Men’s Mag Roundup: Satanic Sleaze

 

Boy, it’s been several years since I’ve done one of these men’s adventure magazine roundup reviews. Ever since Bob Deis and Bill Cunningham started up Men’s Adventure Quarterly, I’ve rarely dipped into my collection of men’s adventure mags. But recently I hit Bob and Bill up with an idea for a “Satanic sleaze” sort of MAQ Halloween special, focusing on the lurid “killer cult” tales of the latter men’s mags (ie, from the early to mid 1970s), and then I decided that I’d just read some of these stories from my own collection. 

Yes, as documented in Barbarians On Bikes (which Bob put together with his other co-editor, Wyatt Doyle), as the ‘60s progressed the editors of the men’s mags started looking for more than just the typical “Nazi villain” of the earlier pulps. So there was an increasing amount of stories with biker villains, or cults, or Satanists, or hippie killer freaks. 

First up is this Man’s Story from April 1975. This mag was one of the “sweats,” meaning it traded in more lurid and sensationalistic content than the “upmarket” men’s mags (which were pretty lurid themselves, but still). And the cover is the proof in the pudding, illustrating some Nazi terror. I really love the covers on the later men’s mags, and this one’s great. Though I have to admit, the Telly Savalas-lookalike Nazi in the far corner almost looks like a TV game show host, the way he’s grinning and pointing at that poor blonde. “And you just won – a flaming poker enema!” 

This issue serves up the exact sort of story I had in mind for my “Satanic sleaze” Halloween MAQ special: “Blood Rites Of Satan’s Darlings,” by Chuck Graham. It features a great splashpage, which again demonstrates how cool this latter-era men’s mag artwork was: 

Yeah man, this one is short but it serves up the whole thing. Curiously, it’s written in present-tense, which is unusual for a men’s mag. It would appear that the editors were open to experimentation in the later days. But then again, the drugs were just better back then. The story concerns an unfortunate young American girl named Jan who is on vacation in Mexico (apparently a hotbed for Satanic cult, at least so far as the men’s mags were concerned). 

The story opens with Jan enjoying dinner with the female friend who brought her here and the three people who live in this house: two beautiful native women and an older native man. But something seems off and Jan’s thoughts are fuzzy…yes, folks, Jan’s been drugged, but the drug leaves only her body unresponsive but her mind is cogent, because the Satanists want Jan to know every horrid thing that happens to her. 

We go immediately to the “sweats” stuff, with Jan taken into a cult chamber where the man and four women strip her down to her “nylon panties” and start pawing her up…but some of the “depredations” done to poor Jan are too much for even our author to recount. About the most we know is that she is tortured; the author intimates that the four use her sexually, but does not go into detail. At any rate, Jan’s heart is ripped out, and that’s it for her. 

I first read this story probably around 2011, when I bought the magazine, and the finale made me laugh then and it still makes me laugh now: after recounting all this lurid horror, author Chuck Graham finishes off the story in a faux stentorian style in which he soundly condemns the atrocities of Satanists in the western world…as if he hadn’t just exploited such atrocities in his lurid story! But then, it is quite evident that most of these men’s mag authors had their tongues firmly in cheek. 

Overall this one certainly serves up the sleazy Satanism, but otherwise “Blood Rites Of Satan’s Darlings” is really just a torture story, with no actual plot or anything else. But then, that’s what we want from the sweats. 

Much longer and more enjoyable is “I Joined A Cross-Country Sex Circus,” by Don Peters “as told to Steve Lawton.” From Barbarians On Bikes I know that this story also appeared in the April 1972 Man’s Story. The men’s mag editors were not shy about reprinting stories. (And by the way, that is not my finger, or carpet, in the screengrabs above; these images are from an eBay listing for the magazine I came across many years ago!)  As mentioned above, bikers were also prime “villain candidates” for the mags, as demonstrated here. 

In this first-person tale, “Don Peters” (though our narrator never actually refers to himself in the story) is going across the Denver area in search of a particular biker. His girlfriend you see was raped and killed by a biker, an act which Don witnessed, but was too busy being knocked out at the time to stop it from happening. He only saw a brawny biker push his girlfriend up against a tree, rape her, and then gut her with a knife – Don got to her before she died, saw that she was holding the broken half of a Maltese Cross, and now Don is going around looking for a biker with a broken Maltese Cross. In other words, the biker who has the other half of this broken cross is the biker who raped and killed Don’s girlfriend. 

Well, it’s an okay setup, I guess. Doesn’t really live up to the title of the story, though. But then, that’s standard for the men’s mags. Don thinks he’s found his bikers when he latches onto a group near Denver and hitches a ride with one of them to a party in the woods. Oh, and by the way Don himself is not a biker, which sort of robs the appeal of the story. He’s really more of an aimless drifter; “dude” is how everyone refers to him, including the “mama” of the club’s boss, who promptly slips into Don’s sleeping bag that night for some barely-described hot action. 

Our hero’s kind of dumb, though. He sets his sights on one of the bikers, sure it’s the man who killed his woman, and then gets him to go off on a pretext. But our hero has been played for a fool and is knocked out. This leads to the climax, where Don somehow manages to free himself – memorably taking out one of the bikers by stomping him repeatedly in the balls. There’s a bizarre editorial error, though; our narrator is about to be killed, too weak to fight, and then the boss’s mama kills the man who is about to kill our hero – but the editor goofs and writes “I” instead of “she,” ie giving the impression that the narrator has saved himself, though it’s clear he did nothing. 

“Bride Of The Corpse – The Incredible Terror Ordeal of Lucia Alvarez,” by sweats veteran Jim McDonald, is another torture piece that lives only to illustrate its memorable splash page. Essentially our narrator, Lucia, an actress in an undisclosed South American country, is brought in by the despotic regime as a “traitor,” and after being groped and tortured she’s tossed into the fresh grave of one of her compatriots, being made to sleep with the corpse. This one’s pretty lame and at least has a happy ending, with Lucia being rescued. 

The last story I’ll focus on from this April 1975 Man’s Story is the cover story, “The Hideous Evil Of The Nazi Fire Beast,” by Hal Sommers. This one’s crazy because it starts off really good: the narrator, a German reporter, is in the morgue, looking at the corpse of a man in his 60s who was an arsonist. Indeed, the old man accidentally killed himself in a fire he was setting. But our narrator suspects a Nazi, and sure enough finds the SS code number (or whatever it is) tattooed beneath the corpse’s arm. He identifies him as a beast named Breslaur. 

From there our narrator goes to a war records place, where he reads about Breslaur’s background…and here the story becomes just another sweat. Without warning we are thrust into the first-person recollections of one of Breslaur’s many victims, our narrator listening to her tape-recorded statements. So now the story’s in 1944 and we read as this beautiful young woman outside Paris is sent to a prison where Breslaur rules with an iron fist. 

He’s not only a sadist but an arsonist, a man who is sexually aroused by fire, and there follows lots of sweat mag stuff where Breslaur tortures women with fire and flaming pokers – ghoulish stuff, somehow made even more ghoulish given that the author doesn’t go into full-bore exploitation, though letting us know without actually saying it that some of the women are raped by the poker. 

This poor girl who has become our new narrator is “only” raped by Breslaur in the traditional way, ie not with a flaming poker – but she knows her time is coming, and the author does a good job of mounting the suspense. But man, this one comes to a rushed end; the war’s over, and Breslaur escapes before he can kill this particular girl, and then we’re back to the narrator’s POV and he’s sickened by all this stuff he’s read – more laugh out loud stuff, because the “sickening” stuff is exactly why the author wrote the story in the first place, which is another indication of how these authors had their tongues in their cheeks – and then the narrator figures that Breslaur must’ve accidentally killed himself in this fire he set, a fitting end for the sixty year-old sadist. The end! 

