Get Nookie (Nookie #2)

Get Nookie, by Ross Webb
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

First we met Nookie, now we get Nookie, and it’s about damn time if you ask me. J.C. Conaway again serves as “Ross Webb,” credited as “Jim Conaway” in the Catalog Of Copyright Entries; the dude went by a ton of names. But if you’ve read one Conaway you’ve read them all, with Get Nookie coming off like a retread of the first volume, even down to the “Cast of Characters” we’re provided at the start of the book, with goofy clues as to which of them might be this volume’s villain.

It’s a little over a month after the previous book, with the action opening in late November and then jumping forward to Christmas, before wrapping up in the first few weeks of January. Nookie Narducci, our brunette bombshell American Indian/Italian beauty, is as ever strapped for cash, and hasn’t had a case since the last book. First though a moment to appreciate the cover photo; the nameless model perfectly captures how Nookie’s described, both sexy and innocent, though again the gun’s a fake as Nookie doesn’t even own one. Also the “hairy” puns of the cover copy ring false, because we’re reminded – within the first couple pages! – that Nookie, due to her American Indian heritage, lacks any body hair. And again surprisingly this doesn’t surprise any of the guys who boff her, given that this is the shaggy ‘70s and all…but then, Nookie only boffs the same two guys as she did last time, so they’re already aware.

I really enjoyed this one; it’s very much a goofy, light-hearted yarn instead of a violent thriller, but it’s not a straight-up spoof or satire. The humor comes more through the strange situations and Nookie’s disparaging comments about her love life or her lack of work. As I’ve written many times before, there is a lot of similarity between the writing styles – and plots – of Conaway and Len Levinson. Let’s add Martin Meyers, as not only is his writing style similar, but the plot of Get Nookie is a lot like the plot of Meyers’s fourth Hardy novel, Hung Up To Die: a killer is operating in a string of New York health spas, and our heroine goes undercover as a gym member to stop him. I guess at this point I’m familiar with Conaway’s style and wasn’t expecting too much of him, but again, don’t go into this one looking for thrills or action. Even the “tense” parts toward the end, with Nookie being chased by the killer, lack much bite, given the general light-hearted air of the entire book.

As if proving his “let’s take it easy” approach posthaste, Conaway sort of eases into the story; we open with Nookie still waiting for a job and checking out the newborn kittens over at the apartment of her GBF Sidney. The focus is more on Nookie’s lack of funds and her desperation for work, with only marginal efforts toward establishing tension or a plot; we do learn early on that Nookie works out in her apartment every morning with Johnny De Mann’s TV program. De Mann will eventually factor into the story, as he owns the “Swing Spas” which have recently opened in New York: gyms specifically catered to singles. You can even buy alcohol on the premises, which just struck me as strange. Nookie would love to become a member, as she’s worried she is putting on weight, but of course doesn’t have the money. One such Spa has just opened at the nearby Chelsea Hotel, which is where the previous novel took place and where the climax of this one will occur; little touches like this give the series a nice sense of continuity.

Meanwhile, people are getting killed at the Spas. We get our first reminder of the sleazy vibe of the series when a swinging ad copywriter meets some babe on the gym floor and then immediately has enthusiastic (and explicitly described) sex with her in the steam room. But when she leaves for a shower, someone comes in, obscured by the steam, and stabs the poor guy in the heart. As the novel progresses there will be more murders at the other Spas around the city, most notably in one instance in which a poor woman has a thirty-five pound weight plate dropped on her head while she’s lying on the floor doing leg extensions. Lt. Ferguson, the hunky cop from the previous book, is working the case, but suggests that Johnny De Mann hire Nookie as a private investigator to figure out who is behind these murders. His reasoning being that Nookie, as an attractive young woman, would have a better chance of operating undercover in one of the Spas.

It takes a while to get to the central plot, though. Nookie smokes “dynamite grass” with Sidney and pines over her boyfriend, Pompie, hunky Italian owner of a nearby bar, as they’ve had a minor spat. We also learn eventually that she also had something going with Lt. Ferguson but it’s broken off because he’s so hung up on his ex-wife. It goes without saying that she re-acquaints herself with both men as the novel unfolds, and like last time Conaway gets fairly explicit in the sex scenes. As I’ve mentioned before, Conaway never learned to type (as revealed in an eBay auction I saw years ago – the seller apparently knew Conaway and had come into possession of all of Conaway’s author copies after his death), so he hired typists to take dictation. I always get a chuckle imagining him shouting out the hardcore sex descriptions to some poor old spinster of a typist.

After the first Swing Spa kill we flash forward a couple weeks and Nookie’s got a security job at a department store, posing as a shopper to spot shoplifters. She hates the job and lets most shoplifters get away, feeling bad for them, something which soon gets her fired. Meanwhile the only “mystery” she’s encountered is who broke into her apartment and stole her black-and-white TV. Later, in an arbitrary subplot, the drunk old hag who lives next door and works at a laundromat will help Nookie figure out who it was: Head, the drug-addled hippie who sits in a daze in front of the apartment building all day. This subplot ultimately goes nowhere, but seems to exist so as to introduce Head into Conaway’s ever-expanding Cast of Characters for the series. Speaking of which, Mavis, the “raucous black woman” from the previous book, still hangs around with Nookie, as ever making unsettling proclamations about her sex life, or lack thereof; most unforgettable being her comment that the sight of a well-hung patron at the Chelsea Swing Spa makes her “old pussy quiver.” Good grief!

We even get a veritable “Nookie Christmas” with our heroine throwing a party at her place – she’s so strapped for cash she even steals caviar at the grocery store! – complete with gift exchanges among her circle of friends. Pompie gets her a new color TV to replace the stolen one, leading to another sex scene. Finally, the day after Xmas, Conaway gets to the promised plot: Johnny De Mann comes over to Nookie’s office (in which she spends most of the day reading Playgirl magazine and Travis McGee novels) and hires her to figure out who is behind the string of murders at his Swing Spas. This entails Nookie going from one gym to another, meeting an assortment of red-herring freaks. Even here though it’s played on more of a goofy vibe, with the oddballs coming off more like bizarre shut-ins than dangerous murderers.

Eventually Nookie works the case alongside Lt. Ferguson, which is how things progressed last time. And of course they get friendly again, but Ferguson’s hangup about his ex-wife is pretty humorous, and intentionally so. And like last time Ferguson comes to the rescue in the end, though Nookie for once holds her own. She’s planted “mace guns” around the various spas, and when she uncovers the killer – actually killers, in the plural – she’s able to defend herself as they chase her through the deserted Swing Spa. She also manages to rescue Mavis, who is about to be drowned for overhearing the murderers as they plotted their next kill, but just like last time Nookie herself still needs to be. This time Ferguson tells Nookie he’ll “never let her go again,” so it seems apparent he’d be in the next Nookie, which never happened.

As ever Conaway attempts a goofy sort of literary vibe throughout, especially when it comes to metaphors and analogies. Some of them are pretty damn memorable, like a spa secretary’s frizzy blonde hair reminding one guy of “what Cloris Leachman’s arm pits look like.” Nookie’s little corner of Manhattan comes to vibrant, noisy life, and Conaway subtly captures the everyday craziness of the time, like how Nookie’s apartment building is mostly frequented by bikers and heroin addicts, yet she traipses around without ever once feeling in any danger. I also like the oddball little touches here and there, like the off-hand comment that the walls of Nookie’s bedroom are covered with “crunched aluminum foil” so as to cover the old pipes and such – an idea from her window decorator pal Sidney. Also this book might contain the earliest reference to HBO I’ve encountered in fiction; Sidney tells Nookie that if he ever strikes it rich he plans to get “the home box office” on TV, and goes on to inform her that on it you can watch new movies without commercial interruptions.

This was it for the series, but not for Nookie: she became a blonde and changed her name to Jana Blake, continuing her adventures for two more volumes over at Belmont Tower. Her cast of characters went along with her, also changing their names in the process: Sidney became “Charlie,” Pompie became “Gianni,” and Lt. Ferguson became “Lt. Lanahan.” It’s been too long since I read the Jana Blake books so I can’t remember if Mavis made the transition. Even Jana’s office was located in the same place as Nookie’s. Also as I argued in my review of Meet Nookie, it seems very likely that the cover of Deadlier Than The Male was originally commissioned for a Nookie installment. The depicted heroine is a brunette and wears a trench coat, the same thing Nookie wore throughout Meet Nookie (she doesn’t wear one in this volume, though). Of the two series, I enjoyed Nookie more, if only because it’s more sleazy.

