To Russia With Lust - The Lady from L.U.S.T. #6

To Russia With Lust is the sixth of the Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers written by Gardner Francis Fox (1911-1986) using the pseudonym Rod Gray. It was published in 1968.

Eve Drum is an ace agent for an ultra-secret U.S. intelligence agency, L.U.S.T. (the League of Undercover Spies and Terrorists). Her latest mission requires her to break into the Soviet Embassy to steal a code book. Her theft is going smoothly until she realises there’s something going on in the adjoining bedroom. What’s going on is that a senior Soviet diplomat is having some bedroom fun with a gorgeous brunette named Magda. While they’re coupling the girl steals a notebook from the diplomat.

Eve figures the notebook is probably worth stealing as well. So of course she steals it.

Later that evening when she meets up with her controller she discovers that she hit the jackpot. The diplomat is Serge Akonov, and he’s important. The notebook is much more important. It contains the whereabouts of a fabulous fortune which Rommel tried to ship out of North Africa in 1943. The treasure is five billion dollars in gold bullion. Of course the bullion was stolen but the U.S. Government now decides it wants to steal that bullion. The idea of returning the gold to its rightful owners doesn’t occur to anyone.

Eve’s job is to get further information out of Akonov and if possible persuade him to defect. She doesn’t know how she’s going to do that but she figures that seducing him will be a good start. Seducing men is one of Eve’s special skills. Eve has seen Serge Akonov in action in the bedroom and she was mightily impressed by his sexual prowess. Seducing him should be very pleasant. Mixing sex with duty is one of the things that makes Eve love her job as a spy so much.

Before Akonov can be seduced it will be necessary to rescue Magda. She’s about to be executed for pilfering that notebook. So Eve pulls off a daring underwater rescue.

Seducing Akonov is easy. Eve poses as a guide for an exhibition of American art in Leningrad and makes sure she attracts lots of publicity by wearing scandalously revealing outfits. That should attract Akonov like a Pooh Bear to a honey pot, and it does. He is so taken by her that he invites her to an orgy. Eve likes orgies.

Persuading him to defect will be less easy, until she comes across something that will be the perfect lever. Of course then she has to get him out of the Soviet Union and the KGB is likely to make that rather difficult.

Finding that treasure proves be a challenge as well. It turns out that knowing where it’s supposed to be isn’t enough.

Fox had a solid formula worked out for both his Lady from L.U.S.T. and Cherry Delight thrillers. Get your heroine naked as often as possible, feature lots of moderately graphic (but not too graphic) sex and include plenty of thrilling violent action scenes. And make sure it all moves along at a breakneck pace. But most importantly, make sure that despite all the sex the book still works as an exciting spy thriller. Make sure to include all the required spy fiction ingredients - double-crosses, betrayals, divided loyalties. Include lots of fight scenes and gunplay and explosions. Include cool gadgets.

In this case the formula works perfectly. We get helicopters battling ships, assassins running about everywhere, underwater action scenes, rocket backpacks and then there’s Eve’s secret weapon. I won’t tell you where she hides it.

In between all the spy action Eve still finds time to have plenty of sex. She has plenty of energy. And she’s a very imaginative girl and she’s always wiling to expand her knowledge base. The sex is described in an engagingly lighthearted cheerful way and is never graphic.

I’ve previously reviewed the first two Lady from L.U.S.T. books Lust, Be a Lady Tonight and Lay Me Odds as well as the first Cherry Delight book, The Italian Connection. They’re all great fun.

To Russia With Lust is high-octane entertainment. Sexy but good-natured and with a perfectly serviceable spy thriller plot. Not to be taken too seriously, but still highly recommended.

Tong in Cheek (Cherry Delight #2)

Tong in Cheek, published in 1973, is the second of Gardner Francis Fox’s Cherry Delight sexy spy thrillers which he wrote under the name Glen Chase. This series is sometimes known as the Sexecutioner series. Fox had plenty of experience in this genre having written the very entertaining The Lady From L.U.S.T. spy thrillers in the late 60s.