Otherwise this issue of Man’s Story is filled with the usual sex articles of the later men’s mags, not to mention a whole plethora of ads for sex toys and sex services and sex books. It’s interesting that none of the ads have nudity in them; the nipples are usually blacked out and the actual penetration is also blacked out, so no doubt the concern was Federal charges for sending out porno in the mail. 

I reviewed this December 1974 Man’s Story before, but at the time my focus was on the WWII pulp action story, “OSS Carter’s Death Doll Platoon,” which later made its way into MAQ #5. That’s a good story, but I’ve read it a few times, now – and reviewed it on here twice – so this time I’ll focus on the other stories in this issue. This time I’ll focus on the Satanic sleaze! 

“Helpless Virgins And The Night Of The Slithering Horror” is by Mark Powers “as told to Ted Harper,” and serves up the sleazy Satanic goods. Indeed, this one would be an even better candidate for my imaginary MAQ Hippie Horror Halloween Special. Our narrator is a writer who is visiting Mexico, where apparently he discovered the corpse of a young woman, who appeared to have been killed by snake bites. But the local cops disbelieve him and tell him he’s imagining things. The narrator is content to bang his native girl; cue some of the slightly-more-risque material of the later men’s mags. 

But as I mentioned above, Mexico was apparently a Satanic Disney World in the ‘70s, and you guessed it – there’s a friggin Satanic snake cult operating out of the area, and our narrator saw too much when he came upon the murdered girl. So now the cult abducts his girl, leading to the splashpage illustration where the robed and cowled cultists are about to kill her with a bunch of snakes. But we’re in the world of the men’s mags, thus our hero’s able to get out his gun and start blasting away – a fairly graphic bit where he blasts out the brains of one of the cult leaders. 

A notable element here is that the narrator goes off to a happily ever after with his native gal; as I noted before, the white heroes of the earlier men’s mags were all well and good with having sex with native gals, but rarely if ever stayed with them. But our narrator assures us that he’s staying with his native Nina. Well, that’s progress! That said, there’s an unintentionally hilarious editing snafu where Nina becomes “Linda” for a paragraph. 

“Rape Rampage Of The Sex Cult Savages” is by Rod Brady, and is the title piece of this issue. The most interesting thing about this short and rough story is how the author strives to cater to the splashpage (and cover) illustration; it seems clear that he either saw the artwork, or he was given thorough description of it. Otherwise this is another story that really hinges on sadism and nothing else – but again, that’s what we expect from the sweats. 

A curious thing about this story is that it goes into second-person later in the tale, an unusual stylistic gimmick that you don’t see very often. Outside of Choose Your Own Adventure books, at least. (And yes, I used this exact same joke in my previous review of this tale, but so what! At least I steal from the best!) This grungy little tale, which could almost be a cheap drive-in flick or something that played on 42nd Street, concerns Herbie, a loser who lives with a trio of other losers in Alphabet City, in New York (not referred to that way in the story, but that’s where they are – off Avenue C). Oh, and one of the group is named “Batman!” 

Well, the group has often “gang-banged” women and done other outrageous things, but so far as Herbie’s concerned, all the women have been in on it, or enjoyed it, or were whores and were probably so strung out they didn’t even care. But this time it’s different! The group has picked up a young woman who was waiting for the bus, and they’ve taken her off in van, and now they’re stripping off her clothes and one of them’s carving her initials on her leg…and basically all the other stuff that is shown on the memorable cover/splashpage art, so again it’s clear the author was trying to cater to that. 

But Herbie doesn’t like it, and after a few pages of describing the girl’s horror as she’s pawed and raped – including that aforementioned strange bit where the narrative goes over to “you thought this,” “you thought that,” and other second-person narration – Herbie decides to do something about it, and steps in to save the day. A short, nasty tale, but commendable for actually trying to live up to the artwork, which is something too few of these men’s mag stories ever do. Yet at the same time, it is another indication of how the plots of the actual stories seldom if ever lived up to the potential of the titles.

Otherwise in this issue we have “The Nazi War Who Made War On The Maidens Of The Maquis,” which I also reviewed previously, as well as the usual sex-based articles and ads. One of the ads really made me chuckle, though: 

Well, as the cover will attest, we’re now in a totally different men’s mag world. And yes, I did block out the ta-tas in the above screengrab; don’t want the blog to get hit with another random sensitive content warning. But boy, the pulpy thrills of the early days are for the most part gone; this December 1976 issue of Male is printed on slick paper, not the pulpy paper of earlier men’s mags, and it features full-color interior photography. And boy, folks, we’re talking straight-up Penthouse sort of stuff. The models who pose for us are fully nude and, uh, fully spread, so absolutely nothing is left to the imagination. 

In a way it’s a sad end to the men’s mags; the cool “I’m an honest vet who fought for my country and now I just wanna work at my blue-collar job and go home to read about virile yanks banging big-boobed broads during the war while I have a smoke and a drink” vibe of the early days is completely gone; this is porn, and sleazy porn at that. The market had clearly changed, and the men’s mag editors were desperate to cater to a readership that wanted Hustler instead of quality tales of military action. For, believe it or not, Male was one of the “upmarket” men’s mags I referred to above, offering stories and articles that were much better than the grungy stuff in the sweats. But reading this December, 1976 issue of the magazine, you’d never guess that. 

That said, they still managed to get some fairly good fiction into the pages, and “Ex-MP Who Became The Sex-And-Crime King Of Europe” by Jerry Trumbalt is a case in point. In fact I think this story is the reason I picked up this issue many years ago. It’s a heist yarn, about a moral-lacking MP who heists the Army payroll with a team he puts together, and then goes into the slave-trade business outside of Tangier. 

As with many of these stories, it’s framed as a nonfiction piece; Harry Malone is an MP with a mind for an angle and he gets responsibility for all the payrolls in a part of Germany. He puts together a team from the stockade and they pull the heist – but all that is sort of told in summary. The meat of the tale is Malone taking the money and starting up a lucrative sex-trade business, which he runs on a ship in the Tangier area. He also enjoys testing out all the girls he will sell: 

“Anal sex was something she held the patent on.” Now there’s a line that needs to be stolen for a book. More focus is placed on Malone and his run-ins with the abovementioned Arabic criminal, culminating in a firefight by some ancient Roman ruins in the desert. Overall a pretty good story, but not as long as such a story would have been in an earlier men’s mag. 

Earl Norem, my favorite of all the men’s mag artists, handles the nice splashpage for “The Rape Hunt Brothers,” by Anthony Farrar, another short piece that harkens back to the men’s mags of yore. This one’s a fairly short revenge piece about a group of five scumbags in Baja California who drive around in a “high-powered car” and enjoy raping female American tourists. And beating their men to a pulp. 

But the group, which manages to evade arrest, sows its own fate when one of the rape victims goes back home and tells her three brothers to get revenge for her. So now these good ol’ boys head down to Mexico to find the scumbags and make them pay…though, for vague reasons, their sister wants it all to be “legal.” Okay, whatever. This grim setup doesn’t prevent the author from “inserting” a random sex scene: 

As you can see, the sexual material has become more risque in the later years. The revenge angle is given short shrift, with the brothers catching the scumbags in action – as illustrated by Norem in his splashpage – and then shooting at them as they drive away. 

The sexual material is even more risque in “Porno Girls And The Casting Couch,” by Eugene Grant, which purports to be another nonfiction piece, the author interviewing a few porno actresses, but this is really just the framework for a bunch of explicit sex scenes: 

It’s like this throughout; the author will introduce a girl “in action,” then spend some time talking to her about how she got into the porno biz – and even here sex is factored in, as the girls all got into the biz after having sex with a guy (or, in the case of one of them, sex with a gal). This story too suffers from an abrupt finale, as if the author hit his word count without expecting it. 

