Paul Tabori's The Green Rain

The Green Rain is a 1951 science fiction novel by Paul Tabori.

Paul Tabori (1908- 1974) was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer who also occasionally wrote under the pseudonym Peter Stafford.

The Green Rain is a wild ride. This is humorous science fiction with a definite satirical edge.

Everything goes wrong when the first C-Rocket is launched. The destination is the Moon. The C-Rocket is the brainchild of a brilliant but seriously eccentric scientist. It carries a kind of proto-chlorophyll with rather extraordinary properties. Within a few months the Moon will be a living planet, with an atmosphere and abundant life.

The only problem is that the C-Rocket malfunctions and deposits its cargo on Earth. With unexpected results. When mixed with rainwater it turns people green. Permanently green, all over. Anyone caught out in the rain at the time of the disaster is now green. They don’t suffer any other ill-effects but the political and social consequences are profound. The newly green people are considered by some to be a superior race. Others regard them as inferior mutants.

As you might expect the author indulges in a lot of political satire. That’s usually a bad thing but this book’s saving grace is that Tabori makes fun of absolutely everybody. Whites, blacks and Asians. Christians, Jews and Muslims. Communists and capitalists. Republicans and Democrats. The Americans, the Russians, the British, the French, Africans, the Irish, even Norwegians and Poles. Everybody is fair game. By being offensive to everybody the books ends up being, in my view, offensive to nobody. It’s just totally nuts and fun.

A crazy crooked communist and a crazy crooked anti-communist get together to take advantage of the situation by establishing a new religion. They make use of middle-aged lady evangelist Gloriana and glamorous movie star Madge McMamie. They come up with a cool stunt - Gloriana will die and be reborn.

The objective is not just to start a new religion but to gain political power as well. The reborn Gloriana will run for President.

And then the book changes gears in an interesting way. It suddenly becomes a whole lot darker. The world becomes green, but in a different way. A nightmarish way.

The ending is not what you might be expecting.

I’ve now read three of Tabori’s novels and he really is an intriguing writer. Wildly original and crazy and definitely full of surprises. None of the books of his that I’ve read can be easily slotted into a particular genre. He’s also inclined to mix humour and darkness in interesting ways.

The Green Rain is a fun ride and it’s best to just allow yourself to be swept along with it. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed his bizarre but brilliant and lurid Demons of Sandorra and his sexy horror witchcraft romp The Wild White Witch (written as Peter Stafford).

Jimmy Sangster’s Touchfeather, Too

Touchfeather, Too dates from 1968 and was the second of Jimmy Sangster’s two spy thrillers featuring sexy lady spy Katy Touchfeather. And I do so love spy thrillers featuring glamorous sexy lady spies.

Jimmy Sangster (1927-2011) had an immensely successful career as a screenwriter. He wrote a lot of movies for Hammer, including most of their best early movies. Unfortunately his career as a novelist tends to get overlooked. He wrote a number of fine spy novels.

Katy Touchfeather is an airline stewardess. She’s beautiful, sexy and charming so that definitely makes her an airline stewardess rather than a flight attendant. This is however merely her cover. She is actually a British counter-espionage agent.

Her latest mission involves a Greek shipping tycoon named Galipolodopolo. He doesn’t make his real money from shipping but from gold. Katy understands just enough about international finance to understand that Mr Galipolodopolo’s dealings in gold are highly illegal. The British Government wants to put an end to his gold dealings.

Katy’s immediate target is handsome young bullfighter Antonio. She discovers that his athletic prowess in the bedroom is as impressive as his prowess in the bullring. Antonio appears to be working as a courier for Mr Galipolodopolo. Katy has to find out how Antonio is involved and if necessary to kill him. Katy doesn’t particularly like killing people, but sometimes murder is part of the job. Although it does seem a pity to have to kill such an impressive bedroom athlete.

Katy has managed to get herself invited as a guest on Galipolodopolo’s luxury yacht. That’s where her trysts with Antonio take place. The mission does not go according to plan. It does end with a corpse but Katy didn’t do the killing. And she didn’t get the evidence. Mr Blaser is very annoyed with her. But he gives her another chance.

As a result Katy ends up in the African nation of Borami. She ends up on board Borami’s presidential jet. And she also finds herself in a Dakota desperately short of fuel trying to find somewhere to land in the middle of a desert.

More disturbingly, she ends up back on Galipolodopolo’s yacht but as a prisoner rather than a guest. She she gets to meet Lucia. Lucia is very beautiful and very glamorous, and very evil. She is Galipolodopolo’s chief torturer. Katy does not like Lucia. The odds are heavily stacked against her but Katy is resourceful and deadly.

Katy’s employers do not supply her with any gadgets. Sangster was clearly trying to avoid the obsession with gadgetry in 60s spy fiction and spy movies. Katy doesn’t really need gadgets. You can leave Katy alone in a room and within five minutes she will have collected an assortment of small inoffensive household items and turned them into a small but deadly armoury. Very low-tech, but Katy is a great improviser and she knows an astonishing number of methods for killing people.

There is a certain amount of 60s Deighton-esque cynicism here. Mr Blaser tells Katy that the British Government plans to confiscate Galipolodopolo’s gold. When Katy suggests that it sounds like the British Government intends to steal the gold Mr Blaser has to admit that this is indeed the intention. But of course when governments steal things they don’t call it stealing.

The government of Borami is corrupt. The Americans, Chinese, Soviets and British are all heavily involved in Borami and their motives are entirely cynical. International politics is a dirty game.

Katy is fairly ruthless. She doesn’t like having to kill people in the line of duty. If she has to do so it can keep her awake at nights. For a couple of nights. Then she forgets about it. No point crying over spilt milk.

This is a sexy spy thriller but the sexiness is very mild. The plot is solid.

The book’s main asset is Katy Touchfeather. She’s not infallible. She makes mistakes but she has an amazing ability to get herself out of the messes she gets herself into. And she does so in very clever very entertaining ways. She’s a very cool action heroine even if her ethics are just the tiniest bit dubious.

This is a hugely enjoyable spy thriller. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first book in the series, Touchfeather, and it’s very good indeed.

Charles Williams' The Sailcloth Shroud

The Sailcloth Shroud is a 1959 crime novel by Charles Williams.

Charles Williams (1909-1975) was an American crime writer whose work could be described as hardboiled or noir or suspense fiction, in varying degrees in different books.

The Sailcloth Shroud is a nautical thriller and I am personally very fond of nautical thrillers.

Stuart Rogers (the narrator of the tale) has just arrived back in the U.S. on the Topaz, a ketch he bought cheap in Panama on the assumption that he could sell it at a substantial profit in the States. It was not the happiest of cruises. He had taken on two men, both experienced seamen, as crew. One of them, Baxter, died of a heart attack on the voyage and as a result of unfavourable winds there was no way of getting the body back to an American port in time. Baxter had to be buried at sea.

Then the other crewman, Keefer, turns up dead. Murdered. Brutally beaten to death. There’s some mystery about the money Keefer was carrying. He was supposed to be broke but several thousand dollars were found on the body. For some reason the F.B.I. is interested and curiously enough they’re more interested in Baxter’s fate.

