The Curious Case of Carter Brown

Carter Brown books are the penultimate in bad tawdry sleaze/crime/sex novels, and guilty pleasures.

They”re so awful that they are good fun reads.

Carter Brown was the pen name for British-born Australian pukp writer Alan G. Yates, who had an extended deal with Horowitz publications for one 42,000 word novel a month plus two novelettes for periodicals like Long Story.

All were hardboiled sexual fiction featuring one of three heroes: L.A. County sheriff detective Al Wheeler, L.A. private eye Rick Holman, or LAPD cop Danny Boyd.  neither three were indistingquasable, they all had the same first-person voice and the same sexual libido.

What is hilarious about the books is that Yates/Brown had no idea what L..a and Hollywood was like, writing from Sydney, AU, he just picked the locale because it was (and is) a popular setting for detective fiction.

It seems that Yates may have been ripped off by his publisher, which paid him about $1200/month for his output and licensed his books in America to Signet for $1500 each, not mention in Europe and elsewhere…it was doubtful Yates saw a percentage of these foreign sales, or royalties on the “50,000,000 Carter Brown books sold!”

I remember well reading these books in high school, even junior high. They were on the racks at the local library or could be had in bulk at used bookstoreds for fifty cents each, three for a dollar.  You can still find plenty at the used stores, usually the ones with the 70s photo cover models, many of which were probaly not penned by Yates but various ghosters — Riobert Slverberg has stated he wrote one but had no idea if it was ever published, or under what title.

For fun, I picked up an early Brown, The Blonde…

Con Sellers — Who Was He?

In the next few weeks, I will be taking a look at Con Sellers and his titles from Novel Books.  I’ve become rather interested in Novel/Merit and their tough-guy, Manhunt-style fiction, their house organ Men’s Journal, and their writers, such as Orrie Hitty, Jerry Goff, Jack Lynn, Bill Lauren, Herb Montgiomery, Ennis Willie, G.H. Smith, and Con Sellers.

Along with his Novel titles, he seems to have branched out from the sleaze era and penned a number of men’s adventure and thriller books with Pysramid and Pocket (some as Crane Sellers).

His Novel novels, like all Novel novels, have colorful and suggestive titles and artwork…

But will the text live up to the packaged hype?  We shall see…

We shall know…

Dial “M” for Man by Orrie Hitt

Reviewed here.

The Spread by Barry Malzberg (Belmont Tower, 1971)

One of Malzberg’s least known books, it has had three editions: this 1971 Belmont Tower edition, a 1977 edition with an art cover, and a 1980 “price breaker” plain cover edtion from Leisure Books.

A note on publisher history: Belmont was once an independent paperback house that specialized in faux sexology studies and popular culture, as well as second rate science-fiction and mysteries. They merged what was left of Midwood (Tower Publications) and became Belmont Tower, then later merged with Lancer Books and formed an inprint, leisure Books — not the same Leisure imprint from Greenleaf/Cornith.  Lesiure still exists today as Dorchester Publishing (which published a number of curious books by Linda DuBrieul), which supposedly still has the rights to all these old books, Lesire mainly publishers a popular horror line, romances, thrillers and westerns now.

The Spread is pure black comedy, and a nasty criticism of the sleaze rag era of the 60s-70s, the other half of the biz that went along with the books: nudie mags and newspapers under the guise of adults news and entertainment…

His to Command by Max Collier (Midwood, 1964)

There is often an outer illusion to those who are rich, famous, both, or live in certain areas of cities — Beverly Hills, Upper West and East Side Manhattan, Martha’s Vinyard, a yacht in Ft. Lauderdale and so on.

Those who are poor, lower middle and even upper middle class may look at mansions and $80K cars and think, If only I had that, I’d be happy and all my problems would be gone.

I can attest for myself, having lived in a guest house of a Beverly Hills mansion of a young JAP’s parents, because they wanted me to marry said young JAP and covert to their faith, that the wealthy are not happy, have just as many issues as anyone else, if not more.

Even the movie “stars” I have met and befriended over the years tend to have more personal problems than your average invisible person — perhaps because they are in the public view, and they are expected to live up to the images they portray on the screens.  (This is why I was not surprised to hear of Nicky Cage’s IRS troubles and his having to sell off things to pay the gov off — jis recklessness was apparent back when he was my neighbor in Beverly Hills, long long ago, when he was riding high on his notoriety in Valley Girl.)

His to Command tackles this topic — that what someone rich and famous projects to the public is not true in private.  t’s a curious little novel from Max Collins, whoever he was/is.  I was blown away by Mark of Man, here, and was disappointed with Say When…I’m somewhere in the middle with this one.

Stephen Sanford is a rich and successful lawyer who seems to have it all — except the use of his legs and a male heir to carry on the Sanford name. Kelly Lieder applies for a job as his private secretary at the top, getting it based on her looks and her ability to match wits with the outspoken lawyer.

Sanford mainly reps hoods and the mob, getting them off on technicalities or ensuring good plea bargains.  When he goes to trial, he always wins.  Kelly’s father was a fan of his, would go see his cases, so Kelly finds it “an honor,” or so she says, to work for the man.