Meet Nookie (Nookie #1)

Meet Nookie, by Ross Webb
No month stated, 1975  Manor Books

“Ross Webb” is none other than J.C. Conaway, who here serves up the first of what will be two volumes in the Nookie series, which is basically a prefigure of Conaway’s later Jana Blake series. Prefigure? Actually it’s the same exact thing, with only minor changes. 

Conaway has already proven himself to be a master recycler, as seen with Deadlier Than The Male, which was a straight-up rewrite of his earlier Lady From L.U.S.T. contribution. By the same token, it would appear that Jana Blake was just the Nookie series, moved from Manor to Belmont-Tower, with the heroine changed from a brunette to a blonde. Otherwise the two series are identical and are both low-thrills, high-sleaze.

To wit, Italian-American Indian beauty Nakomis “Nookie” Narducci is a “well-stacked female dick.” She has straight black hair that flows past her shoulders but no other body hair to speak of; her “hairless femininity” will often be mentioned in the copious sex scenes, but none of her male consorts seem much surprised by it, which is strange given that this was written in the shaggy-hairy ‘70s. Just like Jana Blake, Nookie has an office in Greenwich Village, on West 60th and 9th Ave – and just like Jana Blake she’s up on the third floor. Whereas there’s a gay-frequented gym on the second floor of Jana’s building, Nookie’s has a gay-frequented “beauty school” on the second floor. And while Jana’s best friend is a pudgy gay interior designer named Charlie, Nookie’s best friend is a pudgy gay window decorator named Sydney who steals clothing for her.

More paralells: Jana Blake has a sort-of boyfriend named Gianni, an Italian hunk who runs a fruit stand; Nookie has a sort-of boyfriend named Pompie, an Italian hunk who runs a bar. As with Jana and Gianni, Nookie’s night with Pompie serves up the first of several XXX scenes in the novel. And just as Jana has a doting aunt – her only living relative – who often comes into the city to bring Jana presents and take her out to expensive dinners, so too does Nookie. Jana and Nookie even both end up boffing the police lieutenants who handle their first cases; for just as Deadlier Than The Male depicted Jana Blake’s first-ever case, so too does Meet Nookie depict Nookie’s.

Speaking of which, the brunette on the cover of Deadlier Than The Male is a better representation of Nookie than it is of blonde Jana Blake, so there might be something there: I’ve never seen confirmation that Manor was owned by Belmont Tower (though Len Levinson has speculated to me that it was, perhaps as some sort of tax-evasion deal), but it could be that the cover art for Deadlier Than The Male was commissioned for a never-published third volume of Manor’s Nookie series. More evidence: the brunette on the cover of Deadlier Than The Male is wearing a raincoat, and while Jana Blake is never stated as wearing one, we are reminded throughout Meet Nookie that Nookie wears one. That is, when she’s wearing anything at all.

The only difference between Nookie and Jana Blake, other than hair color and heritage, is that Nookie doesn’t have the sexism of Jana; as we’ll recall, Jana Blake only takes jobs for women and deals with “women’s issues.” Also, Nookie doesn’t sleep in her office like Jana does; Nookie’s apartment is on 56th street. And the only real difference between the series themselves is that, at least judging from this first volume, Nookie is much more focused on the sleaze, with several hardcore sex scenes throughout. Otherwise the two series are the same in that they are more along the lines of slow-moving mysteries than action yarns (like Jana, Nookie doesn’t even own a gun). Not to mention the interesting fact that each series only lasted two volumes, so the idea wasn’t exactly a hit despite the publisher.

As with Jana’s first case, Nookie’s has her looking into what appears to be a serial killer, one operating in the downbeaten Chesterfield Hotel on West 58th Street, within walking distance of Nookie’s apartment. Nookie is hired by former silent film star Violet Valady, who lives in her twilight years in the Chesterfield with her sister, who gets murdered in the first pages of the book. Violet complains that the cops aren’t moving on the case and so hires Nookie; our heroine’s first client, given that Nookie is usually discarded by potential clients when they discover that “Nakomis Narducci” is really a woman. Why Nookie even wants to be a private eye is something Conaway never reveals.

Nookie goes out with “unattractive homosexual” GBF Sidney Pomeroy and ends up going back to her apartment with Pompie, thus leading us into our first taste of sleaze. Here we learn that “Nookie’s body had an unusual feature…it was completely hairless.” Nookie will have sex the very next day, as part of her “interview” for the job of “chambermaid” at the Chesterfield. Her plan is to get this job to scout out the big hotel and find the killer. Having no qualms with screwing someone to get something, Nookie eagerly bangs Ray Lawrence, studly manager (and secret owner) of the Chesterfield. But Nookie’s just getting started, as that very night she’ll be double-teamed by a pair of medical interns.

As is typical with Conaway, Meet Nookie is more of an ensemble affiar, with Nookie competing with a variety of characters for narrative spotlight. On her first day on the job she meets all the many characters who live in the Chesterfield, each of whom could be the murderer. There’s Mavis, the foul-mouthed, heavyset black lady who also works as a chambermaid (Conaway serves up a string of gross-out jokes concerning Mavis’s attempts at “self pleasure” throughout the novel); Lottie Hess, the butch former roller derby champion who now serves as staff manager; and Jablonski –Smythe, the simpering gay front desk clerk. There’s also a bunch of residents, from a shut-in married couple to a Greek father and son who sell diamonds but who might really be into something more nefarious.

As mentioned Nookie gets familiar with two such residents on her first night: Monty and Hans, who insist on taking Nookie out to Chinatown, where they first hang out in the restaurant of Ming Toy, a “Chinese-Jewish lesbian” with a mouth nearly as foul as Mavis’s. She also declares she’s an old rival of Lottie Hess in a subplot Conaway doesn’t do anything with. But Conaway does again indulge in his interest in the underground world of homosexual bars and clubs – and such material has repeated in enough of Conaway’s books for me to go, “hmmmm.” This time Ming Toy takes Nookie and the two studs to a gay club built in an old church; there Nookie gets smashed, goes back to Monty and Hans’s room, smokes dope, and has sex with them – the third such hardcore scene in the novel – this time even swinging out of their window on draperies, Tarzan style, with Monty’s “cock inside her.” 

Meanwhile the killer scores again, this time an old drunk of a lady who lives on a floor that Nookie doesn’t tend to. In another narrative miss, none of the murders occur on the floors Nookie is assigned, meaning Nookie is never the first person to discover any of the corpses. But it should be clear by now that Conaway isn’t interested in (or perhaps capable of) a standard mystery thriller with the standard developments. This second kill brings in Lt. Terry Ferguson, a handsome cop who learns Nookie is a private eye, but doesn’t instantly spurn her. Instead, he eagerly requests her help – and of course has sex with her that very night, though this sequence is bizarrely vague and almost included in hindsight.

Conaway tries, but there is no tension in the novel, even with a murderer operating in the hotel. There’s never a point where you fear for Nookie. This is likely because Conaway is so focused on other stuff, like the upcoming rodeo convention Ray Lawrence has booked in the Chesterfield, featuring famous rodeo star Pokey Barnes. This whole sequence, complete with the Chesterfield made up in Western décor, exists solely so Conaway can deliver a scene where Pokey gives Nookie a ride through Central Park on his horse – and screws her while they’re both sitting in the saddle.

When Violet Valady herself is killed, Nookie becomes even more determined to find the killer…this despite the fact that, you know, her source for payment has just been killed off. This doesn’t prevent her from more fantastic sex. While snooping in the apartment shared by the Allottas, Nookie is discovered by the father, who promptly begins feeling her up and screws her. Meanwhile Nookie’s discovered an unusual substance in the closet; we’re later informed it’s cocaine, and the father-son team have used their diamond business as a cover. Plus, Lottie Hess is arrested off-page for being their accomplice! This part is bizarrely underplayed, particularly given Lottie’s narrative importance prior to this. But she’s abruptly gone, and no longer a suspect so far as the murders go.

Conaway usually references old movies, in particular musicals and whatnot (“hmmmm” again), and Meet Nookie climaxes with a big “Hooray For Hollywood” costume party at the Chesterfield. With Sidney’s help, Nookie dresses up like silent film star Theda Bara in Cleopatra, practically revealing all in a scanty costume. But this is another narrative miss on Conaway’s part. Why not have her dress up like one of the characters played by silent film star Violet Valady, as a tribute to the dead lady who hired her? Not that much is done with the costume party; we’re only informed what a few of the characters are wearing, anyway, though Conaway does get more comedy mileage out of simpering gay Jablonski-Smythe, who shows up in drag.