There’s no evidence against Rogers but the Feds think that he knows more than he’s saying. Some other people, very unpleasant people (in fact they’re the guys who killed Keefer), also think Rogers knows something. Which is distressing because Rogers really has told the complete truth and he really doesn’t know anything else.

His problem is that although his story is true, although Baxter really did die of a heart attack, Rogers can’t prove it. Baxter’s body is at the bottom of the Caribbean. Rogers really is telling the truth when he says that there was no alternative to a burial at sea, but he can’t actually prove that either.

Rogers figures that it might be a good idea to do a bit of investigating himself. If he can turn up anything that will clear up the mystery he’ll be able to get the Feds off his back, and, those goons as well.

He knows there are two women involved. Both women were connected in some way with Baxter. And there’s clearly a mystery attached to Baxter.

Stuart Rogers is a regular guy who is not equipped to deal with murderous hoodlums. He briefly considers buying a gun but dismisses the idea. He’s an amateur. These heavies are pros. A gun would just get him into more trouble. Rogers is not a tough guy but he’s not totally soft either. He might not be an experienced brawler but it’s amazing what you can do when you’re scared enough and desperate enough and you’re fighting for your life.

He’s also very much an amateur investigator but he does stumble across a couple of leads.

This is a tale of a pretty ordinary guy suddenly caught up in a nightmare that he doesn’t really understand.

It’s somewhat hardboiled but it's not really noir fiction even if it does have its darker moments. It doesn’t contain the key ingredients that distinguish noir fiction.

It is however a gripping and extremely well-written thriller with plenty of atmosphere and the nautical aspects of the tale add plenty of interest. Top-notch stuff. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this with another Charles Williams thriller, All the Way, in a double-header paperback edition with is pretty much a must-buy.

Paul Tabori's Demons of Sandorra

Demons of Sandorra is a 1970 science fiction novel by Paul Tabori.

Paul Tabori (1908- 1974) was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer who also occasionally used the pseudonym Peter Stafford.

There’s quite a bit of sexual content in Demons of Sandorra but this is definitely not a sci-fi sleaze novel. It’s a dystopian novel with some post-apocalyptic overtones. The setting is one of those utopias that is really a dystopia (of course all utopias inevitably become dystopias) but no-one will admit that their society is dystopian.

The setting is Sandorra, a tiny independent country only it isn’t really independent because there’s a single global government, but nobody admits that. Everybody pretends that independent nations still exist.

This is the story of an attractive young woman named Yolanda Vernon who seems to have a bright future in front of her. She has however started to display disturbing and distressing signs of sanity. Sanity is of course a disorder that usually responds well to therapy. The important thing is to spot the symptoms early and seek treatment immediately.

This is a world that, in the wake of a nuclear war, proceeded to build a perfect new society. The basis of this society would be Synthetism, a psychological theory which rejects reason entirely. Instinct rather than reason should be the guiding principle of both individual and group behaviour. This is also a society that has rejected normality. In this society sanity and normality are regarded as serious mental illnesses.

Marriage and monogamy are also regarded as dangerous deviations. Heterosexuality is tolerated although exclusive heterosexuality is considered dangerously eccentric.

The Synthetists have created a society in which all sexual pleasures can be indulged. Even sexual predation is permitted although you do have to buy a licence. The Synthetist have found ways in which all citizens can open the Gates, the Gates being the pathway to fulfilment. This includes the ultimate Gate.

The end result is a soft totalitarian society in which non-conformism has become compulsory, so non-conformism is now conformism. Sanity is insanity and insanity is sanity. Normality is abnormal and abnormality is normal.

This is a world of therapy, but the therapy is intended to keep people insane.

Privacy has been abolished. It’s considered undemocratic.

Yolanda has a good job at the Lethe Institute. It’s very satisfying being able to help people. Her job is to open the ultimate Gate to those who have passed the appropriate tests and have waited patiently for their turn. The ultimate Gate is of course Death.

This is clearly satire. It’s meant to be amusing and it is. But there’s a serious purpose as well. It does raise all kinds of questions about conformity and authoritarianism and social engineering, and sexual indulgence versus sexual repression. And what it means to be sane or insane, and the conflict between the overwhelming human desires for both freedom and conformity. Also the ticklish problem that there is a need for order but order always leads to repression.

And it develops these ideas in surprisingly complex and nuanced ways. It doesn’t present the various opposing concepts in a simplistic black-and-white manner. Readers are left to make up their own minds. Life is messy and every attempt to reduce the messiness of life just creates new problems. And revolutions don’t always turn out they way you’d hoped, and you can’t predict where they’ll lead.

As the story progresses it becomes crazier, but in interesting ways.

This future society does of course have some unsettling resemblances to the world of today.

Demons of Sandorra is wild stuff but it’s inspired wildness and I was sufficiently impressed to order several more of Tabori’s books. Highly recommended.

The author’s witchcraft potboiler, The Wild White Witch (written as Peter Stafford), has a similar deceptive feel - it seems trashy on the surface but has more substance to it than you’re expecting. I recommend it as well.

Peter O’Donnell’s Pieces of Modesty

Pieces of Modesty, published in 1972, was Peter O’Donnell’s first Modesty Blaise short story collection. By this time he had already written five extremely popular Modesty Blaise novels.

There are six short stories in this collection and they’re rather varied in tone and approach.

The first story, A Better Day To Die, begins on a bus on a remote road somewhere in Latin America. For the whole trip Modesty has been subjected to a lecture by a clergyman on the evils of violence, and on her own wickedness in resorting so often to violence. The reverend gentleman is escorting a party of schoolgirls.

A shot rings out, the bus driver is dead, and Modesty and her fellow passengers are now prisoners of a rag-tag but trigger-happy party of guerrillas, although really they’re not much more than glorified bandits. Modesty would be a lot happier if the clergyman had not seized her little .25 automatic and tossed it into the bushes. The clergyman assures her that it is always wrong to meet violence with violence.

This story is interesting in showing a very ruthless side to both Modesty and Willie Garvin. They don’t enjoy killing (Modesty does end up respecting the clergyman’s courage in sticking to his non-violent principles). But when it’s clear to them that lethal force is justified they become merciless and efficient killing machines.

Modesty also displays some slightly shocking touches of cynicism. Or perhaps not cynicism - perhaps merely an acceptance of brutal realities. An excellent story.

The Giggle-wrecker is outlandish and even whimsical. It starts in a straightforward manner. A Japanese scientist who defected to the Soviets a decade earlier now wants to defect back to the West. He’s now in hiding in East Berlin. Getting him out is quite possible but would involve a major operation which would put the British espionage network in East Germany at risk. Tarrant, the British spymaster for whom Modesty often does jobs, doesn’t want to take that risk.

The alternative to a major operation would be to get a couple of unconventional talented freelancers to do the job. Freelancers like Modesty and Willie. They encounter unexpected and frustrating problems until Willie has a brainwave. His idea is pure madness but it might work. A light but amusing tale.