Then there’s “Secrets Of A Whore House Detective,” by George Harris “as told to” Simon Koch. Note the title: It’s “Whore House Detective” here in the magazine, whereas it’s shown as “Cat House Detective” on the magazine cover. Again, methinks the concern was over what could and could not be shown on the cover, due to these magazines being sent out in the mail. This is another pseudo-nonfiction piece, about a detective who works for a “consortium” of health insurance companies – his job to root out “pockets of infection” in the prostitution world. 

The detective is currently in NYC, where a shipment of fifty whores have been sent in by “the Chicago Syndicate” to entertain the delegation that’s come in town for a Democrat convention(!!!). Word has it that a new strain of syphilis or whatever has broken out, and this detective’s job is to find the infected hooker(s); the consortium isn’t concerned with morality or legality, they’re just sick of paying out for men who contract STDs from infected hookers! So this detective’s job is to find an infected whore and report her to the cops, to keep her off the streets. 

Other than that, this issue of Male features the usual sex exposes, not to mention a lot of full-color photographs of fully-nude women (one of whom sports very unattractive hairy armpits!), in a manner more Hustler sleazy than anything you’d see in Playboy. It’s no surprise that the men’s mags would soon wither away.

Duffy

Duffy, by Harry Joe Brown, Jr.

October, 1968  Dell Books

One of those movies that seems to be completely forgotten, Duffy was a caper film that tried to tap into the late ‘60s zeitgeist and starred James Coburn as the titular character. The only reason I ever heard of it was many years ago when I was into the work of Donald Cammell, who later wrote and directed Performance. I’ve still never seen Duffy, but now I’ve read the novelization – which was written by Harry Joe Brown Jr., who was the other writer of the script. 

So far as I can tell, this is the only writing credit for Brown, and also Duffy appeared to be his only movie. He died in 2005, and was born into “Hollywood Royalty.”  But man, having read this book I can see why he didn’t do any other movies. Duffy is a dud, even in book form…and I have the suspicion that Brown wrote the original script before Donald Cammell was brought in to rewrite it. Further, I suspect that, like Paradise Alley, this novelization is a reflection of the author’s original screenplay…I’ve browsed online for reviews of the film, and have found mentions of scenes that aren’t even in this novel, so I’m guessing this was stuff added by Cammell that did not exist in Harry Joe Brown Jr.’s draft of the script. 

Essentially the novel is a basic heist yarn, only very drawn out, and made relevant with a “groovy” Eurotrash vibe. It’s a lot like the film version of The Adventurers by Harold Robbins, only without the saucy stuff. It’s short, too, coming in at 140 big-print pages. This is because there isn’t much story. Basically it’s about two half-brothers who decide to rip off their mega-wealthy father, and Duffy is an American expat they go to for help in the caper. There’s also a hotstuff American girl named Segolene who gets caught up in the mix. But it takes forever for anything to happen, and when it does, it’s not very memorable. 

One thing the novel seems to make clear that the movie might not is that the characters are all European, save for Duffy and Segolene…but then the latter is presented as one of those annoying American girls who goes overseas and starts acting “continental,” with a fake accent and etc. Plus her name is confusing; you’d never guess she was an American. The mega-wealthy father being heisted is named Calvet, an Onassis-type who was played by James Mason in the film (where he was renamed “Calvert”). The plotting half-brothers are Stefan, Calvet’s 20 year-old French son, and Anthony, Calvet’s half-British son of a previous marriage. The gist is that Stefan, as Calvet’s “main” son, has all the family wealth, whereas Anthony, as the “former” son, has nothing and must work. The two men hatch a scheme to heist Calvet’s ship, The Osiris, which will be hosting “currency transfers” around Tangier. Anthony needs the money because he has none, and Stefan wants to pull a heist just for the fun of it. 

It's through Stefan that we get most of those “groovy” period details. He likes to smoke joints and is prone to spouting New Age hippie philosophy, like how time is meaningless and whatnot. His girlfriend is blonde American model Segolene, but Segolene is a free spirit and not truly attached to him. This is another of those topical details, but the problem is Brown makes Segolene seem more like a narcisstic whore than a free-spirited, free-thinking woman. But then, perhaps that was precisely Brown’s intent. Susannah York played her in the movie, while future Performance co-star James Fox played “Stefane,” indicating that another name was changed from Brown’s original script. John Alderton played Anthony. 

Duffy meanwhile is described as a beach bum in his thirties, a former Navy man, who now makes his living as an artist in Tangier. Reviews of the movie have it that his pad in Tangier is decorated with tacky sculptures of the female anatomy, but none of this is present in the novelization. Rather, Duffy is a cipher with no real motivation…perhaps more commentary on the hippie mindset, for Duffy is clearly identified as a hippie. Dell Books was very intent on getting this across, with a headline announcing “Take a trip” on the first page of the book. Otherwise Duffy’s hippie-ism is mainly evident in how he has no real life intentions, other than lazing in Tangier and creating art. He doesn’t even display much of a libido. 

Brown is in no hurry to tell his tale. None whatsoever. There’s also no real drive to the heist. The two brothers want to hit their father’s ship, and go about their leisurely plotting of the job. Brown’s also in no hurry to introduce Duffy, who doesn’t even appear in the narrative until page 33. Here we are told he’s 32, with sandy brown hair and “Bogart-ish” looks. Duffy previously worked for Calvet, thus the brothers know of him, and ultimately they hit upon the idea of using him in the heist. Even the way Stefan and Anthony bring Duffy into the caper is lame; they essentially hang out with him for a bit and get into a “daydream” discussion about hitting a boat in the ocean and stealing four million bucks off it, and how such a job could be done. 

In the meantime there’s a lot of stuff with Segolene, who is more annoying than arousing, at least in the book. Stefan sort of puts her on Duffy, as a honey trap I guess, but even here it’s just more “hip” dialog, like her admission that “Stefan calls me a whore. I guess I am a whore.” How shocking! It takes a while, but Segolene does eventually give in to Duffy’s virility: “Slowly, fully, she let him enter her.” A clever thing here is how after their initial boink, there’s a part where Duffy and Segolene awake in bed and Duffy muses how, in books, sex scenes are often glossed over, with the author jumping immediately to the post-sex material…which is exactly what Brown does in Duffy. I thought this was funny, particularly given how I always note in my reviews if the sex scenes are off-page; Harry Joe Brown Jr. was noting the same thing in 1968, it appears. 

But Duffy’s still a bit of a square; when he wakes up next morning to find Stefan and Anthony standing over the bed, Duffy feels uncomfortable, given the fact that the two clearly know that Duffy’s been having sex with Segolene, ie Stefan’s “woman.” But man, it’s the late ‘60s! Get with it! And plus, as Segolene insists, she belongs to no one. In other words, she’s a “slut,” as Duffy calls her shortly before their sex scene. Now that’s how you get a woman! Anyway, at this point Duffy is as expected in on the heist, which sees him disguised as a Bedouin and the two brothers also disguised as they board their father’s ship and then rob it with “Israeli submachine guns,” clearly Uzis, though Brown never identifies them. 

The heist is bloodless and more on a suspense angle, but only takes up several pages and really isn’t much to get hung up about. Indeed, it’s the post-heist material that takes us into the climax, with a “shock twist” reveal that one of the plotters is actually working with Calvet…for reasons that aren’t even made clear. But Duffy gets the last laugh; having figured out the duplicity, he “finds” the money that’s been heisted and returns it in a public setting, ensuring plenty of media coverage and making himself look like a hero. It’s a clever ending, only undone by the fact that Duffy hasn’t done anything clever before this. 

All told, Duffy wasn’t so much a “trip” as it was a “bore.” I doubt I’ll ever see the film now, and if I want some Donald Cammell material I’ll just watch Performance again…or The Touchables, if I’m really desperate. That one’s only slightly better than Duffy, but at least has a super-mod look and features a cast of smokin’ hot swingin’ ‘60s babes.