The “mystery” is abruptly wrapped up in the last few pages. Skip this paragraph and the next if you don’t want to know. But when Nookie sees Jablonski-Smythe in drag, she instantly knows he’s the killer. Nookie makes the sudden deduction that J-S’s costuming ability allowed him to disguise himself as his victims; a vague subplot has it that some of the victims were seen after the M.E. had ruled they were dead, which of course puzzles the cops. The novel’s sole action scene occurs when Nookie knocks out Jablonski-Smythe with a karate chop, but then Nookie herself is almost strangled – by Ray Lawrence, who turns out to have been behind the entire scheme as part of a plot to sell the hotel for a big price.

Our author is so unconcerned with tension and payoff that he has Nookie unconscious while all the heavy lifting goes down. She wakes up, having been saved by Lt. Ferguson from Lawrence’s strangling hands; the lieutenant, who has been disguised in costume at the ball all along, followed after Nookie and got to her just in time. He casually reveals Ray Lawrence’s plot and has him and Jablonski-Smythe arrested. Meanwhile Nookie wants to go home and screw – and that’s it, folks. 

Messily plotted, with paper-thin characters that don’t go much beyond caricatures, Meet Nookie is more of a sleaze yarn, with a lame “murder mystery” plot forced on it. I can’t say I hated it, though. Conaway has an easy style and his material is so goofy you can’t help but keep reading. There’s some weird-o stuff throughout, like the bizarre off-hand revelation that Ray Lawrence’s ex-wife moved to some small town and started hitting on random guys in sleazy bars, taking them home and calling them “Ray.” Conaway also makes humorous attempts at investing a “literary” vibe to his prose, such as, “[Nookie’s voice] reminded him of burning leaves in a forest painted by autumn.” Mull on that one.

Nookie returned for one more adventure in that same year’s Get Nookie, which I’ll get to eventually.

Vic Merritt: Man of Justice: Death On The Boardwalk

Vic Merritt: Man of Justice: Death On The Boardwalk, by Jake Cafferty
No month stated, 1986  Critic's Choice

J.C. Conaway surfaces as “Jake Carfferty” for this one-shot courtesy Critic’s Choice, likely yet another Leisure imprint. Billed as the first volume of a series titled Vic Merritt: Man Of Justice, Death On The Boardwalk was the only installment ever published. The spine labels it as “men’s action,” which is a laugh and a half. One could likely find more action in a cookbook. This one’s a slooow-moving affair that, as usual with Conaway’s work, is more of a tepid mystery.

There are also a few interesting paralells to Conaway’s earlier Shannon series. For one, the “sidekick” hero Vic Merritt is graced with: a Filipino cook/karate master named Joe-Dad, which was also the name of Shannon’s sidekick. (However this Joe-Dad doesn’t speak in the pidgin jive of the previous one.) Merritt himself is different from Shannon: he isn’t a spy, secret agent, vigilante, or anyting – he’s just a mega-wealthy owner of a global chain of hotels and buildings. Seriously, folks, Vic Merritt: Man Of Justice is like ‘80s Donald Trump starring in a TV mystery movie.

Sounds promising, but Conaway isn’t up to the challenge. This book is a snoozer. While we’re at times reminded that Vic Merritt, 32 and good-looking, has studied karate and whatnot, he doesn’t do much more in this book than fret over his newly-opening Atlantic City hotel, the Boardwalk. As is typical with Conaway, the novel is stuffed to the gills with incidental characters, and mundane dialog runs rampant. Death On the Boardwalk has more in common with a glitzy ‘80s trash novel, only most of the sex is off-page and there’s nothing racy about it.

The novel spans August through October of 1985; the Boardwalk is scheduled to open in early September and it’s been plagued with accidents that seem to have been intentional. Vic shows up from his New York penthouse to oversee the final days. We get lots of digressive stuff about various characters, including the Madonna-esque singer Suzi Harrington, who is almost burned alive in the run-through for her opening night act. She isn’t too hurt, though, as Vic manages to have off-page sex with her in her hospital room a few days later; she’s an old flame of his (lame pun alert), and Vic wonders if maybe her old boyfriend Bart Bartolucci, notorious Mafia boss, might be behind the Boardwalk attacks, as vengeance for stealing his girl way back when. 

Most time is spent on walk-throughs of the deluxe Boardwalk, with an endless tide of one-off characters trolled out to fill the pages. If we read that there’s a girl group named Glitter hired by the hotel, Conaway will introduce us to each and every member, even give us a few lines from one of their songs. The novel in no way, shape, or form is “men’s action.” It is mostly a soap opera with a slight mystery overlay, as eventually one of the musicians is killed during a rehearsal, thus Vic must try to find out who has been behind these intentional attacks.

Along the way Vic meets lusty redhead Kay Harrington, a reporter for an Atlantic City paper who has “voluptuous lines” and “nicely rounded buttocks.” Their inevitable coupling is the one sequence where Conaway gets slightly risque, but it’s all pretty tame for an ‘80s paperback. These two trade lots of exposition as Vic gets all lovey-dovey with Kay; here we also get slight more detail on Vic’s background. His parents, who ran the global business before him, were “killed by terrorists” at Kennedy airport (an incident almost humorously unexplored), and if that wasn’t sad-sack enough, his fiance was also murdered a few years ago.

Who knows what Conaway’s plans were, but it appears that if the series had progressed there would have been recurring characters, in particular Lila, an old lady who was a famous singer in the ‘40s who now lives across from Vic on the penthouse floor of the Boardwalk; there’s also Caledonia Brown, Lila’s maid, “a Negro woman of sixty.” (If that isn’t enough for you, there’s also Carmen, head of Boardwalk security, who is a “big, beefy broad.”) But mostly it’s about the one-off characters, like Sike Deacon, sleazy manager of a Sex Pistols-esque British rock group who runs afoul of Vic given his bad attitude. Then there’s Charles Deacon, flamingly flamboyant night club actor.

As mentioned Death On The Boardwalk is mostly a mystery story, and it builds to a slow boil, with Vic not as driven to uncover the murders as you might expect. There’s no part where he whips out a pistol and takes justice into his own hands. Indeed he puts pieces together thanks to off-hand dialog from one of the bajillion characters who overstuff the novel. The killer turns out to be two unlikely culprits, with Conaway doling out that hoary old cliché that one of them’s actually insane and suffers from a sort of split personality disorder. The novel ends on a bittersweet note, with Vic determined to make it as big in Atlantic City as he has around the rest of the world.

More indication that this was a Leisure joint is the puzzling goof halfway through where a character refers to Merritt as “Jake Cafferty,” which is of course the pseudonym Conaway used for the book! Even more puzzling is the fact that the book is copyright “James Callahan.” One begins to wonder if Conaway was in the Witness Protection program or perhaps the CIA or FBI – pseudonyms upon pseudonyms. In fact this element is more interesting than the book itself; shed no tears that there were no more volumes of Vic Merrit: Man Of Justice.

They Do It With Mirrors (Jana Blake #2)

They Do It With Mirrors, by Jim Conaway
No month stated, 1977  Belmont Tower Books

The second and final volume of the Jana Blake series is once again courtesy J.C. Conaway, who again brings sleazy ‘70s New York City to life; the guy was so familiar with the seedier areas of the city – and so gifted with presenting a gutter-level view of them – that I’m starting to think that Conaway might’ve been the mysterious author of The Savage Women.

Our heroine doesn’t even appear for the first 46 pages; we open with Stash, a black pimp with movie-star looks who is given to outrageous fashions. These opening pages of They Do It With Mirrors are almost a guide to grungy ‘70s Manhattan, with Stash doing the rounds of the sleazy parts of the city, including a jaunt along 42nd Street which sees him checking out a live sex show where Conaway leaves no gross stone unturned. Stash lives in utter poverty (cockroaches litter his cupboards in another memorable bit of detailing) and runs his stable of whores with an iron fist – actually, make that a sharpened knife. When he catches three of his working girls cheating him on pay, he takes his knife to the scalp of one of them to leave her a permanent reminder not to screw him over again.