I Had a Date with Lady Janet is narrated by Willie Garvin. He has a new girlfriend, a charming girl with one leg. Then a nightmare from the past catches up with him - Rodelle, a very unpleasant man he thought he’d killed, isn’t dead after all. Rodelle wants revenge but he intends to strike at Willie through Modesty whom he has kidnapped.

There’s lot of mayhem in a crumbling old baronial house in Scotland. And it really is literally crumbling. A story very much about the unusual but intense Modesty-Willie friendship and quite exciting as well.

A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck is mostly a story of Willie and Modesty trying to find a way to help their friends John Collier and Dinah without appearing to help them (there’s nothing worse than being put in the position of seeming to be asking for help). There have been a series of spectacular robberies, which may turn out to be the perfect opportunity.

It also offers a reminder that Willie and Modesty are not cops or government agents. Their attitude towards the law is decidedly flexible. A fairly enjoyable story.

In Salamander Four Modesty gets mixed up in industrial espionage after a wounded man shows up on the doorstep of the remote Finnish cabin she is sharing with a renowned sculptor named Hemmer. He’s doing a sculpture of her. She’s giving him lots of encouragement in the bedroom and out of it.

The wounded man, Waldo, is an old rival from her criminal past. A rival but a friendly rival. Waldo’s troubles are none of her business but she doesn’t take kindly to attempt to kill people she knows socially. A pretty decent story.

The Soo Girl Charity is a story in which Modesty’s bottom plays as crucial role. It goes without saying that Modesty has a very nice bottom. She has no great objections to having it admired. Even a gentle friendly pinch is something she can take her in her stride. But this was different. What business Charles Leybourn did to Modesty’s bottom was neither gentle nor friendly.

Modesty and Willie decide that Leybourn needs to be taught a lesson in manners. Their plan involves stealing. They haven’t stolen anything for such a long time so this sounds like fun.

It turns out that there is more than bottom-pinching going on.

This is the best story in the collection. There are several twists, including a very nice one at the end.

Pieces of Modesty is an interestingly varied collection and is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed three early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first five novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth, A Taste for Death, The Impossible Virgin, And I, Lucifer.

W. Somerset Maugham’s The Magician

The villain of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1908 novel The Magician was inspired by Aleister Crowley although the story itself is pure fiction.

Maugham had met Crowley and while he disapproved of him and considered him to be a charlatan he was strangely fascinated by the notorious occultist. And while many of the extraordinary tales Crowley told about himself were untrue Maugham had to admit that they were not all untrue. Crowley was a remarkable man. It was obvious to Maugham that he was a perfect subject for a novel.

Maugham’s novel begins with a brilliant young surgeon who is engaged to be married to the beautiful Margaret, who had been his ward. In Paris they encounter the notorious occultist and magician Oliver Haddo. Haddo is wildly eccentric and slightly sinister but he is charismatic and fascinating.

Haddo seems to be intent on seducing Margaret. Is he simply making use of standard techniques of hypnotism (aided by his charismatic personality) or does he possess actual occult powers?

And is he intent on mere seduction? There is a possibility that he has something much stranger and much more shocking in mind.

Maugham did not believe that Crowley possessed any real magical powers but had to admit that he certainly had the ability to convince people that he did. Oliver Haddo might well have obtained such powers.

The story of Maugham’s novel of course has no connection whatsoever to any events in the life of Aleister Crowley. Crowley simply served as a jumping-off point. And of course in the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were many occult practitioners so Haddo is perhaps more representative of a breed than of an individual.

Either way Oliver Haddo is a wonderful and memorable larger-than-life character. He entirely dominates the story.

This was a period of intense interest in the occult so in commercial terms the idea was a winner. It was very much in tune with the cultural obsessions of the day. The reading public had an inexhaustible appetite for thrillers with an occult flavouring.

The novel is an unashamed potboiler (and I have no problems with that). It can be regarded as an occult thriller, a melodrama, a romance and even as gothic horror. It’s not what you expect from Maugham, excepting that being a Maugham novel it’s extremely well-written. He has some fine suspense, some genuine chills and thrills and a perverse love story. And the love story is quite powerful.

This is a very early example of the occult thriller genre which would reach its full flowering in the works of Dennis Wheatley.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Magician. Highly recommended.

Rex Ingram’s The Magician (1926) is a superb movie adaptation of the novel.

Crowley was himself a talented writer. His Simon Iff Stories are splendid occult detective stories, Crowley’s most famous novel, Moonchild, does touch on some of the occult practices described in Maugham’s novel. So it is possible to get both sides of the story.

Carter Brown's The Bump and Grind Murders

The Bump and Grind Murders is a 1964 Carter Brown crime thriller.

The phenomenally popular and prolific English-born Australian pulp writer Carter Brown created a dozen or so series characters, one of the lesser-known being female private eye Mavis Seidlitz who featured in a dozen books between 1955 and 1974.

Brown could be described as a Hardboiled Lite writer with a slightly tongue-in-cheek approach. On the basis of The Bump and Grind Murders I’d say that the Mavis Seidlitz novels were among his most lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek. And also among the sleaziest.

While all fictional lady PIs owe a debt to Honey West I’d have to say that Mavis Seidlitz bears very very little resemblance to Honey West. Honey is tough, resourceful, brave and competent and she’s a smart cookie. Mavis isn’t very tough, she’s accident-prone, she’s ditzy and she’s staggeringly incompetent. The Honey West novels combine solid PI action with touches of humour and a huge dash of sexiness. The Bump and Grind Murders has a reasonably solid plot but it’s played mostly for laughs.

Mavis makes every mistake a PI could make and invents some brand new mistakes that nobody else had ever thought of.

The only thing Mavis and Honey West have in common is an extraordinary tendency to end up without any clothes on.

Mavis is a partner in a detective agency with Johnny Rio. The agency is hired by a nerdy guy named Hatchik to protect his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Irma, is a stripper at the Club Berlin. Hatchik has tried to persuade Irma to give up her stripping job but Irma takes her art very seriously. The Club Berlin’s gimmick is that everything is German-themed and the strippers use German-sounding stage names. Irma is Irma Der Bosen, which apparently means Irma the Bosom. Once Mavis gets a look at Irma’s superstructure she decides that the name is extraordinarily appropriate.

Mavis will of course go undercover at the club, as a stripper. Her act involves having her clothes fall off accidentally. She has a partner, a guy called Casey, who helps to ensure that her clothes fall off.

There is tension between the girls at the club. The manager is slightly sinister and there’s a really sinister guy with a scar hanging around. Then of course there’s a murder, but Irma is not the victim.

The plot gets a bit crazy and that’s partly due to Mavis’s amazing ability to misunderstand everything that is going on. She discovers that the club is being used as a front by a spy ring and that there’s an undercover CIA agent working there.

The strip club setting works well, adding some seedy glamour.

Brown perhaps makes Mavis (who is the first-person narrator) just a bit too ditzy but this does the advantage that we’re dealing with a kind of unreliable narrator -if it’s possible to misunderstand something and leap to the wrong conclusions Mavis will do just that. That makes the plot a bit more fun. And Mavis can be amusing at times.