Whether the Cherry Delight books qualify as spy thrillers can be debated. Cherry isn’t quite a spy. She is however a secret agent working for N.Y.M.P.H.O., a shadowy top-secret US government agency. N.Y.M.P.H.O. is mostly engaged in the fight against organised crime but some of their cases (including this one) do involve international intrigue. N.Y.M.P.H.O.’s methods are so unconventional that even the F.B.I. would consider them to be unethical.

Cherry is actually a gorgeous redhead by the name of Cherise Dellissio but inevitably everybody calls her Cherry Delight. She’s not just a secret agent, she’s also a high-class call girl. That’s actually part of her job. She belongs to an elite squad known as the Femmes Fatales. They work as prostitutes because it’s a useful cover and one that offers plenty of opportunities for them to get close to organised crime figures. Cherry doesn’t mind. If there’s one thing Cherry enjoys more than being a secret agent it’s having sex. Her job allows her to combine business with pleasure.

Cherry’s latest case has very definite international ramifications. The Mafia is forging links with tongs operating in Red China. It’s a disturbing development which has to be nipped in the bud.

A N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent has been killed by three Mafia hitmen. The three Mafiosi are now believed to be in Hong Kong en route to Red China. Cherry’s assignment is to prevent them from making contact with the Chinese tongs but mostly her assignment is to kill those three men. Cherry’s duties with N.Y.M.P.H.O. include assassinations. She’s quite relaxed about that.

Once she gets to Hong Kong Cherry will be working with an Englishman named Derek Guyfford. He knows the territory and he happens to be a part-time N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent. Cherry is pleased that he seems to know his job. She’s even more pleased when he turns out to be very good in bed. Derek is keen to help Cherry make the hit on the three Mafia goons but he has another agenda as well. He has a more personal more selfish reason for wanting to go to China. A reason that could make him a vast amount of money. Money that he might be prepared to share with Cherry.

It has to be admitted that the Cherry Delight books are very very trashy. Fox’s prose is more than a little rough around the edges. There is however one thing that Fox understood. If you’re going to combine the thriller and erotica genres you have to make sure that your books deliver on both counts. There has to be plenty of sex and the sex has to be pretty explicit but there has to be lots of action and mayhem as well. And if possible you have to integrate the sex stuff with the thriller stuff. Fox made sure to do this.

You have to consider the historical context. In the late 60s and the 70s there was a widespread feeling that the idea that there was a dividing line between erotica and other genres was rather artificial and outdated. In both the literary and film worlds there was increasing interest in breaking down the barriers between softcore porn and other genres. The 70s was the golden age of cinematic art porn and film-makers with respectable arty credentials were enthusiastically embracing the concept of art porn. The idea of combining erotica with other pure entertainment genres was also becoming quite popular.

The spy sleaze novels which blossomed in the 60s and 70s were very much a part of the zeitgeist. Sexiness was cool. Sexiness was fun. And in the 60s and 70s (unlike today) fun was more or less legal.

Personally I think that the first of the Cherry Delight novels, The Italian Connection, is much superior to Tong in Cheek. It’s faster-paced and it puts more emphasis on action and excitement and non-top mayhem. The Italian Connection is enormous fun.

Tong in Cheek is still reasonably good fun and if spy sleaze is your thing you’ll enjoy it.

You might want to check out my reviews of the first of Fox’s The Lady from L.U.S.T. novels, Lust, Be a Lady Tonight and the first Cherry Delight novel, The Italian Connection.

The Lady from L.U.S.T. #2 Lay Me Odds

Lay Me Odds is the second of Gardner Francis Fox’s Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers, written under the pseudonym Rod Gray. It was published in 1968.

Eve Drum, ace secret agent for L.U.S.T. (League of Underground Spies and Terrorists), has a problem. She’s on a mission in England and she was supposed to pick up a microfilm but she finds her contact man dead. There’s a possibility that he hadn’t picked up the microfilm before he was killed. It might still be in the hands of his own contact man, a man known as the Satyr. Or the Satyr might know the name of the person currently in possession of that microfilm. Finding the Satyr should be easy. He hangs around the strip clubs in Soho.