The reason Stash takes center stage is because he’s gradually shaping up to be this volume’s villain; Conaway inserts a lot of faux-“API” stuff and fake news columns (most of them an obvious page-filling gambit) about the recent migration of famed blonde goddess film star Chiara Locatelli, who is moving with her movie producer husband and toddler daughter Risa from their native Rome to Manhattan. Stash you see has recently hooked up with a blonde transvestite named Honey (Stash we’re informed has “unusual sexual leanings” so it’s cool with him that Honey’s a dude), who has real boobs but hasn’t yet gotten “the operation” to go full-on woman. But Honey looks identical to Chiara, and Stash slowly (very slowly) is beginning to form an idea to make some big bucks capitlizing on her resemblance to the famous woman.

Meanwhile Jana, when we finally get to her on page 47, is still hanging out with her gay pal Charlie, who has since opened his own boutique and is trying to lose weight. Conaway shows a passing familiarity with the then-underground world of the gays and the transsexuals, so much so that you go “hmmm.” As with all of Conaway’s other novels I’ve yet read, They Do It With Mirrors even takes the time to briefly feature a gay or at least underground musical; this time we’re treated to an all-tranny revue of Grand Hotel, in which Honey plays the Jean Harlow part. But otherwise we get lots of stuff from Charlie’s boutique, how he cuts patterns and gives fashion advice, and it all shows a bit more “research” than you’d expect from the average men’s adventure author – not to make any assumptions, of course.

It’s some unstated time after the previous volume, and Jana hasn’t had a big case since. She’s still trying to hide the fact from her landlord that she secretly lives in her office, which as we’ll recalll is on the same floor as a gay-dominated gym (“hmmm” again) and one floor down from a porn film production company. Jana when we meet her is swimming laps with Charlie, and Conaway shows a complete disintrest in conveying tension; it’s all very much in a long-simmer trash fiction mode as Jana and her GBF shoot the shit and go eat at a health food restaurant. Here again Conaway brings seedy New York to life; indeed he’s almost a regular Len Levinson throughout, sometimes even giving exact locations of his fictitious locales, complete with walking directions.

Jana’s still in a relationship with hunky Gianni, the Italian dude who works in a fruit stand across from her building (and whom she has off-page sex with here – Jana’s sole such scene in the novel), however the hunky cop she was also involved with last time out isn’t mentioned this time. But friends, Jana is a supporting character at best in They Do It With Mirrors. I kid you not. She’s absent from the book more than she’s in it. Jana disappears for long stretches…for example, other than a page-and-a-half cameo, she’s completely absent from pages 78 to 158. That’s eighty pages where our heroine isn’t even seen or mentioned! So it seems clear to me that Conaway wasn’t much invested in this series or his protagonist, and basically went about filling the novel with incidental characters.

So in that regard the true protagonist is Stash, who saunters around various Times Square establisments and has frequent sex with his transvestite “girlfriend,” Honey. There’s also lots of stuff about Honey’s dreams of stardom and her appearances in various off-Broadway plays, as mentioned a recurring staple in Conaway’s work. It’s via Honey that Jana makes that brief cameo between pages 78 and 158, as Honey hires Charlie to design a new gown for “her,” and Jana happens to be in the boutique when Honey stops by to check the designs. But Stash and Honey aren’t the only characters who steal the show from the series protagonist. Conaway also spends a lot of time with Chiara and young Risa; most of the novel is told through their perspectives.

The incident promised on the back cover – the kidnapping of Risa – doesn’t occur until well over a hundred pages in. Stash, at great page length, earlier watched a lame magic show performed by a drunk, older married couple – and Conaway, not getting enough mileage out of this, actually writes the sequence twice, as Stash later takes Honey to see the show, too – and thus Stash hatches a scheme to steal away Risa via magic. Coincidence be damned, the drunk couple has been hired to do magic at Risa’s birthday party, and here the abduction is carried off. One can’t help but feel bad for poor little Risa, who is locked up in Stash’s grungy apartment with only her stuffed monkey to keep her company. Stash, wearing a ski mask, periodically brings her food, but otherwise he just forgets about her for long periods of time.

Chiara and husband receive the ransom note and the cops tell them not to play along, but the Italian couple is frantic. Also, Chiara is frustrated by the slowness of the cops in handling the case, and conveniently remembers an ad she just happened to have seen in the paper recently – an ad for Jana Blake, private eye who only handles cases for women. Thus in the last 30-some pages Jana’s finally on the job.

And here’s the unique skill she brings: when Chiara shows Jana around her apartment, Jana notices the dumbwaiter and figures that’s how the kidnappers abducted Risa. Jana’s theory is confirmed when she finds a scuff mark inside the dumbwaiter, no doubt left by a shoe – Risa’s shoe. She shrugs off Chiara’s comment that the cops already searched the place, scoffing that the cops wouldn’t know a scuff mark when they saw one, as none of them have likely ever scrubbed a floor! And that’s it, friends, Jana’s sole lead here is provided via her sexism.

Even here there’s no action or suspense. Jana just goes around the grungier areas of Manhattan asking one-off characters about a truck, Jana haviing learned from a neigbor of the Locatellis that a mysterious truck was seen outside the building before the little girl disappeared. This goes on and on, Jana calling people, visiting them, finding out they’ve sold the truck, and then moving on to the new owner.

Like the previous volume, you can forget all about that cover image of an ass-kicking Jana toting a pistol. The only “weapon” she uses here is a telephone, and she doesn’t get in a single fight. In fact Stash and Honey are chased by the cops while Jana instead saves poor Risa, who is in danger of being burned alive in a fire accidentally started in Stash’s apartment, Honey having dropped a smoking cigarette when she left with Stash to collect the ransom.

As for Stash and Honey, neither are killed – the cops chase them through the city and shoot Stash in the arm, while Honey meanwhile freaks out in a heroin trip. We’re informed via another of those faux-API news bulletins that the two have been arrested, along with the other accomplices. And this is how They Do It With Mirrors ends, with Conaway, out of space due to padding, not even bringing us back into Jana’s world long enough to say goodbye. It’s debatable if he intended another volume, but I’m betting not – it’s clear from this volume that he had lost all interest in the character, and his disinterest is contagious.

While this was it for Jana Blake, I have more Conaway books on tap…including most promisingly another two-volume series he wrote in the ‘70s about a female private eye: Meet Nookie and Get Nookie, which were published by Manor Books under the pseudonym “Ross Webb.” Oh, and I’ve since found out here that Conaway was a WVU graduate (class of ’57), meaning like myself he might’ve grown up in West “the middle of nowhere” Virginia. I’d suspected this for a while, mostly due to the WV setting of The Deadly Spring.

The Lady Killer (aka The New Lady From L.U.S.T. #6)

The Lady Killer, by Rod Gray
No month stated, 1975  Belmont Tower Books

The Lady From L.U.S.T. was another of those ‘60s spy paperback series that was packaged as sleaze but was really just goofy satire. I’ve tried reading these types of books before (M.O.T.H.E.R. Versus Mafia by Rosemary Santini, one of Clyde Allison’s Man From Sadisto books, etc) and they just fell flat for me; too much focus on ridiculous acronyms, character names, and plots, and too little focus on action, suspense, or thrills. In short, these books kind of suck, just light-hearted spy spoofs that aren’t funny.

The Lady From L.U.S.T. series was likely no different, but the books in this series go for stupid prices these days; apparently Gardner Fox served under the house name of “Rod Grey” for the majority (all?) of the 18 installments from the series inception in 1967 to its end in 1973. Two years later Belmont Tower brought the series back, this time as The New Lady From L.U.S.T., and it ran for two years, amounting to seven volumes. The Rod Gray house name was once again used, but apparently Gardner Fox wasn’t the writer this time. I’m guessing it was a revolving door of ghostwriters, and it’s only a fluke – actually, my own sad over-familiriaty with trash fiction – that led me to discovering who wrote this particular volume.

Anyway, what with sleaze being at critical mass in the mid-‘70s, the New Lady From L.U.S.T. was a lot more hardcore than the earlier series had been; I have one of those early installments, #4: Five Beds To Mecca, from 1968, and it appears to go for the expected lyrical/metaphorical approach in the sex scenes, which are of course light-hearted to begin with. Compare to The Lady Killer, in which the three brief sex scenes on offer are straight-up porn, with the anatomical parts in question clearly named and no purple prose getting in the way of the humpin’ and bumpin’.