The Gravy Train Hit

The Gravy Train Hit, by Curtis Stevens

November, 1974  Dell Books

Nominated for an Edgar Award in 1975, The Gravy Train Hit clearly seems to be “inspired” by John Godey’s The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (which is even referenced on the cover); author “Curtis Stevens” is in reality the writing combo of Richard Curtis and Paul Stevens. The book is copyright them and the first page informs us of the pseudonym; I haven’t bothered to research them much but I believe Richard Curtis was an agent and/or an editor. 

I got this book several years ago during one of my frequent ‘70s crime kicks, and of course was drawn to it because it’s a paperback original. Plus it takes place in ‘70s pulp-crime sweet spot New York. Similar to another Edgar nominee of the day, Death Of An Informer, this one features a black protagonist; indeed, The Gravy Train Hit almost comes off like the novelization of a Blaxploitation movie that never was. But man the first twenty or so pages are a bumpy read for sure, and for a while there I thought maybe this was part of that unofficial Dell “sleazy paperbacks” line of the day, a la Making U-Hoo and Black Magic. 

Because, it surprised me to discover, The Gravy Train Hit is a comedy, a goofy one at that, with humor that won’t resonate much today…the Prologue being a case in point, which takes place in 1881 and features a bumbling black guy who comes across a train wreck and is mistakenly identified as “the first n-word train robber” (and no, they don’t write “n-word”), and eventually he is hanged for it…and it’s all played as comedy, complete with painful “former slave diction” for this guy, like “heah” instead of “here” and the like. 

Then the book proper begins and we are introduced to our hero, 24 year-old Cleron Jonas in early ‘70s New York, descendant of the protagonist in the Prologue (and sharing the same name), whose “large ears jut out of his closely barbered kinky hair.” So I wondered if we were in for an entire book of this stuff…my concerns compounded when Cleron was revealed to be a bumblng fool, taking a hot dog with him on his first day at the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s new central office and inadvertently jamming the hot dog into a computer key slot during training. Otherwise it was cool to read about computers and their “Twenty First Century sounds” here in a 1974 novel; Cleron, having worked for the MTA for four years and knowing every inch of the New York subway system, is one of the chosen few to oversee the computer that monitors the rail system. 

Fortunately the comedy becomes slightly less goofy in nature as the book progresses, and for the most part the humor comes through the actions of the characters. And luckily Cleron Jonas will prove to be less a bumbling fool than he is a good-natured guy who harbors a lifelong dream of becoming a master criminal. Inspired by his ancestor, Cleron daydreams about being Wild West outlaw “Black Cleron,” and we have a couple fantasies featuring this character before Cleron realizes he has the makings of a real-world, first-class crime act right in front of him: robbing the “gravy train,” ie the armored train that collects all of the subway system’s receipts for the day. 

That said, when the sexual material transpires, it’s just as explicitly-rendered as in those aforementioned sleaze paperbacks Dell published at the time. All of which is to say, The Gravy Train Hit is more comparable to, say, Sexual Strike Force than it is to a crime thriller. The cover photo of a revolver could just as easily have been replaced by a scantily-clad female model, same as those other Dell paperbacks, to the point that I wondered if The Gravy Train Hit was in fact written as part of this line. The fact that it’s a comedy, with zero in the way of violence, further lends credence to the theory that it was never intended as a “serious” crime novel…which is how Dell packaged it. 

And hell it must’ve worked, otherwise the book wouldn’t have been nominated for an Edgar. But it’s curious that it was, as really The Gravy Train Hit is kind of stupid, let down by its goofy tone. Basically, young Cleron Jonas, an up-and-coming MTA computer worker who has never lived up to his full potential, strikes upon the idea of robbing the titular gravy train, while trying to also swindle the Jewish Mafia, the Black Mafia, and the regular old Mafia, each of which is trying to horn in on the caper. Plus he falls in love with a “light-skinned” black babe named Verna who engages in frequent explicit sex with him. 

It’s through Verna that Cleron comes up with the idea to rob the gravy train; there’s a nice “meet cute” between the two when Cleron, on his first day as an MTA bigwig, is riding the subway in full uniform, and a sexy young chick named Verna asks him for directions. Since he’s been ordered to ride the rails all day, as an “owner” of the system now, Cleron gets the idea that he can just keep riding with Verna, working up the nerve to ask her out. The way this plays out is a caper in itself, and nicely handled. Also Verna is an interesting character: as the weeks progress and she and Cleron become a steady item, she is the one who keeps trying to initiate sex with Cleron. But Cleron refuses, wanting to “become a man” first (by pulling a big robbery), and then “taking” her. And when the naughty stuff finally does happen, boy does it leave no juicy stone unturned, again reminding the veteran sleaze-hound of material in those other Dell paperbacks – super hardcore stuff. 

As for the caper itself, as mentioned it plays off on a comedic angle. Not even a “light” comedic angle; it’s straight-up slapstick, as Cleron goes from one racial stereotype to another as he first tries to get the Mafia in on the heist and then, having been turned down by the Italians, goes to the Jewish Mafia. Which also says no. Meanwhile Cleron’s older brother, a thug in the Black Mafia, starts to suspect Cleron is up to something (there’s no love lost between the two), and soon enough all three of these organizations come back to Cleron and basically insist they take part in the heist. 

How the caper goes down is kind of fun and no doubt why The Gravy Train Hit was nominated for the Edgar. But those expecting a gritty ‘70s crime thriller will be let down; again, the cover photo is very misleading. Instead Cleron orchestrates the entire thing from the computer terminal at the MTA office, speaking to the various thugs via the radio system; he cleverly works them against each other in what is the highlight of the book. This takes up the final quarter of the slim novel – the book’s only 157 pages – and the authors keep the narrative moving, with a calm and cool Cleron giving directions to the increasingly-panicked crooks who carry out his scheme…in ways they don’t comprehend. 

The problem with Cleron directing affairs remotely is that there’s no impact to the finale of The Gravy Train Hit. For that matter, the “hit” of the gravy train itself happens off-page, with Cleron merely instructing one group of thugs to go in and tie up the gravy train guards, simple as that. Instead, it’s still on the comedy angle with the increasing bewilderment and panic of the various thugs Cleron orders around down in the subway system, moving them like pawns. But then Cleron does prove to be rather brutal, nonchalantly sending some of them to their doom – though he specifies it’s only those who “deserve it” who will get hurt. 

Overall The Gravy Train Hit is a quick read, sometimes funny but for the most part kind of annoying. That is, if judged as a crime novel. If judged along the likes of, say, Black Magic or Michelle, My Belle, then it’s certainly a success, as unlike those novels there’s more to the story than just goofy shenanigans and bursts of sleaze. I also enjoyed the feel for mid-‘70s New York; in particular the reader gets a good appreciation of the byzantine byways and mainlines of the MTA.

Mission: Impossible #4: Code Name: Little Ivan

Mission: Impossible #4: Code Name: Little Ivan, by John Tiger

No month stated, 1969  Popular Library

After a one-year gap the Mission: Impossible series returned with this fourth (and final) volume. Walter Wager also returned as “John Tiger;” he’d written the first volume back in 1967. That one tied in with the show’s first season; Code Name: Little Ivan ties in with the fourth season. Series regulars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were gone, meaning that their characters Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter do not appear in this book; instead, we have magician/actor Paris (as protrayed by none other than Leonard Nimoy in Seasons 4 and 5), and a female character named Annabelle Drue, a “sloe-eyed” beauty who previously worked as a model before becoming an IMF agent “three years ago.” This character is unique to Code Name: Little Ivan, and likely was a creation of the editors at Popular Library. 