Towards the end Brown throws in a bunch of plot twists and the fact that the narrator doesn’t have a clue what’s going on around her does increase the surprise factor a little.

Classical strip-tease was of course all about the tease and the sleaze factor in this book is a bit like that - it isn’t anywhere near as sleazy as we expect to to be, even when Mavis gets naked.

Carter Brown had zero literary pretensions. His books were pure entertainment, a bit trashy, but always fun. The Bump and Grind Murders is recommended.

J. Hunter Holly’s The Running Man

J. Hunter Holly’s The Running Man is a 1963 science fiction novel published as a paperback original by Monarch Books. It falls at least loosely into the category of science fiction paranoia fiction.

College professor Jeff Munro becomes involved, quite by accident, with a group known as Heralds for Peace (HFP). They’re a mysterious group regarded with suspicion by many. They appear to be a cult but whether they’re a religious or a political cult is uncertain. Jeff Munro violently disapproves of them.

Munro encounters an angry mob about to kill a woman. She is a member of HFP and the mob is convinced that HFP is some kind of sinister threat to society.

Then he encounters a strange very frightened man (Munro thinks of him as the Running Man) who is convinced that the HFP are out to kill him. And It appears that they really are out to kill him.

Munro is puzzled. He has seen evidence of irrational hatred directed at HFP but also evidence that they might indeed be a sinister organisation. He is intrigued enough to start poking about the cult’s vast headquarters compound hidden away deep in the woods. He sees a couple of things that lead him to wonder if this really is an ordinary cult or whether there might be strange and powerful forces at work, forces that might be unnatural or other-worldly in origin. He expects cult members to be fanatics, but these cultists are disturbingly zombie-like.

Infiltrating the HFP seems like a good idea at the time but Munro may have landed himself in the middle of something more dangerous than he can handle.

And also more perplexing. There may be bad guys behind the cult, or possibly several different groups involved behind the scenes. All of them may be planning to double-cross each other. There may be multiple levels of double-crosses. The nature of the bad guys is a mystery - there does seem to be something unnatural going on.

Munro needs to find somebody he can trust but he might be better off not trusting anybody.

In 1963 brainwashing was becoming a cultural obsession. Not just brainwashing of prisoners-of-war but more subtle forms of brainwashing employed by the advertising industry and governments - there were plenty of different kinds of brainwashing about which to be paranoid and this novel certainly taps into that cultural obsession.

Munro is an interesting hero. He’s a college professor so he’s not exactly open-minded. He led a campaign to deprive the HFP of the right to speak on campus. He has a bit of an authoritarian steak although at the time the author may have seen that as a good thing. It certainly makes Munro a valuable potential recruit for the HFP - this is a man who has a yearning for power.

There’s plenty of paranoia here. Poor Munro seems to be hopelessly out of his depth. He starts to understand some of what is going on, but not all of it, and that could lead him into making mistakes. And he’s just an ordinary college professor, not a secret agent.

There is some genuine science fiction content although it takes a while to emerge. The science fiction elements are moderately interesting.

It’s a fairly entertaining tale if you enjoy science fiction paranoia and you don’t set your expectations too high. Worth a look.

Armchair Fiction have paired this novel with William P. McGivern’s The Mad Robot in a two-novel paperback edition.

Joseph Kessel’s novel Belle de Jour

Joseph Kessel’s novel Belle de Jour was published in 1928 and was immediately controversial. It would be decades before anyone dared to publish an English translation.

Both Kessel and his novel are now entirely forgotten outside of France. Luis Buñuel’s 1967 film adaptation is however still regarded as one of the masterpieces of cinema.

The basic premise of both novel and movie is the same. Séverine is a happily married young woman who has never learnt to be totally comfortable about sex. She decides to take a part-time job, in a brothel. It’s a kind of therapy. She can however only work the afternoon shift, so she becomes known as Belle de Jour.

It’s obvious that Séverine has major sexual issues and that she takes no pleasure at all in love-making with her husband Pierre (an eminent young surgeon). Her first experience with a customer at the brothel is degrading and humiliating. That excites Séverine a great deal. She discovers that if she feels sufficiently degraded she can enjoy sex a good deal.

Then along comes Marcel. He’s one of her customers. He’s a hoodlum. His body is covered in scars from numerous fights. He’s dangerous with a suggestion of violence. This is the best sex Séverine has had so far!

Her husband is kind and gentle and sensitive and never pressures her into having sex. He’s so passive and understanding and sensitive that she can hardly bear to have him touch her. Marcel just takes her brutally when he wants her. That works for her.

Séverine is determined to keep her two lives separate. That might be possible as long as she and Marcel do not get emotionally involved. Perhaps they are already emotionally involved. Séverine isn’t sure she can tell the difference between lust and love and she isn’t at all sure which of those two things she wants.

The sadomasochistic elements that are prominent in the movie are more diffuse and more indirect in the novel. It’s clear that Séverine enjoys to some extent playing the submissive role but it’s the more generalised sense of shame and degradation that gets her blood pumping.

While the basic plotline sounds very similar to the 1967 movie there are in fact huge differences. Buñuel’s movie operates on at least two different levels of reality. It is clear that much of the action of the movie consists of Séverine’s sexual fantasies. It is impossible to be certain where reality and and her fantasies take over. Dream and reality seem to be bleeding into each other. It’s possible (but by no means certain) that almost everything in the movie only happens in Séverine’s fantasies. Buñuel has no intention of making things easy for us. He wants us to be uncertain.

This is not the case with the novel. The novel is a straightforward linear narrative with no ambiguity. Everything that appears to happen in the novel does happen.

It is always important to bear in mind that a novel and a movie adaptation of that novel do not necessarily have the same meaning. And the intentions behind the novel and the movie may be very very different. Buñuel did not feel the least bit constrained to make a movie that meant the same things that the novel meant. And there is no reason at all why he should have felt so constrained.

So if you’re thinking that the novel may make the movie’s meaning more clear then you’re hoping to be disappointed. It’s not going to be any help at all in that department.

Although Buñuel’s movie is the greater artistic achievement his movie and Kessel’s novel are both exceptionally interesting and both are very much worth seeking out. Kessel’s Belle de Jour is highly recommended.

My copy of the book is the Overlook Duckworth paperback edition of Geoffrey Wagner’s 1962 English translation.

I’ve also reviewed Buñuel’s movie, Belle de Jour (1967).

The Spy and the Pirate Queen

The Spy and the Pirate Queen was published in 1967. American former newspaper reporter Hal D. Steward wrote two sexy spy thrillers in 1967, both featuring CIA agent Nails Fenian.

Both were published as paperback originals by a small obscure outfit specialising mostly in sleaze fiction. And The Spy and the Pirate Queen straddles both the spy fiction and sleaze fiction genres.

These two books were I believe Steward’s only forays into the world of spy fiction.

Nailan Fenian, nicknamed Nails, is a philosophy professor, which is a useful enough cover for a spy.

Nails is in Singapore, on the trail of a Chinese lady pirate. Yes, piracy was in fact common in the South China Sea in the 1950s and 60s. Madame Wong is a very successful and ruthless pirate who operates on a large scale. Nails’ job is to terminate her activities which means killing her if necessary.