That being said, the series, at least judging from this entry, is still pretty lame. The Lady Killer is not much of a spy novel, even comparitively speaking; it’s more along the lines of a private eye novel. Hell, protagonist/narrator Eve Drum is even made a temporary detective in New York City during the course of her investigation. Eve is a gorgeous blonde with a brick shithouse bod (she kindly gives us her measurements on the first page) and she lives in a penthouse in Manhattan where she poses as a worldly, well-to-do socialite. All very much like Cherry Delight, of course, and in many ways The Lady Killer is very similar to Len Levinson’s contribution to that series.

Eve works for top-secret spy organization L.U.S.T., and per the back cover her archenemy is the evil organization H.A.T.E., which not only plays on the SPECTRE deal but also is yet another indication of the unfortunate focus on punny acronyms these spy spoofs were known for. Now, H.A.T.E. is namedropped on the back cover, but the dudes don’t even really show up until the final page. Instead, The Lady Killer is an Agathie Christie-type deal where four doctors who have invented a new, stronger form of methadone are being killed off one by one by a sadistic redheaded female assassin. Eve Drum must figure out who is behind the plot and how to stop further killings.

The first few chapters alternate between Eve’s humdrum narration – her life in Manhattan, her casual sex affair with boss David Anderzanian, her current paramour Mac Morris, a famous mystery novelist – and third-person chapters in which an attractive redhead named Jobeena goes out on assassination missions. This alternating viewpoint stuff, particularly with the skewed viewpoint of the clearly-disturbed female villain, was the first element that started nagging at the ol’ memory banks – I was certain I’d read something almost identical to this before. As the book progressed, with Eve using her wits and beauty rather than weapons or karate, and particularly with Eve coming to the conclusion that the redhead was getting revenge for something that happened in the past, it all gradually came to me.

My friends, this is the exact same plot J.C. Conaway gave us in Deadlier Than The Male. It’s even written identically (save for the fact that Deadlier Than The Male is in third-person throughout), with the alternating viewpoints and the gradual reveal that something rotten happened on a college campus several years before, something which is now causing rampant death. It’s basically the same novel J.C. Conaway delivered two years later, once again via Belmont Tower Books.

At this point I did some deep Google diving and enjoyed one of my rare moments of vindication: according to the 1975 Catalog of Copyright Entries, The Lady Killer was indeed written by J.C. “Jim” Conaway.

As with that later Jana Blake novel, The Lady Killer is a slow-moving affair that’s more concerned with detailing the mundanities of the heroine’s high-society life while sleazing things up every once in a while with visits to New York’s more sordid establishments. You know it’s a ‘70s Belmont Tower book when the first murder takes place in a massage parlor, and Conaway brings the place to such grungy life that you suspect he might’ve visited a few such parlors for “research.” A later kill takes place in a gay nightclub called The Tubs which again has the same sort of over-the-top debauched vibe as the disco club in Deadlier Than The Male (where a murder was committed, as well).

And like Jana Blake, Eve isn’t an ass-kicking protagonist by any means. In the course of the 160-some pages of the novel she chops one dude in the throat and, in the very final pages, shoots two H.A.T.E. guys in the shoulder. She’s more in the brains department, but it’s not like this case is a puzzler. As mentioned Eve learns that these four doctors were pals in Harvard over a decade ago, where something mysterious happened. Eve’s certain that whatever it was is what’s causing these murders today. In yet another prefigure of Deadlier Than The Male, no one but Eve believes this theory, particularly the gruff New York detective who is working the case (yep, just like in Deadlier Than The Male).

While Eve isn’t much for the fighting, she’s quite capable in the lovin’ department, bedding her boss David, her boyfriend Mac, and a muscle-bound club bouncer. Each sequence runs a few paragraphs and leaves nothing to the imagination, though yet here again we have that strange conundrum where a male writer delivers hardcore sex scenes from a female character’s point of view. The scenes don’t go on very long, though, yet coupled with the massage parlor and gay nightclub stuff it all lends the novel an overall sleazy feel, which is again typical of every Conaway book I’ve yet read.

One difference between this and Deadlier Than The Male is that Eve, suprisingly, does not boff the studly detective she works the case with, though Conaway gives a few intimations that they might before he apparently forgets all about it. Rather, more time is given to Serena, a teenaged Gypsy girl who had a hardscrabble youth and now, at seventeen, works in the massage parlor in which the first murder occurs. Eve pities the young girl and actually takes her home with her (Serena’s lecherous boss at the massage parlor is the recipient of Eve’s karate chop), giving her nice clothes and eventually hooking her up with a job as a typist at L.U.S.T. HQ in Manhattan. (The novel features a “several months later” epilogue in which we learn that Serena has gotten married…to Eve’s boyfriend Mac Morris!)

It turns out that redhead assassin Jobeena was raped as a young Radcliff student a decade ago by those four Harvard doctors, and somehow H.A.T.E., wanting now to steal the secrets of their new drug and sell it to the commies, got wind of her sad plight and hired her as an assassin. Or something! Jobeena actually takes out three of the doctors (the third one she strangles with his blood pressure monitor) before Eve figures out what’s going on. However Eve herself is quickly caught by Jobeena, who delivers on her promise to H.A.T.E. by handing them Eve Drum on a veritable silver platter.

Things look bad for our heroine, but Conaway delivers another of his cheesy copout finales with the appearance of a little boy who lives in Jobeena’s building and who just happens to be going by the window of the cellar Eve and Serena are captive in. Eve gets the kid to come in and tells them they’re play-acting as spies and the kid unties them! Then Eve karate-chops Jobeena (who is eventually arrested and sent to an insane asylum), shoots a few of the H.A.T.E. dudes (not killing them), and that’s that.

So yeah, this was a pretty unsatisfying read, filled with mundane, expository dialog and boring snatches of non-action, salvaged only by brief flashes of sleaze – which pretty much describes every other novel I’ve read by J.C. Conaway!

Deadlier Than The Male (Jana Blake #1)

Deadlier Than The Male, by Jim Conaway
No month stated, 1977  Belmont-Tower Books

J.C. Conaway returns as “Jim” for the first of a two-volume series that comes off like a female-fronted equivalent of Conaway’s earlier Shannon series. Our hero is Jana Blake, a hotstuff blonde (despite the brunette on the cover – and Jana doesn’t wear a trenchcoat or carry a gun, by the way) who lives in Greenwich Village and works as a private investigator who only helps women.

An “ardent feminist who likes men,” per the back cover copy, Jana is apparently new to the world of private investigation, and is waiting for her big case. She lives on the second floor of a Greenwich flophouse, the first floor of which is a leather and chains store that caters to gays, with a gym across the hall from Jana’s apartment and a porn film production company on the third floor! And Jana’s constantly afraid her landlord will discover that she’s actually living here, with a Murphy bed hidden in one of the walls – her lease only calls for her to office out of the room, not live in it fulltime.

Deadlier Than The Male takes place during a very hot New York summer, and opens with the first of a few lurid murders, as a good-looking woman, dressed as a nun, stalks some random middle-age guy from the subway and murders him, unseen by anyone, in the entrance of his swank penthouse. Then she chops off his head and takes it with her, leaving no fingerprints. The woman is of course the novel’s villain, a complete basketcase with one of the most miserable childhoods I’ve ever read in a trash novel.

Interestingly, her first victim is very much like Patrick Shannon himself – we read that he lived in a “sensuous” type of pad with a mirrored ceiling in his opulent bedroom, and was known for courting many ladies. The second murder is even more along the swank lines, as the lady makes her kill in a disco club called Narcissus, and Conaway really goes to town describing the garish, swanky place, with lucite furniture, glowing lights, an entrance that is designed to look like female genitalia, and private “conversation rooms” on the upper floor where couples can go to “talk.”

Once again our villain murders a middle-aged guy who is popular with the ladies, coming on to him and then following him into the restroom – he’s sick from too many drinks – and chopping off his head. A later murder sees her further playing up on her apparent sex appeal, calling up another middle-aged guy and talking her way up into his bedroom, where she has him strip down…and then chops off his head. Like the other two, she makes off with the guy’s head.

The cops are baffled, and Gil Lanahan, the detective working the case, insists they’re all random murders. Jana, following the case in the papers, suspects otherwise. When she’s hired by the mother of the first murdered victim, she promptly follows her hunch and researches the man’s background. This leads her to a private college on Staten Island which the guy attended twenty years before, in 1956 – and Jana soon discovers that the other two victims attended there at the same time, and that they were all friends.