For, page 12 and the back cover copy of Code Name: Little Ivan reveal that Rollin Hand and Cinnamon Carter did appear in Wager’s original text: Paris is mistakenly referred to as “Rollin” on page 12, and the back cover lists Cinnamon as one of the characters in the book. So it seems clear that these two characters were originally in the book, but had to be replaced when the actors left the show. And only the names were changed, as Paris acts in the same capacity as Rollin Hand – a noted actor who seems mostly into the whole IMF thing for the drama – and Annabelle Drue is described in the same terms Wager used for Cinnamon Carter in the first novel: a “leggy blonde,” etc. I’d imagine some editor at the imprint had to go through the text and change all mentions of “Rollin Hand” to “Paris” and “Cinnamon Carter” to “Annabelle Drue;” other than the aforementioned two misses, the editor did a good job. 

Wager again proves himself the best writer on this short-lived series, and not just because he’s clearly the only writer who actually bothered to watch the show. Once again his novel feels very much like an episode of the series, perhaps one with an expanded budget. While the previous two novels just seemed like generic ‘60s spy action, Code Name: Little Ivan is clearly intended to be a genuine Mission: Impossible story, following the template of every show: IMF “chief” Jim Phelps (described by Wager as an athletic “blond” man…who packs a .357 Magnum beneath his “expensively-tailored” sport coat!) is briefed via self-destructing tape and then goes about pondering the assignment and then putting together a team for the job. Here we get the tidbit that the Impossible Mission Force is comprised of “volunteer civilian daredevils.” 

One additional thing Wager injects into his version of Mission: Impossible is a sense of humor. I wasn’t too fond of this – the show itself is usually pretty cold and aloof – but fortunately it wasn’t too egregious. We aren’t talking pratfalls or anything, but we have a lot of goofy bantering between idiotic East German officials, with a bungling assistant who is the source of his superior’s wrath…and also a lot of the payoffs on the caper are done comedically, which doesn’t gibe with the series vibe at all. This even extends to the typically-cold IMF agents, particularly Paris, who often chortles to himself about “going too far” in his portrayal of an overly-patriotic Red Army officer. There’s also a little more “friendly banter” among the IMF agents than typically seen in the show; Paris, for example, is a bit egotistical, and Phelps convinces him to take the job by appealing to his egotism. 

Now that I think of it, Code Name: Little Ivan doesn’t veer too far from the constraints of the show; given some of the relatively implausible sci-fi scenarios seen on Mission: Impossible, I think the plot of this one could have fit right in. Basically, the IMF team must get into East Germany and steal a protoype Russian tank that’s made of a new alloy. As it turns out, though, there aren’t any big fireworks or really any action whatsoever; late in the novel there is a staged assault on a German military base, but in true Mission: Impossible style it’s all a fakeout, nothing more than Barney Collier hoodwinking the moronic soldiers with a sound effects tape. 

Wager has the mandatory opening down pat: Phelps shows up at a carnival in his unstated home city and proves his marksmanship skills to win a stuffed animal. After exchanging some code words with the proprietor, Phelps gets on a roller coaster – one that stops at the top so he, alone on the ride, can hear the secret tape that’s embedded in the stuffed animal. A secret tape which of course self-destructs after playing. From there to the also-mandatory bit of Phelps in his swank pad going over his IMF dossier to put together his team; here we learn that “Paris” was injured in a recent assignment and has not been stated as fit for duty by the medics, but Phelps figures Paris will take the job when he hears how impossible it is. 

And it truly is one for the “master thieves” of the IMF: they must steal an entire tank and sneak it out of East Germany. So they go about this in the usual caper way: Phelps and Barney pose as salesmen for “Lovely Lips,” a lipstick manufacturer(!), Annabelle is their hotstuff French model, and Paris poses as a KGB agent, with typically-sidelined muscleman Willy Armitage acting as his chaffeur. Willy’s presence was apparently challenging even for the screenwriters – how do you integrate a strongman into every single caper? – but Wager has it that he and Paris often work together as a pair, even though they are so physically mismatched. Of course, this likely made more sense with the original Rollin Hand/Martin Landau of Wager’s original text, rather than the tall and lanky Paris/Leonard Nimoy. 

Despite a brief 128 pages, there’s still a fair amount of padding in Code Name: Little Ivan, mostly due to the scenes featuring one-off East German characters. Also, the caper itself doesn’t unfold with as much tension as on the show. Wager does try to instill a little suspense in some spots, but it comes off as at odds with the show itself, where the capers most always went off without a hitch – even when they seemed to be going wrong, it would turn out to be yet another bit of “5D chess” by mastermind Phelps. Here we have sort of “tense” bits where the machine they plan to use to hide the tank starts leaking water from beneath the big “Lovely Lips” truck and Annabelle must distract the East German guard with some small talk; stuff like that. 

But otherwise there’s no action per se, unlike the previous two novels in the series with their car chases and shootouts. The caper goes down on more of a comedic nature, with Paris – wearing one of the show’s famous “rubber masks” – posing as a Ukranian tank expert and steering it for the awaiting IMF team. Spoiler alert, but just to note it for posterity: the way the IMF team hoodwink the Commies is they have a water-filled rubber replica of the tank, which they leave on the road while Paris drives the real tank into the awaiting Lovely Lips truck. Even here the tone is one of comedy, with an idiotic East German officer insisting one of his men to get on the “tank” the next day, only for the nonplussed soldier to claim the tank is sinking beneath his weight – because it’s a rubber replica filled with water. 

Wager does sort of replicate the moment where the villains realize they’ve been swindled – always one of the highlights of the show – but here, again, it’s mostly comedic, other than an off-page bit where two of the Commies shoot each other due to some IMF hijinkery. But that’s it; the two separate teams drive over the border to West Germany and that’s all she wrote for Code Name: Little Ivan, as well as the Mission: Impossible tie-in series itself. All told this was an okay series, with the caveat that the second and third volumes seemed to be novelizations of an entirely different show.

Men’s Adventure Quarterly #6

Men's Adventure Quarterly #6, edited by Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham, and Paul Bishop

October, 2022  Subtropic Productions

Every issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly has been great, but this sixth volume was really up my alley. It’s devoted to heist yarns, and some years ago I personally was on a hunt for men’s magazine heist stories. In fact, a few of the stories I hunted for but never acquired are actually collected here. So once again Bob Deis, Bill Cunningham, and guest editor Paul Bishop have done everyone a great service by bringing these long-lost tales back into print. 

Even better, many of the stories here are from the ‘70s, which to me was the decade that crime fiction was at its best. This also means that the stories here are slightly more risque than the men’s adventure stories of the decades before. It also means the stories are a little shorter; even the “Book Bonuses” collected here are shorter than those from the ‘50s and early to mid ‘60s. All told though, the editors have done a swell job of putting together a great “snatch” (lame pun alert) of men’s mag heist stories. In fact it would be an even sweller idea if they did another heist theme in a future MAQ. 

A cool thing about the heist stories in the men’s adventure magazines is that they usually lack the fat of a longer novel in the genre. While you still get the planning of the heist and the carrying out of it, the timeline is much accelerated. Also, there’s more than likely going to be a full-breasted babe in various stages of undress (perhaps even more than one such babe) at some point in the story. The protagonists, while criminals, are generally the same square-jawed “Yanks” (as they were always referred to in the original mags) that would feature in the WWII stories the men’s mags were more known for. That said, many of the protagonists are vets; there seems to have been a requirement from the editorial department that the heroes be combat veterans. 

As usual we get nice intros from each editor, with overviews of favorite heist movies and novels. There’s a lot of Bill Cunningham’s usual great art direction here, with movie posters and stills augmenting the text. There’s also a great beefcake section on Angie Dickinson. Completely random TMI moment: I recall seeing a glimpe of Ms. Dickinson in the 1980 movie Dressed To Kill, shortly after it came out and was on HBO or something – my parents had one of those boxes on the TV set that would get HBO or “The Superstation” (aka TBS). I was only six or seven at the time, but man, what I saw was Ms. Dickinson in the shower – I don’t even think she was nude – and we’ll just say I was, uh, moved by the sight. To this day I’ve still never seen Dressed To Kill, but I’ll always remember it for that. 