Within hours of his arrival in Singapore Nails knows that his cover has been blown. Several attempts have been made on his life. An informer has been murdered. More murders will follow. Madame Wong does not take kindly to people who pry into her affairs.

Nails gets involved with a beautiful half-Chinese girl, Lung Mai, who works as a freelance spy. She may be the femme fatale here but that is by no means certain. Nails hopes she’s innocent. She’s amazingly good in bed. He would hate to have to kill a woman with such impressive bedroom skills.

Madame Wong has never been photographed and has kept her true identity a secret. One day she intends to retire, as a respectable citizen. If there is a chance that a person might, deliberately or inadvertently, reveal her true identity her policy is to have that person quietly disposed of. It seems that both Nails and his buddy Underwood at the US Embassy are now in the category of people to be eliminated.

The plot is fairly straightforward, perhaps too straightforward for a spy novel, with the main interest being provided by the possibility that Lung Mai will try to double-cross Nails or double-cross Madame Wong. She might even try to double-cross both of them.

When you read a lot of paperback originals it’s noticeable that most are quite competently written even when they’re trashy. It’s therefore a slight surprise to come across one that is rather poorly structured and that features rather clunky prose. That unfortunately is the case here. Steward also has a bit of a tin ear for dialogue.

There are some fairly graphic sex scenes although they come across as workmanlike rather than passionate.

Nails Fenian is just a little too perfect a hero. A hero needs some flaws, or at least some quirks, to make him interesting. Fenian is just a by-the-numbers action hero.

Madame Wong is at least a reasonably interesting villainess and lady pirates are of course inherently cool, and the piracy in the mid-20th century concept is cool as well. Lung Mai is also a reasonably effective seductive ambiguous dangerous woman.

The Spy and the Pirate Queen is not a great spy thriller. If you’re a fan of sexy spy thrillers it’s maybe worth a look but there are much better books in this genre.

Nicholas Freeling’s Love in Amsterdam

The first of Nicholas Freeling’s Van der Valk mysteries, Love in Amsterdam (AKA Death in Amsterdam), was published in 1962. Van der Valk is a Dutch police detective and these mysteries are set in Amsterdam.

It begins with a man named Martin in police custody. A woman named Elsa has been murdered. Martin knew Elsa very well over a long period of time and had obviously been her lover. He was in the vicinity of the murder scene at the time of the killing.

Inspector Van der Valk does not have enough evidence to charge him and is in fact inclined to believe that Martin was not the killer. He does however intend to keep Martin in custody for questioning. He is sure that Martin is lying about something important and he is convinced that that something is the key to solving the case.

Van der Valk makes it clear from the start that he has no interest in nonsense such as taking casts of footprints or looking for cigar ash or lipstick traces on cigarette butts or fingerprints. Van der Valk’s methods are psychological.

He is convinced that the secret to identifying the murderer is to find out why Elsa was killed. It’s the motive that interests Van der Valk. In fact the motive is the sole focus of his investigation. Van der Valk is also not interested in giving Martin the third degree or intimidating him. He believes that if he can get Martin to talk about Elsa and think clearly about the events of the fatal night and the events that led up to it then eventually Martin will want to tell him the truth. Van der Valk does not believe that he will get anything useful out of Martin unless Martin gives the information voluntarily. Van der Valk is prepared to manipulate Martin but he does so openly - he tells Martin exactly what he is doing.

It’s made clear that Van der Valk is not hoping for a confession. He genuinely does not believe Martin is a murderer. Martin is not a murderer but he is the key to catching a murderer.

Van der Valk is a man with a somewhat earthy sense of humour and he is perhaps a bit of a rough diamond but he’s an affable sort of chap and he and Martin get along quite well. Martin is more of a semi-willing collaborator in the investigation than a suspect. The fact that Martin is now happily married to Sophia may be part of the reason he is holding things back but it’s also likely that there are things Martin does not want to admit to himself.

Slowly the complicated and sordid truth about the relationship between Martin and Elsa is brought to life. They had a passionate, obsessive but unhealthy relationship. Elsa was promiscuous and she was manipulative and selfish. Elsa used men. Sex plays a major role in the story since it played a major role in Elsa’s life but for Elsa sex was always a weapon. There’s some kinkiness in this tale but it rings true given what we find out about the people involved.

It has to be said that if you’re hoping for anything resembling a traditional fair-play puzzle-plot mystery you’ll be very disappointed (and the plot most definitely does not play fair). The mystery plot is pretty feeble. But clearly Freeling had no intention of writing a mystery of that type. He doesn’t care about the plot at all. This is a psychological crime novel.

Generally speaking I dislike psychological crime novel. Too many of them try to put the reader inside the mind of a serial killer or a psycho killer of some kind and I have no desire to be put inside the mind of such a person. But Love in Amsterdam is different. Firstly, while there’s a killer there is no serial killer or psycho killer. Secondly and more importantly (and more interestingly) in this book Freeling is trying to put us inside the head of the victim rather than the killer. And since the victim is dead he can’t do that directly. The only way the reader (and Van der Valk) can get inside Elsa’s mind is indirectly, through Martin. This is a genuinely intriguing approach.

Of course we also get to know Martin very well. He’s quite fascinating. He’s not quite a loser but he’s made a lot of mistakes and he has taken an awfully long time to grow up. He has indulged in very self-destructive behaviour. But he’s not a total loser. He’s trying his best.

Elsa isn’t quite a monster, but she’s close. She’s the kind of woman who might not set out to destroy men’s lives but she will do so anyway. She is bad news, but fascinating in the way that Bad Girls always are fascinating.

If there’s a slight weakness here it’s the motive which I felt needed to be fleshed out just a little.

Overall a psychological crime novel with a genuinely interesting approach. Recommended.

Peter Rabe's Journey Into Terror

Journey Into Terror is a 1957 crime novel by Peter Rabe.

It opens with a killing. A senseless killing. Two criminal outfits shooting it out in Truesdell Square and a girl named Ann just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up with a bullet hole in her forehead.

Ann was John Bunting’s girl. They were to be married the following day. Now that his girl is dead Bunting is just an empty shell. He gets drunk. He gets drunk again. He keeps getting drunk. Then he hears another drunk, a guy known as Mooch, talking about all the people who have done him wrong over the years and how one day he will have his revenge.

And suddenly Bunting knows what he has to do. He has to kill the guy who killed Ann.

He doesn’t know where to start. All he has a name. Saltenberg. Saltenberg may have some connection with the events in Truesdell Square. Bunting has also heard that a whore named Joyce might know something. Joyce doesn’t know anything her sister Linda does. Linda isn’t a whore. She’s a widow. Since her husband died she’s been dead inside. Just the way Bunting has been dead inside.

Linda has some vague connection with Saltenberg. Saltenberg is a businessman but he’s not exactly an honest businessman.

The answer may lie in Florida, in a town named Manitoba. Bunting heads for Florida. Maybe Bunting is finally doing something positive, but maybe he’s being manoeuvred into it. He doesn’t know and doesn’t care. Linda tags along with him. She doesn’t care about Bunting or Florida and she doesn’t care about herself but Joyce has kicked her out and she has to go somewhere.