The best way to find him would obviously be for Eve to get a job as a stripper. That’s no problem. Eve has no inhibitions whatsoever about taking all her clothes off in front of an audience. Her strip act (as a bashful bride) proves to be a hit and she does find the Satyr. He’s prepared to give her the name she needs as long as she agrees to have sex with him. Eve also has no inhibitions whatsoever about having sex in the line of duty. Eve enjoys sex a great deal. And when she sees the Satyr naked she figures that this will be a very pleasant duty indeed.

She gets the name and the trail takes her to Hamburg. Naturally it takes her to Hamburg’s red light district. The trail will later take her to Innsbruck. This is 1960s spy fiction so some exotic locations are a must and Fox makes good use of them.

Eve has no doubt that the microfilm has fallen into the hands of L.U.S.T.’s deadly enemies, H.A.T.E. (Humanitarian Alliance for Total Espionage). It turns out to be more complicated than that. There’s an internal power struggle within H.A.T.E. and Eve is caught between two deadly factions.

Along the way she acquires a slave. He’s a handsome young German but he just wants to be Eve’s devoted slave. In fact she will discover that he has other more exotic sexual fetishes.

The plot includes enough twists and double-crosses to keep things interesting.

This is refreshingly non-ideological spy fiction. H.A.T.E. is like SPECTRE, it’s just a vast criminal organisation that sees espionage and terrorism as purely business propositions. Fox doesn’t indulge in any political messaging. I’ve now read four of his books and I haven’t got a clue what his political beliefs were. I like that. He just wants to entertain us.

The secret to making a sexy spy thriller work is to strike the right balance between the sleaze and the secret agent action. And Fox, in both his Lady from L.U.S.T. and Cherry Delight thrillers, got that balance right. There’s an enormous amount of sleaze in this book but there’s also non-stop action and mayhem. With an impressively high body count. At one point Eve kills four men within the space of about fifteen seconds. The action scenes are executed with energy and a certain amount of style.

Even is well equipped for her mission. She never goes on an assignment without her explosive panties. Yes, her panties are a deadly weapon.

Eve is highly trained in the normal secret agent skills such as unarmed combat and firearms but she’s equally highly trained in the art of love-making. There’s no sexual activity between a man and a woman that Eve hasn’t tried and in which she isn’t highly proficient. Her controller, David, approves of this. He knows that a lady spy has to have advanced sexual skills. He’s even prepared to assist her in her training in this area.

In 1968 the Sexual Revolution was in full swing and that’s reflected in the book. Eve takes a normal healthy interest in sex. She likes sex and she feels no shame or guilt about it and it’s assumed that the reader will feel the same way.

The sex is moderately graphic with some detailed descriptions of the more interesting parts of both the male and female anatomy (Eve is an expert in both subjects) and the fun you can have when those parts of the respective anatomies come together so to speak. The sex gets decidedly kinky at times. Eve’s slave is a good boy but he craves discipline and Eve is happy to oblige. She’s not really into that sort of thing but it’s the only way to get him excited enough to satisfy her so she’s willing to put some effort into it.

Eve also has no interest in sex with girls but in the line of duty she’s willing to give it a go. Lady spies have to be flexible.

Lay Me Odds works extremely well as sleaze fiction and it works pretty well as a fast-paced action-packed spy thriller as well. Despite the high body count it’s a fun lighthearted romp. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first of the Lady from L.U.S.T. books, Lust, Be a Lady Tonight, and the first of Fox’s fairy similar Cherry Delight thrillers, The Italian Connection. Both are also great fun.

Gardner Francis Fox's The Druid Stone

The Druid Stone is a novel of black magic by Gardner Francis Fox, using the pseudonym Simon Majors. It was published in 1967.

Brian Creoghan is in his mid-thirties but he’s packed a lot of action into his life. That life has been spent roaming the globe in search of adventure, and perhaps (we will come to suspect) in search of something more. His globe-trotting has not taken him to places like Paris and Rome. He’s always been interested in more remote and exotic places. His journeyings have brought him into contact with strange religions, esoteric sects, secret rites and other aspects of what could be described as the weird and the occult.

Now he’s settled down in a farmhouse in New Hampshire. The first sign that his adventuring days might not be over is the patch of blackness in the woods. It just didn’t look natural. That female voice he heard was a bit mysterious as well.