Well anyway, on with the show. Things start off swimmingly with “The Flying Bank Looters,” by Tom Christopher and from the October 1967 Man’s World. In one of his typically informative intros, Bob Deis notes that “Tom Christopher” was really author Thomas Chastain…and it occurred to me I’ve never read one of the guy’s novels before. Oh and one thing I had to laugh about – the slugline on the splashpage (with art by my favorite of them all, Earl Norem) says that the story features a “whirlpool of greed and laughter” (emphasis mine)! I’m assuming that’s supposed to be “slaughter,” and I’m curious if that’s how it appears in the original Man’s World printing. 

Chastain’s story is a fast-moving piece of crime fiction that dwells a little more on the setup than the other stories collected here. It concerns a dude named Frank Cage, hiding down in Colombia as a ranch hand after some criminal business in the States. He concocts a scheme to heist the “Jetbanco” venture, which is a sort of flying bank for the remote ranches in the area. Cage’s American girlfriend, with her “thrusting breasts,” also shows up for some men’s mag-patented off-page lovin’. All told a fun story that sets the tone for the rest of the magazine, complete with the mandatory “complications ensue” finale. 

Next up is a novella that’s more in-line with the typical men’s mag story in that it’s a long one that takes place during World War II: “G.I. Stick-Up Mob That Heisted $33 Million In Nazi Gold,” by Eugene Joseph and from the November 1967 Male. This is the longest story here, and somewhat reminded me of Mario Puzo’s men’s mag story that became a novel, Six Graves To Munich, in that the framing story takes place after the war, with a long flashback to the war itself. It’s not revenge that centers the tale here, but hero Steve Brock’s quest to collect the titular Nazi gold he hid near the Elbe in January of 1945. 

This one really does read like the typical men’s mag war yarn, with Brock leading his tank squadron against the Germans in various pitched battles. The author works in the mandatory full-breasted babe, in this case a hotstuff “fraulein” who engages Brock in a “brutal bout of love” right on some rubble! I mean the poor girl’s back must’ve hurt like hell! This girl is the one who informs Brock of a stash of gold the Nazis have plundered, and Brock talks his men into routing the Germans and stealing it – even though they’ll have to go up against the Russians, too. 

The “1946” story finds Brock with yet another hotstuff German babe, this one a nurse, as he tries to figure out who among his men is trying to kill him. It’s more on the suspense angle here, but the revelation of who was the double-crosser wasn’t as shocking as the author likely intended. A curious note about this tale is that the yank hero marries the native gal at the end of the story; as I noted ten years ago in my review of Women With Guns, in the majority of the men’s mag stories the yank heroes would bang foreign gals with aplomb, but would generally go back home and marry an American girl in the end. 

“Stop California’s Iron Shark Heist Commandos” is pretty much everything I was looking for in this volume of Men’s Adventure Quarterly. It’s by yet another famous author in disguise: Martin Cruz Smith, credited as Tom Irish in the December 1967 issue of For Men Only. Oh, and that’s another note – all the stories collected in this issue are from the “Diamond Line” of men’s adventure magazines, meaning that the quality of the writing is always good. Cruz Smith proves that here, in a fast-moving tale in which a group of heisters take on a floating casino in Baja. 

Smith also works in a bit of a cold war angle in that the hero of the tale is an undercover agent who infiltrates a specially-selected gang of heisters. After some training they carry out the heist, outfitted in scuba suits and hoisting Stoner subguns. There’s a bit more action in this one but truth be told, I found the writing to be harried, as if Smith had to jettison chunks of plot due to limitations on the word count. The finale is especially rushed, with various reveals and turnarounds happening so quickly that they don’t really resonate. 

Don Honig, one of the few men’s adventure magazine authors still with us today, shows up in another MAQ with “Band Of Misfits,” from the January 1970 Action For Men. I really appreciated Bob’s intro for this, as in it Don Honig himself shares the background on the story, which he came up with while on vacation. This yarn is a bit more smallscale than the previous ones, seeing a somewhat smalltime heister planning to hit a casino in Mexico. But then he runs into a hotstuff blonde divorcee with “huge, soft breasts,” and just as our hero predicts the female presence only serves to “louse up” the heist. Then he runs into a fellow ex-con, which louses things up even more. Overall an enterntaining, fast-moving piece. 

Next up is a story I reviewed here back in 2015, and thanks to Bob for mentioning my review in his intro: “The Great Sierra Mob Heist,” by C.K. Winston and from the December 1971 Male. Now, do not go back and read my review, unless that is you’ve already read the story and know everything that happens in it. Back when I wrote that review, I had no idea that one day Bob Deis and cohorts would be bringing these men’s adventure stories back into print. But I read the story again in this issue of MAQ, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It was my favorite story in the issue, in fact. I also appreciated Bob’s intro, with more background from Don Honig on who exactly C.K. Winston was. 

One thing I noticed in my second reading of “The Great Sierra Mob Heist” was the increased focus on sleaze; “hero” Asherman gets it on with both the nubile babes who are involved in the heist, and author Winston heightens the sleazy vibe of the remote gambling resort with a part where a couple have sex in a sauna – an act of cheap showiness that prudish Asherman doesn’t think much of. There are also minor sleazy details like Asherman putting his hand down the “hot pants” of one of his conquests, and the girl “widen[s] her stance to accommodate him.”  There’s also more violence, like the opening bit of Asherman brutally and gorily killing off an ex-con who recognizes him; an interesting parallel to an event in Honig’s “Band Of Misfits.”  

“The G.I. Wild Bunch” is by prolific men’s mag author Grant Freeling and from the March 1975 Male. This one detours from the heist vibe of the other stories in that it’s more about a guy trying to clear his name. There’s a “Yankee Gang” hitting places in early ‘70s West Germany, and it appears to be a group of American G.I.s behind it. Our hero, Landers, is a ‘Nam vet with a shady past who is set up by the heist mob, falling for a “fraulein” honey trap who steals his ID. This bit contains the phenomenal line: “[Landers] realized, to his astonishment, that the large, round, but thrustingly firm breasts beneath her dress were not supported by a bra. The unseen nipples hardened instantly…” Of course the lovin’ happens off-page, but still, great line. Otherwise this one’s like The Fugitive, with Landers evading the military police while tracking down the heisters who framed him. 

More G.I.s-turned-heisters hijinks ensue with “G.I. ‘Hayseeds’ Who Pulled A $2 Million Gold Heist,” by Frank Porter as told to Michael Cullen and from the July 1975 Male. This one rides on the rednecksploitation vibe of the mid-‘70s, with a “hayseed” narrator telling us all the misadventures he and his two buddies endured while trying to hijack some counterfeit coins up in Canada. An interesting note about this one is that it’s the only story here without a female presence. Instead, things play out more on a dark comedy nature with the narrator telling us how one thing after another goes wrong in the heist, as it turns out the coins belonged to the Mafia. The “G.I.” nature isn’t much played up in the actual story, and is just more indication that these men’s mags tried to cater to a readership likely made up of ex-G.I.s. 

The final yarn is even more oddball in its riding of current trends: “Arizona’s Incredible ‘Kung Fu’ Vengeance Heisters,” by Grant Freeling and from the November 1973 Male. This is another longish yarn, and also the second story in this MAQ by Freeling, who has always been one of my favorite men’s mag authors. Here Freeling combines three setups: a heist, revenge, and kung-fu. He also gets the sleaze in, with the story opening with hero Hal Brice checking out a “voluptuous” blonde. Of course, within a few paragraphs he’ll be in bed with her, this being a men’s mag story. 

In his intro Bob Deis notes how Bruce Lee’s image was ripped off for the story’s splashpage, but I couldn’t help but notice the similarity of the hero’s name, as well: I mean, Hal Brice. He too is a former G.I., and in quickly rendered backstory we learn how his father was rendered destitute by an evil land baron. This guy had teenaged Brice beaten up, after which our hero went to ‘Nam – where he, of course, learned kung-fu – and now Brice has returned to the States to get a little revenge. The voluptuous blonde is part of his vengeance scheme, being as she is the secretary (and of course mistress) of the evil baron. 