Her alarm bells are set off by the creepy old “house mother” who oversees the fraternity house the three men once lived in; the lady first professes not to remember them, but as she goes on she starts to say the three were like “sons” to her. Jana also notices a photo with the three victims, taken in 1956, with their arms around two other guys – surely, if the murders are connected, these two will be next on the list.

Meanwhile Jana’s busy getting laid by her studly Italian boyfriend (who runs a fruit stand across the street from her apartment!) and, of course, by Detective Lanahan. Conaway serves up some explicit sequences here, but rarely does he write them from Jana’s perspective, as per usual he POV-hops throughout the novel. And also as per usual he maintains a lurid, sleazy vibe through the novel, often cutting over to the nameless murderer's viewpoint while she’s pleasuring herself.

Conaway also must’ve had a thing for off-Broadway plays, as each novel I’ve yet read by him has either featured theater actors or the protagonists going to a play. This time Jana and her gay best friend go to see a “rock musical” based on Oedipus Rex titled “Mother Fucker” (later changed to “Mother Lover”) which turns out to be performed mostly by transvestites. Conaway doesn’t provide a long sequence detailing the play, like he did in Shannon #3, but it’s certainly memorable enough, and also a lyric in one of the songs gives Jana the idea that whatever is causing these present murders had its beginnings in the past.

Gradually we learn that our nameless murderer was, as a sixteen year-old, raped by these five college boys, all of whom were spoiled, troublemaking offspring of millionaires. We also learn her sad backstory, how her mother (whose surprise reveal is easily seen coming) completely ignored her, and even used her horrible raping as a way to get some money for herself. Jana deduces all of this from basically looking at photos and asking questions; there are no wild shootouts or in fact any action scenes in the entire novel.

So then Deadlier Than The Male is about on par with everything else I’ve read by J.C. Conaway, with a definite sleaze factor at play and a goofy feeling to the entire proceedings. However Jana is more likable than Patrick Shannon, a good-natured bombshell who wants to make her mark as a private investigator. She only had one more shot at it, though, with the second volume, They Do It With Mirrors, being the last one in the series.

The Deadly Spring

The Deadly Spring, by J.C. Conaway
No month stated, 1976  Leisure Books

J.C. Conaway, the man who as “Jake Quinn” gave the world the Shannon series, returns to Leisure Books under his own name and delivers a trashy horror-mystery hybrid that comes off like a proto-version of William W. Johnstone’s The Nursery. Unlike the Shannon books, stuff actually happens here, and it’s all pretty wild and sleazy.

Taking place right after the Bicentennial weekend of July 4th, 1976, The Deadly Spring is set in Cheat Holler, West Virginia, not far from Morgantown. I found this pretty interesting, given that I grew up maybe an hour or so from this area, and one of my earliest memories is of the Bicentennial; I guess I was about a year and a half old at the time. The West Virginia town I grew up in sure as hell was smaller than Cheat Holler, which despite being described as nowhereseville has a lot of people living in it, doing a lot of interesting things. The place I grew up in was lucky to have an ice cream stand.

Conaway fills the 219 pages of the book with big print, and the story moves quickly. He juggles a large amount of characters with ease. Again, it’s all a definite step above the Shannon novels, which for the most part were lethargic. Missing though from those novels is the ultra-sleaze factor, with as we’ll recall Shannon getting it on in explicit detail in his mirror-lined bedroom. That’s not to say there aren’t moments of ultra-sleaze in The Deadly Spring, but for the most part Conaway goes for more of a kinky, macabre sort of approach. The novel is also filled with capably-handled dark humor.

There are a lot of characters on display, but the the main protagonists would be Ben Tyler, a hunky surveyor who contracts for the military base in town, and Amy Forrester, his hotbod girlfriend, who supports herself and her toddler son Buddy by writing trashy novels (her latest being a “sexy historical” in the vein of The Savage Sands). They’re shacking up in Amy’s house, which is right across from the Starlight Motel (owned by white trash Fred and Leona Pilzer) and the town gas station (owned by Ketchy Davis and his man-hungry wife, JoAnne).

The day after the July 4th celeberation, Cheat Holler is hit by a series of increasingly-destructive earthquakes. The first 100+ pages of the novel are moreso about the quakes and the chaos they create, rather than what the back cover claims the novel is about: namely, a psychoactive drug getting into the town water supply and making everyone go nuts. This element doesn’t appear until the final quarter, and it arises from the military base in town, which is overseen by Colonel Alexander Templeton, a stickler for duty who happens to be in lust with half of the men under his command.

The base is more of a research center, most of it housed underground, where army chemists are concocting various nerve agents. One of them is HT-105, which acts like LSD but unleashes a person’s id. Due to the damage of the earthquakes (and Templeton’s mismanagement of affairs) the vault that holds HT-105 suffers a large crack, with the liquid agent slowly filtering down into the soil and into the river channel that runs beneath the base, eventually ending up in the town’s water supply.

Before all this happens, though, Conaway spends more time setting up his various characters, showing how each and every one of them is a ticking time bomb. There’s a sergeant who has night guard duty at the base (posted there because Templeton resents that the good-looking guy is married), who is certain his wife is having an affair; a young woman named Willadene who suppresses her lustful thoughts due to her overbearing, abusively Christian mother; a funeral home director who is currently tasked with perparing the body of a once-notorious prostitute, whose high-falutin daughter has married into wealth and standing; a theater producer who suffers with a headstrong actress from out of town; a spinster who runs the town’s summer school program; and a pair of old high school friends who run The Joint, a bar out on Cheat Lake. 

There’s also Martin Forrester, Amy’s obsessed ex-husband, who manages the local Mountain Creek beer factory and can’t let his ex-wife go. This leads to a few confrontations between Ben and Martin, before the HT-105 even gets out, in particular their first meeting, which sees the two men getting into a protracted brawl outside of Amy’s house. Conaway really lights the fuse on this situation, with the reader anticipating a huge blowup once the drug gets out. Luckily, this is one of the few subplots Conaway bothers to wrap up at the very end of the novel.

Instead, once the drug gets out Conaway goes into an obvious riffing mode, just whittling down his large cast of characters in one crazy situation after another. Here the novel comes off a lot like Johnstone’s The Nursery, though only slightly less perverted. Like Johnstone, the suppressions unleashed among the populace via the drug are mostly sexual in nature, though not all of them. He even goes one better than Johnstone with the spinster’s class of kids going nuts during a tea party, a darkly comedic sequence which first has them tearing up the teacher’s valued first edition of Alice in Wonderland and then turning the spinster into a human pinata.

The drug’s first victim is the cuckolded guard; another darkly humorous scene that has him going home on a whim to find his wife in bed with a fellow guard from the base. The subplot with the funeral home is also grotesquely humorous, with the funeral director making up the old lady’s corpse to look like the hooker she once was. Willadene also gets her share of the lurid fun, first taking bloody vengeance on her domineering mother and then satiating her decades-suppressed lust with various men. Meanwhile, Col. Templeton goes nuts and sodomizes one of his men at gunpoint, blowing the guy’s head off at the, uh, climactic moment.

But here’s the thing: as the novel seems to be moving toward an insane finale, with practically every character converging on The Joint, to skinny dip in the drug-laced Cheat Lake…the novel just ends!! We have no idea what the outcome is of the HT-105 contamination, or indeed what becomes of the many surviving characters. Instead, Conaway focuses more on Ben coming upon the ruins of the base and helping the soldiers free the lead chemist, who was locked in the vault by Col. Templeton.

After this, Ben goes home to find a drug-crazed Martin Forrester again trying to attack his wife. Ben subdues him and ties him up, then calls the sheriff to come get him. This taken care of, Ben proposes to Amy, cracks open a beer, and chuckles that the Mountain Creek beer factory will probably have to shut down for a while, given that its water comes from drug-laced Cheat Lake! The End!! Obviously Conaway, in true pulp hack fashion, hit his word count and said “fuck it.” I checked to see if maybe pages were stuck together or missing, but no – the novel just ends at this arbitrary point, with even a few pages afterwards of advertisements for other Leisure books.

Despite the awkward and abrupt end, The Deadly Spring is still an enjoyable read, with a large cast of messed-up characters, and Conaway proves himself a master at setting up and paying off darkly humorous incidents. There are a lot of twisted happenings afoot, particularly of a perverse nature, but Conaway doesn’t really play up on the graphic details, as Johnstone did in his similar (but superior) novel. Also, the novel is riddled with typos, as is customary for a Leisure publication, the funniest being when, instead of “Amy gathered the child into her arms,” it says “Amy fathered the child into her arms.”