He gets an invitation to dinner with his new neighbours. Moira and Ugony MacArt are brother and sister. Moira is disturbingly alluring. Ugony has spent his life investigating the occult and he has amassed a collection of ritual objects. His interest in the subject is intense but whether it’s healthy remains to be seen. Now he wants Brian to join him in a little experiment. All Brian has to do is to place his hands on a druid stone.

At which point everything changes.

At first it’s reasonable to assume that we’re going to get an occult thriller. This was a hugely popular genre at the time with Dennis Wheatley’s Black Magic books being massive sellers. But before The Druid Stone actually gets underway we’re offered a tantalising hint that this story might be more science fictional than we expect.

And when Brian Creoghan touches that druid stone we find that the book has become a sword-and-sorcery tale. Brian Creoghan is no longer Brian Creoghan. He’s a great warrior named Kalgorrn, he’s in another land which doesn’t seem to be Earth at all, and he’s a different person. Or rather he’s now two people in the same body. And the action starts to really kick in.

He’s now a warrior, a lord whose lands were stolen from him by an evil sorcerer. As a result of a spell he’s been sleeping. Possibly for centuries. But now he’s found his lover, the beautiful witch-woman Red Fann, and they have a quest for revenge to undertake. And lots of terrifying monsters to battle.

To now assume that this is going to be a straightforward sword-and-sorcery adventure would however be a mistake. The author has more tricks up his sleeve.

The story continually switches back and forth between the ordinary world of the present day and the fantastic magical world. Soon Brian Geoghan is no longer sure if he really is Brian Geoghan or if he’s the hero Kalgorrn. He has other complications to worry about. Kalgorrn is in love with Red Fann but Brian is falling in love with Moira. These two women are liable to be a bit unhappy about sharing him.

He also realises that the two worlds he inhabits are liked in some way. What happens in one world could have consequences in the other. In fact the fate of both worlds could hang in the balance. And there’s still that science fiction element lurking in the background.

There’s also the problem that he’s starting to wonder exactly what Ugony MacArt is up to. There was a murder a while back and while Brian is sure that Ugony is not capable of being involved in murder the locals have strong suspicions that Ugony is the murder. So we get a mystery sub-plot as well.

Fox had a real knack for producing thoroughly enjoyable fast-paced pulp tales in multiple genres. He wrote both the Cherry Delight series of sexy sleazy spy/crime thrillers (beginning with The Italian Connection) and the equally entertaining The Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers (beginning with Lust, Be a Lady Tonight). There is however no sleaze at all in The Druid Stone.

The Druid Stone is a very entertaining read. Highly recommended.

The Lady from L.U.S.T. #1 Lust, Be a Lady Tonight

Lust, Be a Lady Tonight is the first of The Lady from L.U.S.T. sleazy spy thrillers, published in 1968.

Spies were one of the major obsessions of the 60s. Spy fiction sold in huge quantities. Spy movies were box-office bonanzas. In both the U.S. and Britain there was a proliferation of TV series about spies.

Ian Fleming’s Bond novels raised the stakes as far as sex in spy fiction was concerned, but by the late 1960s the Bond novels seemed very tame. Adding very large helpings of sex and sleaze to the spy story was obviously an idea that was going to work commercially. There were quite a few spy sleaze book series. One of the most successful was The Lady from L.U.S.T. series which ran to 23 novels.

This series was created by Gardner Francis Fox (1911-1986) who wrote most, if not all, the books in this series using the pseudonym Rod Gray. Fox was a prolific author of comic books who also wrote science fiction and enormous numbers of trashy pulpy paperback originals. As well as The Lady from L.U.S.T. he created another sexy secret gent heroine, Cherry Delight, who is even more fun.

Eve Drum has a couple of unusual talents for a girl. She’s not only a martial arts expert she is also an amateur safe-cracker. Her father was a locksmith and taught her everything there was to know about cracking safes. She’s never actually carried out any robberies but she does have that talent.

So it’s not surprising that Eve gets recruited by L.U.S.T. (the League of Underground Spies and Terrorists). Despite their name L.U.S.T. are the good guys. They’re a top-secret U.S. government agency that handles espionage and counter-espionage cases that are too dirty for the F.B.I. or the C.I.A. - L.U.S.T. commits murders and robberies but they only kill bad guys so it’s OK.