Bunting and Linda don’t get along. There is no whirlwind romance. There’s nothing between them. They don’t exactly hate each other. They don’t care enough to hate each other. But maybe in their own broken ways they have made some some kind of connection. At least Bunting is now vaguely aware of the existence of another human being even if he doesn’t like her. And for Linda it’s much the same.

Bunting finds out that Ann’s killer had to be one of four men. The four men are Tarpin and his associates. They’re decidedly shady businessmen. In fact they’re small-time gangsters. Bunting has found a way to infiltrate Tarpin’s gang. It’s not clear how he intends to find out which one of them was the killer. He just assumes that he’ll find a way. His objective is clear but he hasn’t given much thought to the methods necessary to achieve it. He’s an obsessive but not a very clear-headed one.

So this is a murder mystery as well as a revenge story. Neither Bunting nor the reader has any idea of the identity of the killer.

The real focus is on the two central characters, Bunting and Linda. They’re both severely broken people and they have a lot in common. They’re both dead inside. The question is whether there is any hope for them, whether they can find a way to put themselves back together. Maybe they’ll just destroy themselves, or destroy each other. Maybe they can give each other a reason not to destroy themselves.

They’re not exactly sympathetic characters. They have entirely shut down their emotions and they have also shut down their entire personalities. They’re zombies.

The four men who might have killed Ann have a bit more depth than you might expect. They’re not very nice men but they have their own vulnerabilities and fears.

This is a psychological crime novel with perhaps a slight noir feel, if you’re prepared to define noir very loosely.

Like the other Peter Rabe books I’ve read this is an odd but strangely fascinating tale. Highly recommended.

By the same author I have also reviewed Stop This Man! and The Box and they’re both odd books as well.

William P. McGivern’s The Mad Robot

William P. McGivern’s science fiction novella The Mad Robot was published in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in January 1944.

William P. McGivern (1918-1982) achieved considerable success as a crime writer but early in his career he wrote a lot of science fiction stories for the pulps.

The fact that The Mad Robot is a story about robots written in 1944 is significant. At that time robots did no exist in even the crudest form. Computers were being experimented with but a truly practical general-purpose computer did not exist. The earliest computers were enormous. Transistors, integrated circuits, microchips all lay in the future. It was difficult to imagine that a computer small enough to allow a robot to act independently could ever be built. So in this story the robot have human brains. Or rather they have organic artificial brains constructed from human brain tissue.

Which actually makes the story a bit more interesting today, at a time when machine artificial intelligences seem to have certain serious and possibly insoluble limitations. Maybe organic artificial intelligences will eventually have more potential.

Space pilot Rick Weston is sent to Jupiter to check up on the experimental robot plant there. There’s no reason to think that anything untoward is happening there but it is felt that it would be advisable to send someone to do a bit of investigating.

A scientist named Farrel is in charge of the robot project, working closely with Martian scientist Ho Agar. The robots seem impressive. Rick is puzzled that Farrel seems so defensive and even paranoid.

Of course it turns out that there are problems. The robot brains suffer from certain very human weaknesses. Occasionally they go mad.

Naturally Dr Farrel has a beautiful young daughter, Rita. Rick thinks she’s pretty cute.

At first it appears that the robot project has been a huge success, but when a robot tries to kill him Rick starts to have his doubts.

McGivern was only twenty-five when he wrote this novella so you have to cut the guy some slack. It is rough around the edges and it does occasionally veer towards silliness. It is very very pulpy. On the other hand the basic idea is pretty good. McGivern just wasn’t quite experienced enough to carry it off.

It is also only a novella so he didn’t the scope to flesh out the ideas or to engage in any ambitious world-building. It’s mentioned in passing that the experimental plant on Jupiter is contained within a bubble with an artificial atmosphere and artificial Earth gravity but the setting comes across as being rather generic. There’s a Martian character but there’s no attempt to make him seem truly non-human.

Rick is your standard pulp hero.

The plot has a couple of reasonably effective twists and we are kept in some doubt as to what is really going on. There are interesting echoes of Frankenstein.

Armchair Fiction have paired this one with J. Hunter Holly’s 1963 novel The Running Man.

The Mad Robot is not great but it’s worth a look if you like robot tales that are slightly out of the ordinary.

I’ve also reviewed McGivern’s 1953 noirish crime classic The Big Heat.

Modesty Blaise: Uncle Happy

Uncle Happy collects two Modesty Blaise comic-strip adventures, Uncle Happy from 1965 and Bad Suki from 1968.

Uncle Happy represented an interesting step for Peter O’Donnell, the creator and writer of the comic strip. His concept for the character was a woman who underwent horrific experiences in childhood but survived and came out much stronger. She put herself back together again. A crucial aspect of the character is that despite those traumatic experiences she is a fully functional woman. She is perfectly capable of having normal emotional relationships with men, and she is perfectly capable of having normal sexual relationships with men.

It was therefore important to make it clear that Modesty has a sex life. In the early strips this was implied. In Uncle Happy it’s made quite explicit. Modesty has found a new man. They have moved in together and they are most definitely sleeping together. This was quite daring in 1965, for a comic strip published in daily newspapers.

Uncle Happy is also interesting for being set partly in Las Vegas, and for the fact that there is clearly a kinky sexual element to the nastiness of the chief villainess. It also demonstrates that Peter O’Donnell was quite comfortable dealing with female evil as well as male evil.

On a skin-diving holiday Modesty meets underwater photographer Steve. Pretty soon they’re shacked up together. Everything is going great until he gets kidnapped. Modesty rescues him but he won’t call the cops. Modesty suspects he’s mixed up in something criminal. They’re both keeping secrets from each other and their love affair fizzles out.

Then Willie Garvin shows up unexpectedly. He’s investigating the possible murder of an old girlfriend but there’s an odd link with Steve - the people who kidnapped him are the very people Willie is investigating. These people are a rich philanthropist and his wife. The philanthropist has earned the nickname Uncle Happy for providing disadvantaged kids with an island playground.

There’s plenty of action in this adventure and a couple of memorable twisted villains including a very nasty lady villain with a taste for sadism. A fine adventure.

Bad Suki is interesting for other reasons. O’Donnell preferred to avoid topical subject matter and in fact he preferred to avoid anything that would make his comic strips date. Modesty’s clothes (when she’s not on a mission) are stylish and elegant but in the 60s you’ll never see her wearing the latest Carnaby Street fashions. Her look is timeless.

Bad Suki was an exception to all of these rules. It deals with a subject very topical at the time - drugs. And it deals with the emerging hippie subculture. It’s an experiment that works reasonably well, but it was an experiment that O’Donnell did not care to repeat.

Willie rescues a hippie girl having a bad acid trip. Willie is no fool. He knows you can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. But he and Modesty feel sorry for the girl. They figure if they can’t help her directly they can deal with the drug pushers.

This is yet another Modesty Blaise adventure featuring underwater action. I’m not complaining. I love underwater action scenes.