Shannon #3: The Mindbenders

Shannon #3: The Mindbenders, by Jake Quinn
January, 1975  Leisure Books

As half-assed and leisurely-paced as its predecessors, the third and final installment of the Shannon series once again sees our titular hero more concerned with downing whiskey and scoring with his hooker girlfriend. Meanwhile an Anton LaVey-styled “medium” is implanting mind-control devices in the heads of UN employees in some unspecified plot to do something. And Shannon’s gonna stop him, even if it takes him the entire novel to get around to it.

Once again Jake Quinn (more on whom below) is more content to wheel-spin, casually doling out his lackluster tale with absolutely no sense of urgency. Well, anyway, here’s the story: Alexander Garth, the LaVey-type, is a famous medium with jet-set clients all over the world, and is now famous on his own. However, he uses his hypnotic powers to lull his unsuspecting clients into a trance, during which Garth implants them with a mind-controlling device. We learn this only gradually, the novel opening with the sudden “suicides” of two of Garth’s clients, both of them UN notables: Akasaka of Japan and Haslev of Denmark.

Shannon’s brought into it when he catches his latest girlfriend, a UN translator from Norway named Aurora, snooping around in Shannon’s penthouse study one night. When Shannon sees that the girl’s taking photos of Shannon’s top-secret MORITURI files (the top secret organization Shannon “works” for), he chases after her…and the girl willingly jumps off of the high rise, killing herself. (All this just a few pages after some explicit sexual shenanigans between the two.)

Well, you know it’s Shannon when his reaction is to… break open another bottle of Jameson’s whiskey. Yes, friends, Shannon the drunk is up to his usual page-filling tricks, biding his time throughout the narrative and not really doing much of anything. Hell, he doesn’t get in a single action scene in the entirey of The Mindbenders, at least of the fist-and-guns variety. Now as for sex action, Shannon’s got that covered, with this volume getting pretty down and dirty at times; it’s much more explicit than the previous two volumes.

But anyway, just a few minutes after some hot n’ heavy screwin’ in Shannon’s bedroom (a scene in which we’re graced with the unforgettable tidbit that Shannon “watched himself in the ceiling mirror as he entered Aurora” ), the poor girl’s become a human pancake on the sidewalk far below. And after his drink, Shannon eventually gets around to doing something about it…namely, pestering his boss, the unimaginatively-named Number One, who poses as a priest in a NYC Catholic church.

Here’s the funny thing, though, despite the fact that the two dead men and Aurora all worked at the UN, and the Number One-revealed info that there’s apparently a mole leaking important secrets at the UN, no one believes Shannon that all of it might be tied together! In one of the more preposterous page-filling gambits I’ve encountered, our author instead has Shannon constantly butting heads with Number One and everyone else, who tell Shannon he’s crazy to even suspect that these “random suicides” might be the work of some nefarious foe.

Not that Shannon does much about it. No, he’s more content to call up his hooker friend Lillian, the female lead of the previous two installments whose name I could never recall. Lillian, a stacked redhead who is in love with Shannon, once again serves as more of a star in Shannon’s own novel. However Joe-Dad, Shannon’s black/Chinese cook and best pal, plays a much smaller role, and his un-PC jive talk is also greatly reduced. But then in this particular installment all of the characters talk like automatons, doling out expository info or filling pages with blather about irrelevant stuff, like even Joe-Dad bitching about how literary critics “complain about everything these days”!

Alexander Garth receives an arbitrary background section in which Quinn provides lots of useless backstory – but at least it’s all nice and lurid, especially when Garth hooks up with another Anton LaVey type who introduces Garth to the wonders of Satanism, complete with a Black Mass that features a willing “virgin” and lots of explicit sex. However Garth’s mind control ability isn’t really elaborated on; we learn that some other dude came up with the technology, and after learning how to master it Garth killed him and began using it, so as to spread his own power base. But again, why exactly he’s focused on the UN is never explored. 

Shannon works (well, sort of) in private eye mode throughout, talking to those who knew the two murdered UN employees. One of them is Andrew Lee, a young actor who served as a “friend” for Akasaka, whom we learn was gay. Quinn does actually pepper the novel with goofy stuff, and the Andrew Lee subplot is the goofiest of all, for we learn that he acts in an all-nude, off-Broadway play based 100% on Hair. Quinn, clearly having fun with it, takes us through the show as Shannon watches, and the opening song is “Did You Ever See Anything Like It In Your Hole?” The humor also extends into a darker realm, when a Garth-brainwashed Andrew Lee actually guts himself live on stage. (And then later some dude in the audience complains about having paid for his ticket!)

But man it just kinda keeps on going. Shannon talks with his friends, goes to bars, screws Lillian, and then wonders when the case will wrap up. Even though it’s clear Alexander Garth is somehow connected to all this, Number One refuses to give Shannon permission to do anything. He does however approve Shannon and Lillian going to a party at Liz Manderson’s, a Southern belle who is responsible for spreading Garth’s fame. This middling sequence, which makes a big deal of Shannon dying his red hair brown, at least serves to up the ante, as Garth takes a sudden interest in Lillian, offering to give her a reading the next day.

After Lillian herself is “mindbent,” Shannon ensures the implant is successfully removed in the hospital and then finally gets Number One’s approval to friggin’ do something. This leads to a lackluster climax that plays out during the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving Day. Even here Shannon doesn’t punch or shoot anyone, merely just running after Garth, who ends up doing in himself accidentally (and gorily). Quinn, not realizing he had an entire damn novel to do so, instead plays out a veritable last-second reveal that Garth was really getting his orders from elsewhere, bringing this up and closing it over the course of a single page.

So, a middling end for a middling series. I think Leisure was even sick of it; notice how the cover design is vastly different from the previous two installments. In fact I’m betting this art was commissioned for a different book, as it has nothing whatsoever to do with the contents of The Mindbenders. And for that matter, the back cover copy (which I’m betting was written by Leisure editor Peter McCurtin, as it’s very much in his style) also has nothing to do with the actual novel, spewing out vague hyperbole about how tough Shannon is – actually it occurs to me that it’s mostly just a summarization of the events shown in the cover painting!

A couple months ago I came across some eBay listings where a seller was auctioning off author copies of the Shannon books. (I can’t remember how much they were listed for, but I think they ended without any bids!) According to the listing, “Jake Quinn” was in reality J.C. Conaway, aka James Curry Conaway (1936-2012), a prolific pulpster who turned out a wealth of paperbacks in his day. The listing further stated that Conaway never learned to type, and thus dictated every word; further, he apparently wrote all three Shannon novels in a single month!

At any rate The Mindbenders was it for the adventures of Patrick Shannon, but much like the similarly-boring Joe Rigg series, one could argue that Shannon’s adventures never even really started.

Shannon #2: Shallow Grave

Shannon #2: Shallow Grave, by Jake Quinn
November, 1974 Leisure Books

I nearly forgot about the Shannon series; the initial volume, The Undertaker, was one of the first reviews I wrote on the blog. Shallow Grave is very much in the vein of its predecessor; author Jake Quinn, whoever he was, is once again more focused on sex and drinking than on gun-blazing action, more focused on the "leisure" in Leisure Books.

Our hero Patrick Shannon is still a globe-trotting spy who likes his Jameson's whiskey and his women. In fact the novel opens with not one but three girls hitting on Shannon as he swims in the pool while on vacation in Montego Bay, and they all go up to his hotel room for a little lovin'. As I wrote in my previous review, Shannon is incredibly idealized, but this series has to be a satire or spoof of the genre...I mean, we learn in this volume that Shannon is even a best-selling author, churning out a series of books about a spy, all of them based on his "real life" missions.

Quinn takes his good ol' time setting up the plot. Apparently some voodoo cult in New York City is hacking up hookers and leaving their mutilated corpses laying around...but who cares, 'cause Shannon's on vacation and he's getting laid. He soaks up the sights with a friend who lives down here, eventually ending up in a swanky club where a gorgeous black lady dances for the audience. One lucky member can share a drink with her if he can do the limbo, and sure enough, Shannon's the man. But the lady doesn't just have a drink with him; she of course goes back to his place.