Eve is perfectly qualified to be a L.U.S.T. - female L.U.S.T. agents have to be skilled in the use of firearms and explosives and unarmed combat but they also need advanced bedroom skills. Their main weapon is sex. Luckily Eve Drum happens to be very good at sex and she’s ready to have sex any time of the day or night and with anyone she’s ordered to seduce.

The bad guys work for H.A.T.E. and they’re blackmailing top American scientists. Eve’s first assignment is to retrieve some compromising pictures from the safe of a charming Italian count who is a senior H.A.T.E. agent. Cracking the Count’s safe won’t be a huge challenge for Eve but she will need to be able to work undisturbed. The Count is so focused on getting into Eve’s pants that it’s not likely he’s going to let her get on with her safe-cracking. Even decides there’s only one thing to do. She will have to exhaust the Count completely. She challenges him to make love to her in all ten of the sexual positions described in one of the great erotic classics. After having sex with her ten times in succession she figures the Count will then want a long long sleep.

Eve’s next assignment is to track down the woman in those compromising photos. This will require Eve to enter the decadent world of very rich people with exotic sexual tastes, who have the power and the money to indulge those tastes. It will be a dangerous assignment. Eve is supplied with a number of gadgets cooked up by L.U.S.T.’s technical specialists. There’s the usual deadly cigarette lighter but there’s also a pair of explosive panties. As you can imagine they’re something you’d only resort to in a dire emergency. And her bra is a sophisticated communications device.

Eve gets into the usual scrapes that spies get into, falling into the hands of the bad guys and getting tortured. She also uses her sexual allure on various men, sometimes in the line of duty, sometimes for purely recreational purposes. She’s never slept with a woman before, but if it’s something that her duty to her country demands of her then she’s prepared to try it. No sexual sacrifice is too great for Eve. It’s not for nothing that she’s known as Agent Double Oh Sex.

There’s lots and lots of sex in this book. There is a spy thriller plot as well. It’s sleaze fiction and it’s pulpy spy fiction and the sleaze stuff and the spy stuff are surprisingly well integrated. You just have to accept that Eve is a spy whose main weapon is her sexuality, and there’s nothing implausible about that. From the dawn of history female spies have relied on their sexual allure. And somehow whenever Eve jumps into bed with a guy there does seem to be some professional justification for it. And Eve really is a professional - she’s not emotionless but she does stay in control when she’s on a case.

Of course it’s all very very trashy. If you’re not attracted by the idea of a sexy trashy ultra-pulpy spy thriller then you’d be advised to stay well clear of this one. But if you do enjoy that sort of thing then it’s good-natured lighthearted fun.

Glen Chase’s Cherry Delight #1 The Italian Connection

The Italian Connection, published in 1972, is the first of Glen Chase’s Cherry Delight sexy crime/spy thrillers.

Glen Chase was one of the pseudonyms used by Gardner Francis Fox (1911-1986), a prolific writer for comic books who became a prolific pulp writer. In the 70s he found a lucrative niche for himself churning out sexy paperback crime/spy thrillers with very heavy lacings of sleaze and more than a dash of kinkiness.

We think of the 1950s and 1960s as the period in which television came to dominate popular entertainment but it’s not as simple as that. Television took a huge chunk of the entertainment market away from Hollywood but the book market was thriving as never before. The period from 1945 to the end of the 70s was the period of the paperback boom. Books went from being a luxury item to being ridiculously cheap. The public developed a voracious appetite for books.

The 50s and 60s was also a period in which TV and movies were subject to extraordinarily strict censorship. Sex was a subject that could not be addressed. Sex did not exist. As far as TV and movies were concerned married couples slept in separate beds and never saw each other naked. The book market was much more lightly censored. Booksellers and publishers were occasionally prosecuted for obscenity but in practice you could get away with dealing with sex in books without much danger. You could even get away with dealing with illicit sex and kinky sex.

The result was an explosion of sleaze fiction in the United States. There were numerous publishers specialising in sleaze. Writers, if they had the ability and the discipline to write a lot of books very quickly, could make a good living from sleaze fiction.