This is the rare men’s mag story that also makes reference to the more liberal times; one of Brice’s associates is a former ‘Nam pilot who now does marijuana runs across the border, but has had to stop due to the recent crackdown. This is relayed bluntly, with no condemnation or anything. Now that I think of it, how I wish there was a men’s mag story about dope-running pilots. Hell, maybe there is – Bob Deis would know. Anyway, the kung-fu stuff only factors in the frequent action scenes, with Brice insisting “no guns” and using only hands and feet during the heist of the baron’s coffers. But like so many other stories here, the tale ends with a surprise betrayal or two. Overall, this was a great way to round out the issue. 

It came out a few months ago, but Men’s Adventure Quarterly is still available at Amazon, and would make for perfect escapist summer reading. These stories can be brain-rotting, though. This is also TMI, but one day I was at work, and I’d just been reading this issue of MAQ in the morning, and this lovely young coworker happened to walk by my desk, with a tight top showing off her ample charms (which us male coworkers aren’t supposed to notice, of course, I mean the toxic masculinity of it all). No lie, friends, but the phrase “jutting breasts” popped unbidden into my head. Unfortunately, she did not saunter over to my desk to offer her services in whatever heist I might be cooking up. 

The Ms. Squad #2: On The Brink

The Ms. Squad #2: On The Brink, by Mercedes Endfield

September, 1975  Bantam Books

We have here the second (and final!) installment of The Ms. Squad, one of the more curious representations of the “men’s adventure” genre you’ll ever encounter. This is because it is in fact a caper with a light comedy tone and features a trio of women who are determined to do everything better than men – especially heisting places. But as it turns out, the best thing about On The Brink is the cover art; it isn’t credited, but it looks so similar to the work of EC Comics alum Jack Davis that I’ll go ahead and assume it’s by him. The same artist did the cover for the first volume of the series, Lucky Pierre (which I don’t have). 

Also the background of the book is more interesting than the actual plot; it’s copyright “Ruth Harris Books, Inc,” which appears to have been an outfit similar to Lyle Kenyon Engel’s “Book Creations Inc.” Only much less successful; I can hardly find anything credited to “Ruth Harris Books.” On The Brink is itself credited to Bela Von Block in the Catalog Of Copyright Entries. Block was a prolific writer of the era, writing under a host of pseudonyms, though this is the first book of his I’ve reveiewed here. He had most success writing as “Johnathan Black” in the ‘70s and ‘80s, turning out big, Harold Robbins-style blockbusters like The World Rapers and The Carnage Merchants. Around a decade ago a reader from Manhattan sent me a few packages of books, with a handful by Black, enthusing over their sordid plots (not to mention the strange frequency in which the word “smega” appeared in them), but folks I still haven’t read those books, and I feel bad about that. But damn, they’re long; The Carnage Merchants for example is over 900 pages! 

Well anyway, if Bela Von Block did indeed write On The Brink, one can only hope his “Jonathan Black” material was better – that is, if Block was really Black. That too seems to be a mystery, but I was fairly confident of this at one point. These days I’m not confident about anything. Wait, I’m confident that most of you won’t dig this book. Because I’m sad to report it isn’t very good. And despite being under 160 pages it moves really slowly. This is because Block doesn’t seem to know how to write a fast-moving book. So much of On the Brink is given over to telling rather than showing…with the double kick to the crotch that we’re often told about stuff we already saw happen! Indeed, the second half of the book concerns a new character trying to figure out what happened in the first half of the book…events which we readers were privy to from the start. 

That said, On The Brink is a fun ‘70s time capsule, which I always enjoy; that new character I just mentioned is a famous black private eye named John Shift; Block doesn’t go all the way with the goofy in-jokery and tell us there’s also a famous song about him. Otherwise he’s clearly based on John Shaft, even down to his hatred of the mob. But there’s also an interesting modern vibe to the novel. For we learn that the three members of Ms. Squad have banded together over feminist ideals, in particular the lack of pay equality. The leader of the team, Jackie Cristal (who barely factors in this installment), in particular rails against pay inequality; she’s the Vice President of a cosmetics company, their chief chemist who designs new perfumes and other inventions, but she doesn’t get paid very well. 

Apparently Lucky Pierre detailed the formation of the Ms. Squad. There’s also Deanna Royce, a black soul singer who too is sick of being treated second-hand just because she’s a woman in a man’s industry. Finally there’s Pammy Porter, whose name cracked me up because I work with someone named Tammy Porter; Pammy’s a blonde-haired gold medal gymnast who rails against the fact that she doesn’t get half the lucrative sponsorships the male Olympic athletes do. Apparently in the first Ms. Squad installment these three met at a women’s lib conference or somesuch and, the way these things go, decided to band together to heist places(!?). That first volume detailed their heisting of a luxury hotel; in other words, a retread of The Anderson Tapes. 

But there are two quirks with the Ms. Squad. For one, they hit places after they’ve already been hit; in Lucky Pierre, they apparently robbed that hotel shortly after it had already been robbed. And in On The Brink, they decide to heist the Brinks vault on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the famous Brinks robbery. The other weird quirk is that the Ms. Squad does these heists to prove that women can do the job better than the original male robbers did…but folks, this entire setup is ruined because the three Ms. Squad girls disguise themselves as men on the heists! WTF! So who exactly are they proving these feminist victories to?? 

Anyway as mentioned, the series is basically a comedy. The Ms. Squad has sworn that no one will be killed on their heists; Jackie, the chemist, comes up with all the harmless weapons, like “Perma-zonk,” which is hidden in an “atomizer” in their purses and can knock someone out for hours with just one spray. She also creates various explosives and fake skin that they can wear on their hands that will disguise their fingerprints. Pammy brings the muscle to the team, using her athletic ability to hop around and fight as necessary – but the action scenes, as shown below, are minimal at best. As for Deena…well, she brings her experience as a black woman to the table: she’s familiar with the crime world and how criminals think because she’s black. I’m not making that up, either. 

Deena does all the heavy lifting in this one; the dialog indicates that Pammy might have featured the most in Lucky Pierre. But then again, it appears that the two books follow identical setups; the Ms. Squad carries out a heist, then some private eye gets on the case and tries to prove these three harmless women were really the heisters. In Lucky Pierre it was a handsome Irish P.I. who got on the case and ultimately banged Pammy. In On The Brink it’s handsome black P.I. John Shift who gets on the case and ultimately bangs Deena. But folks even the banging’s off-page. There is absolutely zero in the way of sleaze or filth in On The Brink, I’m sorry to report…which again makes me wonder if this really was by Bela Von Block, given that his “Jonathan Black” books are fairly risque. 

But then, maybe this “G rating” was the request of Bantam Books, or even the mysterious “Ruth Harris Books, Inc.” I just find it curious, because you have here a series about three hotstuff swinging babes in the ‘70s who like to heist places, so you’d figure it would be at least a little explicit in the sexual tomfoolery. But it isn’t! It’s curiously deflated, as if Block doesn’t know how to write the book. This again makes me suspect he was writing to spec, as Bela Von Block also wrote some “nonfiction” sex books as “W.D. Sprague,” so you’d figure the guy would have no problem sleazing things up. Damn you, Ruth Harris! 

Another strange thing is the novel is so awkwardly constructed. So it starts post-heist, with the Ms. Squad having hit a “black restaurant” in Boston which is on the sight that the Brinks vault was back in the ‘50s. Again, their schtick is they hit places a second time, thus they wanted to heist the exact location that the Brinks armory once was, even if it’s now a place called “Chick ‘n’ Treat.” Yes, a big black-owned chicken diner. But the girls discover that they’ve heisted a lot more than the two hundred thousand haul they expected to get; the place was filled with money bags, and after all night counting they discover it’s just shy of two million dollars. 