It’s also a story that displays a ruthless side to Modesty that you don’t see in most of her adventures. In general Modesty hates killing and does so only when strictly necessary. But this time she intends to kill and she intends to enjoy it. This is another experiment that O’Donnell was reluctant to repeat.

So while Bad Suki can be a bit cringe-inducing at times when dealing with the far-out groovy hippie world it is an intriguingly atypical Modesty Blaise story.

So, two comic-strip adventures, one extremely good and one flawed but interesting. Which makes this volume a worthwhile purchase.

Both adventures feature Jim Holdaway’s art.

I’ve reviewed three other early Modesty Blaise comic-strip collections, The Gabriel Set-Up, Warlords of Phoenix and The Black Pearl, as well as the first three novels - Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer.

Harold R. Daniels’ The Girl in 304

Harold R. Daniels’ The Girl in 304 was published by Dell in 1956. It was one of around half a dozen crime novels from this author. There’s nothing noirish or particularly hardboiled about this tale. It’s an old-fashioned murder mystery with some police procedural elements.

The setting is Clay County. Ed Masters is the sheriff and he has a murder on his hands. A young woman’s body has been found just off a highway. She was stabbed multiple times. There is no indication of any sexual assault. Her dress and purse and nowhere to be found. She is clad only in her underwear and shoes.

Ed knows there’s something wrong with this picture, something that doesn’t fit. He knows what it is, but he doesn’t know what it means. It worries him. Ed is like that. He might not be the world’s greatest criminal investigator but he’s thorough and he’s a professional. He likes all the pieces of a puzzle to fit together.

Ed is going to need help. He gets that help from Dunn, a lieutenant on the State Investigation Bureau. They have worked together before and they trust each other. It’s still Ed’s case. It’s the more esoteric forensics stuff that Ed needs help with and Dunn is just the guy for that. He’s never happier than when he has a test tube in his hands. And there will be some moderately complicated forensic evidence in this case.

There’s a minor problem with jurisdiction. The crime was committed in Clay County so it’s a case for Sheriff Ed Masters but the case is linked to events in nearby Clay City. There’s been bad blood for years between The city police and the Sheriff’s Department and this will cause Ed a lot of trouble.

The woman’s name was Lucy Carter. She was a part-time prostitute. She arrived in Clay County a few months earlier. Nowhere is sure where she came from before that. She worked as a carhop at Benny’s Drive-In for a while. Benny’s has an unsavoury reputation. It’s not technically a brothel, no laws are actually broken, but in practice it is a brothel.

Quite a few people in Clay County were linked to Lucy Carter. Some were respectable men, others not so respectable. Eventually Ed finds out a few things about Lucy’s past, things that could be very significant indeed. Ed also finds out a few things from Evelyn, another part-time prostitute.

There are half a dozen possible suspects. They all had motives for killing Lucy. They all had alibis but the sorts of alibis that Ed knows would never stand up to a thorough investigation. Alibis are like that.

Ed Masters is a really decent guy. He’s honest and dedicated, and fairly competent. He does make some big mistakes. They’re understandable mistakes. He concentrates on the promising leads and if those leads point to a particular suspect he focuses on that suspect. There’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes Ed loses sight of the fact that his prime suspect is not the only plausible suspect. Occasionally he is swayed by personal feelings.

In other words he’s a good solid ordinary cop but he’s fallible. His biggest asset as an investigator is that tendency to worry mentioned earlier. If he can’t make a puzzle fit together neatly, if he can’t tie all the evidence together, he’ll keep worrying about the problem. He’s not the kind of cop who would ever want to charge someone unless he really was satisfied about the evidence.

Ed’s attitude towards prostitution is interesting. He doesn’t give a damn if Lucy was a hooker. It’s not just that as far as he is concerned murder is murder even if the victim was an immoral woman. He genuinely does not see her as having been an immoral woman. He doesn’t seem to have any negative feelings about Lucy, or Evelyn, because of their means of earning a living. On the other hand he has an intense dislike of men who prey on prostitutes, men such as crooked cops. And there is such a crooked cop involved in this case. What makes things awkward is that the corrupt officer is a city cop. This novel certainly does not gloss over police corruption and incompetence - the entire Clay City P.D. is rotten.

The climax comes in swamp country and involves some neat plot twists.

The Girl in 304 is a top-notch mystery. Highly recommended.

Black Gat Books have issued this book in paperback at a very reasonable price.

Curt Siodmak's Hauser’s Memory

Hauser’s Memory is a 1968 science fiction espionage novel by Curt Siodmak.

Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) enjoyed success as a novelist and a screenwriter, and occasional film director. He is best-known for his screenplay for the Universal horror classic The Wolf Man and for his best-selling science fiction novel Donovan’s Brain. He was the younger brother of the great film director Robert Siodmak.

Dr Cory is a rather emotionally detached scientist working in the field of memory. He believes that memories are encoded in RNA and that by injecting RNA from one animal into another the memories of the first animal can be transferred to the second. Cory has done some experiments that seem to indicate that this really is possible. It should be possible to do it with humans as well but of course performing such an experiment on people would be ethically dubious.

Then Cory is approached by the CIA - they have in their hands a defector named Hauser and they want the secrets locked in that defector’s brain. Unfortunately Hauser was shot. He is now in a coma and is not expected to survive the night and is not expected to regain consciousness. Hauser was a German who ended up in the Soviet Union after the war. He had been doing top-secret military research for them.

The CIA (an organisation never troubled by ethical considerations) wants Cory to transplant Hauser’s RNA, and therefore his memories, into the brain of a volunteer. Of course this will probably kill both Hauser and the volunteer but the CIA is prepared to take the risk.

The experiment is eventually performed, due to a series of misadventures, on Cory’s young assistant Dr Hillel Mondoro. Whether the experiment has been a complete success or not is uncertain but Mondoro now knows things he couldn’t possibly know. Suddenly he speaks fluent German. He has memories that are not his own. He is Hauser, but he is still Mondoro. The two personalities come and go. Sometimes he is Hauser but on some level he knows that he isn’t really, and sometimes he is entirely Hauser.

Cory and Mondoro are just scientists. They have no interest in politics. It would all be nothing but an exciting scientific breakthrough but for two things. Firstly, Mondoro’s memories include vital Russian defence secrets. The Russians think those memories belong to them. Secondly, the CIA thinks Hauser’s memories belong to them. Of course Hauser’s memories and scientific knowledge are now locked up in Mondoro’s brain. So the CIA and the Russians both want Mondoro.

An added complication is that Mondoro now not only has Hauser’s memories, he has Hauser’s will. There were important things of a personal nature that Hauser intended to do. The Hauser personality is still determined to do those things. The Hauser personality has its own agenda that has nothing to do with the agendas of the CIA and the Russians. Under the influence of the Hauser personality Mondoro suddenly hops on a plane to Copenhagen, and then goes to Berlin. With Cory trailing after him hoping to keep him safe, and with both the CIA and the Soviet intelligence people after him as well.

The science in this story may seen fairly screwy but this was 1968. RNA and DNA were all the rage. They were thought to be the secret to everything. It’s also worth noting that human behaviour is still very poorly understood. We don’t know how much of our behaviour is innate and how much is learned. Siodmak’s ideas might be bold and speculative but in 1968 they would have seemed plausible. And Siodmak develops his ideas skilfully and subtly, and with as much emphasis on the ethical problems as on the scientific implications. This is clever intelligent science fiction.