Censorship in movies was slowly relaxed in the 60s but censorship of books became even lighter, in fact almost non-existent. Paperback sleaze fiction continued to be lucrative because over the course of the 60s sleaze writers were able to keep pushing the edge of the envelope. Descriptions of sex went from moderately graphic in the early 60s to very graphic indeed by the early 70s.

Sleaze fiction was popular but it was even more popular when combined with crime, espionage or adventure.

Which brings us to Cherry Delight. Our heroine is Cherise Dellissio but she has red hair so inevitably everybody calls her Cherry Delight. Cherry is a professional crime-fighter. She doesn’t work for the F.B.I., she works for a top-secret agency which employs methods that the Bureau would consider to be highly unorthodox, probably immoral and possibly illegal. The agency’s job is to combat the Mafia, and they can’t do that effectively if their hands are tied by a bunch of pesky rules and laws.

The agency is the New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organisation, or N.Y.M.P.H.O. as it is generally known. Cherry works for the elite Femme Fatale squad. The Femmes Fatales are highly trained with advanced martial arts and firearms skills but their main weapon is sex. As such their bedroom skills are of a very high order. When it comes to bedroom skills Cherry Delight has no equals. The secret to Cherry’s success is that it’s not just a job to her. She really really loves sex. Some girls might not enjoy having to have sex with gangsters and sleazebags in the line of duty but this doesn’t bother Cherry. No matter what the circumstances and no matter who the guy is Cherry likes sex. And oh yeah, she doesn’t mind having sex with girls occasionally.

And she is always prepared for action.

As far as sleaze is concerned The Italian Connection hits the ground running. It opens with Cherry lying naked in a coffin. But she’s alive. She knows she’s alive because she’s incredibly sexually aroused. That may have something to do with the fact that her N.Y.M.P.H.O. colleague Mark Condon is tickling the intimate parts of her anatomy with a feather. But this is not mere pleasure. Cherry is on a case and she needs to be in the mood for sex to carry out her part in the operation. The idea is that Cherry is going to be sent to Joe Turessi as a gift. Joe Turessi is a Mafia big wheel. Cherry is supposed not just to give him a good time that night but to give him such a good time that he won’t want to part with her. That’s how N.Y.M.P.H.O. intends to infiltrate Turessi’s criminal operation.

It should be explained that, as a clever front for their crime-fighting activities, the Femmes Fatales work as call girls.

Cherry seems to be succeeding in her efforts. She quickly figures out that Turessi is kinky. His kink doesn’t have anything to do with coffins. It’s a particular kind of voyeurism, a very very kinky kind. Turessi is having a really good time and so is Cherry. Then something goes very wrong.

Cherry will have to find a different way to infiltrate the Mafia. Her new plan takes her to an orgy. She needs to blend in with the crowd (she is a trained secret agent) so she picks a man and starts having sex with him. The things a girl has to do for her country. But Cherry has never shirked her duty.

The Mafia have gained possession of a high-tech gadget which would give them even greater power than they already have. It is a threat to the whole world. This gadget is the McGuffin that drives the plot.

And yes, there is a plot. Cherry spends an astonishing amount of time having sex but in between she does find time to do some actual crime-fighting. The plot is serviceable enough and it has to be said that there are lots of action scenes. There are gun fights and fist fights and cat fights. Cherry is a sex machine but she’s a violence machine as well. OK, maybe her skills in marksmanship and unarmed combat are a bit too formidable to be entirely plausible but this is lighthearted pulp fiction which has zero interest in realism. The indifference to realism is something I applaud. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this writer is his ability not only to switch from a sex scene to an action scene in the blink of an eye but to combine sex and action in a single scene. In this novel love-making can be deadly, and unarmed combat can be sexy.

Cherry is basically a crime-fighter but the book does have some vague spy fiction overtones and there’s even a very slight science fictional element.

The sex is very graphic but it never seems crude. Perhaps that’s because Cherry is so clearly having such a good time. And even when she has to have sex with a bad guy or a deadly enemy she makes sure that he enjoys the sex. It’s a matter of pride for her. The violence is not graphic but the fights are fairly exciting.

If you’re looking for sleazy, sexy, lighthearted action-filled pulp fiction then The Italian Connection delivers the goods. This book might be trash but it’s incredibly enjoyable entertaining trash. Highly recommended.