I should mention here that though there is quite a bit of sex in Shallow Grave, it isn't the page-filling gratuitous kind like one would find in The Baroness. Yet for all of that Quinn doesn't dole out the sexual euphemisms that Paul Kenyon is known for. In other words, he calls a cock a cock.

Eventually Shannon returns to his penthouse suite in Manhattan, where you will recall he lives in ultra-swank '70s style, complete with a bedroom which is furnished with mirrored walls and ceiling. His stalwart companion Joe-Dad is there, the half-Chinese/half-black sidekick who serves up drinks, meals, and politically-incorrect banter. And too there's Shannon's stacked and gorgeous prostitute best friend, who is as ever in love with Shannon.

This time Quinn better works the lady into the plot; it's her friends who are showing up dead, prostitutes whose mutilated and heroin-ridden corpses are popping up about NYC. So she plays a much larger part in Shallow Grave than in The Undertaker, even going out on reconnoiter missions with Shannon and Joe-Dad (who himself plays a larger role here).

But again our man Quinn is more concerned with the good times. Rather than jumping right into the case, Shannon instead bides his time, more focused on looking out from his penthouse view and belaboring over the misery of the world while sipping on some Jameson's. As in the previous book Shannon drinks a whole bunch here, and I still say a case could be made for an "alternate reading" of the text, that Shannon in "reality" is a drunk who lives in his own fantasy world. Hell, the "bestselling writer" tag added with this volume only clinches it. Maybe the "real" Patrick Shannon is a drunk hack who churns out James Bond rip-offs while living in his own imaginary, booze-filled world.

Anyway this has nothing to do with the plot itself. Finally Shannon becomes involved, demanding that his boss, "Number One," assign him to the case. Shannon's method of research is so casual as to be hilarious; he basically just looks around New York City and waits for another body to show up. Quinn keeps the ball rolling with lurid scenes of hookers getting murdered every few chapters. A voodoo cult has sprung up in the city, and it likes to gather together, pound the voodoo drums, and sacrifice heroin-ravaged hookers.

Despite all of this, Quinn is still more interested in the non-action stuff. He even manages to slip in long flashbacks of not only Shannon's bio, but also how he met his prostitute best friend/occasional lover (whose name I have obviously forgotten and am too lazy to look up). It's funny, really, and while it might sound annoying it's actually fun just because it's so goofy and so unconcerned with action or thrills. In many ways Jake Quinn is like the alternate universe version of Joseph Rosenberger. Where Rosenbger is all action, all of the time, Quinn holds off on the action until absolutely necessary, and then dispenses with it quickly.

Strangely enough I really enjoyed Shallow Grave. In fact I enjoyed it even more than The Undertaker, which despite being a bit more lurid (what with its dwarf villain who wanted to hack off Shannon's manhood and have it sewn on his own body...!), was actually a bit more boring. Actually, it's that Shallow Grave is just so super-'70s.

There's a great website/blog called Plaid Stallions, which is devoted to shaggy '70s pop culture. The owner of that blog created a character to personify the he-males of 1970s fashion and lifestyle ads, and called him Brick Mantooth. Well, if Brick Mantooth starred in a men's adventure series, it would be very much like Shannon.

And is it just me, or does it look like Shannon's punching Gerald Ford on the bottom left of the cover?

Shannon #1: Super-Seventies Man of Action (and Booze)

Shannon #1: The Undertaker, by Jake Quinn
September 1974, Leisure Books

Published a month before I was born, Shannon #1 is a prime example of '70s men's adventure fiction; main character Patrick Shannon is a globetrotting superspy so irresistible to the ladies that even supermodels hit on him. He drives a sportscar, carries a pistol, works for a clandestine agency (Morituri), and is the successful author of a series of novels based on his "real-life" adventures. He employs a half-black/half-Chinese servant/best friend named "Joe-Dad" who cooks him his meals, serves him his drinks, and cleans his penthouse apartment, all while speaking in an ultra non-PC patois of "black" and "Chinese-English."

Further, Shannon's good friends with a "stacked" redheaded hooker who is in love with him and who would give up her high-paying career if he'd only commit to her, but she's thankful enough for his occasional booty call...even cancelling said high-paying jobs to run to him for a night of good lovin.' He wears all the latest styles, he's in perfect physical shape, and of course he's hung like a horse (indeed, we read that his "large cock casts a shadow over his thighs!"). And if that isn't enough '70s action for you, Shannon's bedroom has a mirrored ceiling. And mirrored walls. Even a mirrored floor!

And you thought James Bond was idealized.

This first novel takes its time getting started up; we meet Shannon on his first "real" date with his latest conquest, a high-fashion model who's in the news due to a magazine spread she's done for a jewelry line...a photo spread she did fully in the nude (!). Yes, this incredibly gorgeous blond approaches Shannon on the street and hits on him, even pulling said magazine from her purse to show off the photos. (What, this has never happened to you?) The model, Ginny, goes out with Shannon a few times; tonight will be their "big" night (read: sex), but before the wah-wah'd action can begin, Ginny's kidnapped by a horror-faced ghoul.

At first Shannon thinks he's just been stood up; he spends the night polishing off a few bottles of booze. But soon he suspects foul play, even though his Morituri superior (imaginatively named "Number One") disagrees. Shannon investigates on his own and soon discovers that his suspicions were correct, and all of it hinges upon a newly-opened funeral home across from his apartment. For there a group of lowlife scum have orchestrated the kidnappings of three other gorgeous and blonde women, stealing them away to a remote island for some nefarious purpose. Ginny is just the latest victim.

The novel soon flies straight off into the hinterlands of full-on exploitation: an island of encaged, beautiful women which is run by a hirsute dwarf who has sex with one of the women a day; a Nazi lesbian of a plastic surgeon who works for the dwarf, trying to figure out a means to amputate his stunted legs and replace them with longer ones; a ghoul with fanged teeth who wants to throw Shannon into his pit of pet crocodiles. And of course the Nazi lesbian falls in love with Shannon, despite her Nazi lesbianism. Speaking of Shannon, throughout all of this he's doing what any other Super-'70s man of action would be up to: banging all those beautiful chicks. Yes, it's all a bunch of sordid fun, and the plot could easily have been turned into a piece of grindhouse cinema.

The book suffers from the usual poor writing of the men's adventure genre. Grammar is shall we say eccentric; commas appear at random intervals, breaking up sentences for no apparent reason. Most frustratingly, the point of view bounces around like a ping-pong ball; one paragraph we're in Shannon's head, the next we're in someone else's, and back and forth. Consistency is key! But then again, changing-POV is a commonplace in trash fiction, so it's not like Shannon is unusual in this regard. However I can't make any excuse for some of the lame dialog (particularly Joe-Dad's; he's already breaking out a "Lahdy!" when we first meet him), and Quinn's insistence upon spelling everything out becomes grating.

One thing, though -- whereas the men's adventure novels of the '80s were more focused on guns and action and bloodshed, '70s men's adventure novels were a bit more focused on sex. (As an adult, guess which of the two I've grown to prefer.) Shannon #1 doesn't shirk on the sex; one early page is mostly comprised of a lovingly detailed description of Ginny's breasts! During the many and frequent sex scenes, Quinn's writing of course improves; I must say he has a talent for writing them, churning out prose as purple as a fresh bruise.

Maybe it's the post-modern reader in me, but it came to me that the entirety of Shannon #1 could be seen as the deranged hallucinations of a washed-out drunk. I mean, think of it. Patrick Shannon is a perfect he-man, an agent for a super-secretive US agency, a guy who drives a sportscar, gets hit on by supermodels, has sex with countless gorgeous women, and lives a life that would make James Bond envious. But yet, the guy is drunk throughout the entire novel. To be sure, Quinn never outright states Shannon is drunk. But damn this guy hammers the licqour throughout this novel! Whiskey (mixed with milk no less!) for breakfast, polishing off entire bottles of champaign and his ever-favorite Jameson's whiskey, hurrying to the nearest bar because he "needs" a drink (after which he finds solace for his loneliness in a hooker); these are the signs of an alcoholic, not "the wildest secret agent since James Bond."

So then, I propose an alternate reading of Shannon #1. Perhaps it all takes place in this guy's head, and, rather than a kick-ass secret agent who gets babes to spare, he's instead a recluse, a penniless hack without a cent to his name, nursing a half-empty bottle of whiskey as he sits all alone in his mirrored bedroom, with no companionship other than his increasingly-deranged fantasies...