This is also clever intelligent spy fiction. There are so many layers of ambiguity and betrayal and duplicity, and so many complex motivations on the part of both the individual characters and the spy agencies on both sides. There’s ambiguity right from the start. Did Hauser really want to defect? It seems that he had certain plans of a personal nature that led him to want to leave Russia but it’s by no means certain that he really wanted to defect. It’s possible he was simply snatched by the CIA. There’s also some uncertainty as to how he got shot.

Hauser was a complicated man with a complicated past. He may or may not have been guilty of more than one act of political betrayal, and more than one act of personal betrayal. But in these cases was he really the villain or the victim? Poor Mondoro has to try these things out, on the basis of confused and fragmentary memories. This is a rather cerebral spy story but with plenty of suspense and some action as well.

Siodmak’s novel manages to work exceptionally well as both unconventional science fiction and an unconventional spy thriller with some moral depth as well. Very highly recommended.

Peter Stafford’s The Wild White Witch

If historical fiction is fun and sleaze fiction is fun then if you combine the two you’ll get double the enjoyment. It’s not surprising that historical sleaze enjoyed quite a vogue for a while. Peter Stafford’s 1973 novel The Wild White Witch is a satisfyingly outrageous representative of the breed.

And it’s not just historical sleaze - this is a story of madness and lust in the tropics where the hot sun unleashes forbidden passions.

Peter Stafford was a pen name used by the fairly prolific Hungarian-born writer Paul Tabori (1908-1974). There was another author named Peter Stafford active at the same (who wrote books on psychedelics) so there is some potential for the two to get confused.

In 1830 Jeremy Radlett, the 22-year-old youngest son of a Scottish laird, receives an invitation to join his uncle Richard at his estate in Jamaica. No member of the family has seen nor heard anything of Richard Radlett for decades but he has apparently prospered in the West Indies and being childless he intends to make young Jeremy his heir. Jeremy takes ship for Jamaica.

Jeremy is in for some surprises when he reaches Rosehall, his uncle’s sugar plantation. His uncle is dead but has left a beautiful young widow, Melissa. Melissa has inherited the estate.

Jeremy is obviously disappointed but is persuaded to stay on as a guest. Jeremy is rather an innocent and the brutal realities of planation life shock him.

Jeremy is an innocent in other ways as well. He is a virgin. He knows little of sex but he does know that no decent woman enjoys it. He is in for quite an awakening when Melissa takes him to her bed. Her sexual appetites are voracious. Jeremy had no idea that such pleasures were possible.

There are a few problems. It’s fairly clear that the brutal overseer Arkell had been accustomed to sharing Melissa’s bed. Arkell is not at all happy about relinquishing his position as Melissa’s bed partner. He will make a dangerous enemy. And the slave population may be planning to revolt.

Then Jeremy discovers the secret door, which leads to an underground cavern. He witnesses rites so depraved that he is scarcely able to believe them. Surely Melissa could not be connected in any way with such things.

Given the setting you might expect voodoo to figure in this tale, but this is essentially a witchcraft story.

The setting is a society based on slavery but the book goes out of its way to make its abhorrence for slavery obvious so don’t make the mistake of having a knee-jerk reaction to the subject matter.

There is plenty of graphic sex and assorted debaucheries and depravities. Jeremy’s bedroom romps with Melissa are steamy to say the least. This is one of those sleaze novels that promises all manner of lurid delights and thrills and this one delivers the goods.

There’s a memorably depraved villain (or villainess - I’m not going to tell you which it is).

You can’t really go wrong with an overcooked extra-sleazy tropical gothic melodrama. It’s a formula that works for me. And this one is nicely scuzzy and it’s done with a reasonable amount of style and energy.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Wild White Witch. Highly recommended.

A.S. Fleischman’s Look Behind You, Lady

A.S. Fleischman’s spy thriller Look Behind You, Lady was published by Fawcett Gold Medal as a paperback original in 1952.

New York-born A.S. ‘Sid’ Fleischman (1920-2010) had three careers. Initially he was a professional magician working in vaudeville. From 1948 to 1963 he was a moderately successful writer of paperback originals, mostly thrillers and mostly spy-themed. He then embarked on his third career as a very successful writer of children’s books.

During his wartime naval service he got to know the Asia-Pacific region reasonably well. Not surprisingly his thrillers tend to have exotic settings.

This one is set in Macau and it would be hard to imagine a better setting for a spy story. This was Macau when it was still a Portuguese colony and it was one of the most exciting, dangerous and glamorous places on the planet. If you were interested in gambling or women or both it was the place to be. The gambling was for high stakes. The women were beautiful, stylish and expensive. They played for high stakes as well.

There is nothing I love more than thrillers (both books and movies) set in the tropics or Asia in the period from the 1920s to the 1960s. It’s a world that is now long gone. You can approve or disapprove of that vanished world but it was exciting, perilous and sexy. An overheated steamy world of intrigue and forbidden sex. Fleischman had a knack for bringing that world to life.

Fittingly the hero of Look Behind You, Lady is a professional magician. Bruce Flemish is having a successful run at the China Seas Hotel in Macau. Then he meets the girl. Her name is Donna. Or her name might be Donna. Flemish doesn’t want to get involved, but he does like the way her hips move. He likes it a lot. Other parts of her anatomy seem very satisfactory as well. She gives him her room number but he has no intention of doing anything about it.

Then the owner of the hotel pays him to do a very simple job. All he has to do is slip a roll of banknotes into the pocket of some guy, an importer. A very simple task for a magician.

Flemish starts to go cold on the idea when he sees the woman sitting at the table with the importer. It’s Donna.

This is just before someone tries to garrotte Flemish. Flemish is not much of a tough guy but he takes exception to attempts to kill him. He figures it might be worthwhile to meet Donna after all.

Donna has a proposition for him as well. She’s a spy, of sorts. Strictly an amateur. Flemish has no desire whatever to get involved in espionage. But Donna seems frightened, and she does move her hips nicely.

Flemish is caught up in a dangerous game. He doesn’t know what the game is. He doesn’t know who the players are, or which of them are working with each other or against each other. He has no idea which are the good guys. Maybe they’re all bad guys. He doesn’t know if he can trust Donna.

The double-crosses start early and they keep coming. Maybe everyone is deceiving everyone else. Maybe they’re not all lying. But they might be.

Flemish is not a bad guy and he’s not totally dumb but he’s way out of his depth. He would be better off sticking to his magic tricks. It’s too late for that. He’s fallen for this dame and there’s nothing he can do about it.

There’s good suspense and a fair helping of action. There’s a touch of sexiness. There’s superb atmosphere.

This is a top-rank thriller by a very underrated writer. Highly recommended.

Look Behind You, Lady has been paired with Venetian Blonde in a Stark House two-novel edition.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Fleischman’s thrillers and they’re all good - Malay Woman, Danger in Paradise, Counterspy Express and Shanghai Flame.