But all this is told in summary, to the point that I assumed we were being recapped on what happened in the first volume. Not so. The majority of the novel is told in this summary fashion. Then we flash back like a year or something to the aftermath of the previous book, and learn how the girls came up with this “Brinks anniversary” heist. It’s all heavy on the plotting and planning, with little in the way of action. Jackie is the only one we get to see in her normal life as VP at the cosmetics firm; Deena and Pammy only factor into the heist planning scenes. The team comes up with an idea to hit the Brinks place, flying to Boston and scoping it out – and finding a chicken diner there. So Deena goes undercover as a waittress to scope the place out, and Pammy comes up with an idea to steal a Brinks truck, just like the original Brinks crooks did 25 years before. 

Of course, we already know from page one that they are successful in the heist, so there’s zero tension here. As I say, Bela Von Bock has a rather interesting approach to how he writes what’s supposed to be a suspenseful novel. At page 70 we catch up with the opening, and now it’s all about John Shift being hired by the heisted chicken diner owner – whose diner was really a front for a numbers racket – and putting together the pieces of how the heist went down. That’s right folks, the entire first 70 pages are the setup of the heist, and the remainder of the novel is devoted to a secondary character figuring out how the heist was planned and carried out! To say On The Brink is a study in repetition would be, uh, redundant. 

The goofy ‘70s touches are okay, like a black crook who retains a seven-foot henchman basketball player named Abdullah Eleven, clearly a spoof on Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who uses his basketball to torture Deena – slamming her in the stomach with the ball. Shift shows up with his .357 Magnum to save the day, not that anyone is killed. Block also tries to develop suspense with Shift suspecting Deena of the heist while also developing feelings for her, and Deena trying to hold him off with lies while developing feelings for him, etc. Shift also factors into the climactic action scene, which also features Pammy, apropos of nothing, showing off sudden obscure kung-fu skills: 

The girls kill no one, though we’re told the cops kill a bunch of the bad guys off-page. That’s another thing. For a trio of heisters, the Ms. Squad is saved twice by the police in the final pages, first in New York and then in Boston. Just super lame all around. Block apparently planned a third volume, as On The Brink ends with the hint that the Ms. Squad, having pulled off the biggest heist on American soil, will now try to do the same thing in a foreign country, namely Brazil. But readers of the day clearly disliked The Ms. Squad as much as I did, thus this second volume turned out to be the final volume. No tears were shed, I’m sure.

The Illusionist #2: All Of Our Aircraft Are Missing!

The Illusionist #2: All Of Our Aircraft Are Missing!, by John P. Radford

No month stated, 1974  Canyon Books

It’s been seven years since I read the first volume of The Illusionist, and it’s taken me this long to recover from it. As we’ll recall, The Illusionist pretends to be a light-hearted caper series, but in reality it’s nothing but gutbucket sleaze. The sleaze isn’t even the problem; it’s that the sex is thoroughly unpleasant, with author John P. Radford clearly trying to gross out his readers. 

I still don’t know if Radford was a real person or some ghostwriter using a house name. The novel is copyright Canyon Books. The writer certainly appears to be the guy who wrote the first book, and also I have to wonder if he was involved with the Space Race. Series hero Joe Maguire worked on the Apollo Program as an engineer, and Radford peppers the novel with a lot of aeronautical engineering details. What I mean to say is, he seems to know a lot about the subject, and also the setup for the series is that Maguire is out for blood ever since “The Great White Father” (ie Nixon) dropped NASA’s budget, leaving guys like Joe (as Radford refers to him in the narrative) unemployed. This is such an unusual setup that I wonder if Radford himself experienced Joe Maguire’s backstory. 

Radford also gives this installment an aeronautical setup. Joe, in France after making “heavy bread” in the first book’s caper, becomes interested in the nascent Concorde program, and soon devises a way to con his way into more money. The previous book had a setup where Joe and his two henchmen pretended to kidnap some kid, or some such shit, even though the kid was never in danger. So is the case here, with Joe coming up with the idea to make it seem like a bunch of Concorde jets have been hijacked – though it will just be trickery. 

This then is what makes Joe “The Illusionist.” In perhaps the only interesting part of the novel, we learn that Joe was a teen in the Depression and listened to a lot of radio shows and read a lot of pulp. He sees himself as the modern incarnation of his favorite character, The Shadow. He doesn’t go for a disguise or even use any weapons; instead, Joe concocts schemes and then acts as a guy who is merely carrying out a job for a mysterious mastermind. His two helpers, Bob Sidak and George Ross, are unaware that Joe is really the plotter of the cons they work on; Joe just calls them up and says he has a new gig he’s working on for a mysterious employer, and once again Bob and George help out. 

All this though is just window dressing. All Of Our Aircraft Are Missing, like its predecessor, is devoted to the sleaze. Endless pages of hardcore tomfoolery, and let’s not forget Joe is in his mid-40s and looks like Woody Allen. But he’s got a big dick, folks! We can’t forget that. But yes, he’s an ex-NASA engineer who looks like Sol Rosenberg or whatever and he picks up chicks left and right. He spends most of the novel banging June, an American girl here in Paris for stewardess school – specifically, a Concorde stew. June is also casually banging Pierre, an engineer on the Concorde program, and Radford uses the opportunity to saddle the book with lots and lots of exposition about aeronautical engineering. 

Exposition is in fact the name of the game here, and I swear I’ve never read a book where even the sex-dialog is exposition. I mean check it out: 

So it seems clear that John P. Radford is not taking any of this seriously (note the alliterative phrases), and in fact the sex scenes achieve this same vibe throughout the novel. Now last time Radford also tried – and succeeded – in grossing us out. I re-read my review of The Most Happy Con Man and regretted it, because I’d managed to forget the puke-inducing bit where Joe graphically screwed his “dirty whore” girlfriend…literally dirty, and literally a whore, and who never cleaned up after her johns. We don’t quite get to that disgusting level here, but the sex scenes are still so thoroughly unpleasant as to be nauseating. And Radford does try to make us sick – like when Joe finally gives it to June the one way he hasn’t yet (think “backdoor shenanigans”), and she, uh, lets one rip, and Joe “delights” in the “warm anal air.” 

Yeah, and there’s other stuff too, like when Joe visits yet another dirty whore, this one French, and Joe is so digusted with her poor hygiene and her copious body hair that he serves her up “the crowning insult to a French whore” and, uh, “He shit[s] in her bidet.” There’s also a random two-page anatomical lesson on female private parts, and speaking of bidets, there’s another grossout bit where June sits on a bidet after yet another boff with Joe, and Joe looks in the bidet and sees the spewage that has spilled out of her…well anyway, enough of that. 

Oh what the hell; here’s the random two-page anatomical lesson: 

Other than that, the book lacks thrills or excitement. We get lots of page-filling dialog in between the page-filling sex; later in the book it turns into a travelogue across France, with yet more screwing as Joe and June still avidly go at it while seeing the sights. What’s funny is that the novel practically reeks of a condescending attitude; nothing is good enough for Joe Maguire, and one can’t help but see it as a reflection of the author’s personality. And also it’s clear again that the author hates his readers, hates anyone who would even want to read sleaze like this, so he goes all-out to ridicule them by serving up the most unpleasant filth his perverted mind can conceive. 

As for the con, it takes forever to get underay, same as the previous book. And it’s lame; Joe and his two comrades manage to fool various airlines and airports into believing some Concordes have disappeared, but it’s all some trickery via radar. By novel’s end Joe’s once again into some “heavy bread,” and also June and Pierre get married – which is real weird because June spends almost the entire novel screwing Joe. But whatever, who cares. 

The craziest thing is that there were two more volumes of The Illusionist. I’ve only got the third one – the fourth one appears to be impossible to find – and I’m in absolutely no hurry to read it. It’s gonna take me another seven years to get over this one.