J. Montague” was his real name, but the Black Swan series is credited to Canyon. The closest comparison I can make to Montague’s style in the genre would be James Fritzhand, a literary author who delivered the Nick Carter installment The Katmandu Contract.

For like Fritzhand, Montague appears as if he’d be more at home penning a Proustian-type work of insight and introspection, heavy with the topical flourishes and scene setting, and not so heavy with the action or excitement. There’s some quality writing throughout The Cong Kiss, even at some points echoing the style of Joseph Conrad (whom Montague name-drops in the narrative), but when it comes to the action it’s very tepid, relegated to brief fistfights or firefights. The novel is more of an espionage thriller than anything, only leavened with elaborate sex scenes every several pages.

Above I wrote that Shauna Bishop was “ostensibly” the protagonist of the Black Swan series. Humorously, though, she spends the majority of The Cong Kiss sitting in a hotel room in Thailand while her fellow agent – and bedmate – Paul Hiller does all the heavy lifting. The true star of the show, Hiller is a tough secret agent in the Nick Carter mold. The Cong Kiss is weirdly formatted: it opens with Shauna in her Newport Beach pad, having just sent off her latest random lay, and reflecting back on her first assignment, “four years ago.” The Cong Kiss is that first assignment, thus the entire novel is a sort of neverending flashback.

Strangely though, despite Shauna setting off the proceedings via her reminiscing, Paul Hiller is the protagonist, and rarely do we even see Shauna! Anyway, the novel flashes back four years and stays there until the final pages. Shauna’s first field operation has her going to Bangkok, where she’s to assist her boyfriend, Paul Hiller. The two are in a hot ‘n heavy sexual relationship, and Hiller’s concerned that Sheila’s emotions will endanger them. Also, he doesn’t think she’s got the right stuff to be a field agent – other, that is, than her nymphomania, thus she has no qualms when Paul occasionally orders her to go screw some guy so as to pose a distraction.

As mentioned, Montague fills the novel with plentiful sex scenes, the majority of them displaying a kinky oral bent – Shauna is real fond of going down on guys, especially Paul, who is eager to repay Sheila in oral kind. The sex scenes too tread the literary line, evidencing the unusual style Montague employs for the book:

Their bodies found the right rhythm, as the softness of her legs locked around the hardness of his skull. He kissed softly, lifting her up higher with each kiss, and tonguing into her, burying his face against the drenched flesh of her, lips sinking, nubbing the turgid cavity, while she gasped and thrust it up closer for him, wanting him to pull the sweet gift out of her, out of the vulva-heart, going madly out of her mind for the moment of it, wanting him to drown in there. His tongue was a feathery rage, encircling the labia, then his mouth was open for the final nurturing vaginal kiss.

And for all that, occasionally Montague will figure to hell with it and just go for low-brow sleaze, ie: “And then Paul was kissing her full, warm tits.”

The plot of The Cong Kiss has Sheila and Paul in Bangkok, there to bring back to the US a former Green Beret who went rogue named Winston Belle. Having served as a mercenary with the Viet Cong and the Thailand Cong Hai, Belle has apparently undergone a change of heart and wants to come back to the US. Paul and Sheila’s superiors have their hesitations but send the two in anyway. Sheila goes along because it was through her old school friend, a French babe named Claudette, that the US has even been able to make contact with Belle again.

Thus it’s all very “Hearts Of Darkness in Thailand” as these four characters plot and counterplot against one another, Sheila as mentioned spending most of her time in her hotel room and eagerly screwing Paul when he’s come back from his latest foray. Sheila and Paul at one point share a room with Claudette, and a devious Sheila one night drugs Claudette just so she can get off on Paul screwing her right beside the comatose form of her old school pal:

She moaned and groaned softly as she felt the heart-shaped head spear into her, followed by one long thrust of the entire length of him. He filled her stretched cavity with one plunge, then pounded her into the floor with triphammer thrusts. She twisted and squirmed under him, her knees pulled up even with his head, sobbing and babbling at the insane pleasure she was receiving, jerking with frantic spasms as one climax after another exploded inside her.

When he finally crushed her thrashing body to him and rammed home into her depths, she raked his back in erotic frenzy as he emptied into her, filling her with his gushing discharge as he spent himself entirely. Exhausted, he collapsed on her, twitching as she continued milking and pulling at his half-flaccid meat.

A scene, by the way, which features Sheila imploring Paul to place his “heart-shaped head” right over the lips of a sleeping Claudette! But don’t worry, ol’ Claudette gets her own go with Paul later in the book. However Claudette is in love with Winston Belle and serves more as a thorn in Paul and Sheila’s side, constantly trying to keep her “true love” from the harm she is certain Paul and Sheila will bring him.

There isn’t much action at all, just a few chases and fights. Montague goes for more of a suspense vibe, with the book as mentioned having more of a realistic espionage yarn, playing more on the duplicitous nature of the Thai agents our heroes must work with. But there’s no big climax (so to speak), and of course there’s no tension because we already know all this happened four years ago and thus Sheila made it out just fine.

All told, The Cong Kiss doesn’t have much going for it, other than a somewhat literate style and a penchant for random bursts of hardcore sleaze – much like The Illusionist, in fact, but much less gut-churning. But the sad fact is the book is boring despite it all, and I do not recommend paying the absurd prices these books go for – you aren’t missing much with this particular series.