She moves into Sanford’s stately estate, a mansion of many rooms and many dirty secrets.  Living there are:

Marty, his legal researcher, once a bright lawyer disbarred for jury tampering, an alcoholic who feels Sanford keeps him around to feel superior because Marty is a failure.

Jan, Sanford’s daughter.  She was three when her mother died on V Day, run over by drunken sailors celebrating the end of WW II.  sanford diodn’t know for a month as he was on an isolated mop up mission on Okinawa, where he was hit by shrapnel and confined to a wheel chair. (A great aside story, I might add.)

Nancy, a young former stripper now Sanford’s wife.  He has cut a deal with her: all she has to do is provide him a son and she will get everything she needs and wants.

Solly, the driver, who is sleeping with Nancy.

Kelly soon learns of all the dirty dealings living there. But she has her own plans: she feels she would make a better wife for the crippled lawyer. Nancy isn;t getting pregnant and Kelly knows the wife is gay, or bi-sexual, from the signals.

During one wild sexual night, Kelly has sex with Marty by the pool, goes to Jany’s room and has lesbian sex, then goes to Sanford’s room and has sex with him, the best way she can with a man without usable legs.  It’s about the only graphic sex material in the book, making it a borderline sleaze Midwood.

The problem, for me, is that there is too much switching of points of view, making the story convoluted.  It does have a curious ending, somewhat similar to a Joan Ellis book, cutting off in the middle of a conversation…

Sin Alley by Andrew Shaw (Lawrence Block and ?), Lesiure Book #613

The cover alone is worth the price of admission.  It’s such a cool cover that, like Midwood’s Sin of Wheels art by Paul Rader or Gil Brewer’s The Bitch, it’s been reprinted on matchbooks, keychains, coffee mugs, and posters.

 

 

 

 

 

The cover also reminds me so much of this former dancer at L.A.’s Jumbo’s Clown Room. When I showed her this cover (she no longer dances, but is an esatte chef in Bel Air) her eyes popped and she said, “That’s me!” Really — same body type, same hair, same lips.  Strange.

There’s no date on this, but as a Cornith Leisure Book, it would date between 1965-66.  It is on Lynn Munroe’s list of “are they or are they not” Lawrence Blocks from his article,”The First Andrew Shaw.”  There’s also question as to whether or not Block continued to write for Hamling and Kemp after 1963, when he and his agent split from Scott Meredith — after all, Meredith contracted all titles to Hamling & Kemp via The Black Box.

I think I’ve become adept at spotting Block’s style.  For one, in general, both his and Westlake’s Nightstands and Midwoods are between 9 and eleven chapters, often ten.  It’s a pragmatic thing — to get a 50,000 words manuscript, you do ten 5,000 word chapters, or nine 6,000 word chapters, and at on chapter a day, in less than two weeks you have a finished book. (Robert Silverberg’s were all fourteen chapters, until after 1965 when Greenlead required all books to be an exact 12 chapters).

Block also has a way of writing about Greenwich Village, a section of Manhattan that he obviously loves.  This is how Sin Alley opens, with colorful depictions of the the streets, trees, and builings of the Village, as well as its doomed youth in th streets:

It is a tough neighborhood.

They fourteen they have smoked their first marijuana cigaratte; by age fifteen they have taken their first hit of H; by sixteen they have graduated to sin-popping and by sixteen they are ready to shoot with medical hardware.

They have already had their first love by age twelve. In the basement or boiler room or hallway or on a fat rooftop, with a girl who is a known tramp, someone from the crowded apartment next door or the street. They start early and soon learn all about that. They know how to get their kicks. (pp. 6-7)

That passage is pure early vintage Block, as if taken from the pages of Pads Are for Passion.  In fact, there are a lot of “pads,” man, in early Block, and, like, beatnik lingio, Daddy-O.

In Sin Alley, The Pad is a special place, a cool space, it is “five rooms on the top floor of a four-story brick painted apartment building” (p. 8).  No one lives there and some think it is a myth; only those with a key, or know someone with a key, can get in.  No one knows who pays for it.  But The Pad is a safe place to take a chick and make her, smoke M or shoot H, play jazz and trip and float and ride the reefer wave.

So happens with a girl named Marion in chapter one; she meets a sexy beatnik trumpet player, they have dinner, he gives her booze and speed, and they go up to the pad.  He tells her to never talk about The Pad and to deny being there if ever asked. She’s too high to remeber anyway.

Chapters two and thre are in completely different writing styles which causes me to think this is a collaborative novel.  Chapter two reads like Westlake’s dense early style and I believe chapter three could be William Coons, who was already ghosting Andrew Shaws as of 1962.

This is a multi-character book, almost a collection of stories, a biout various people in the Village finding their way to The Pad and experiencing mind0-blowing sex and drugs and music.  We don’t get back to Marion’s story until chapter six, and back to Block’s writing — in fact, his chaptrs are choppy, stucatto, single word paragraphs that flow like jazz riffs, returning to themes — the way we return to Marion half way through the book.

It’s an okay book, I’m not a fan of multi-character novels or collections disguised as a novel, because you don’t get to know the characters or even care for them.  Plus, the different writing styles throughout make it an nerratic read.  But like I said at the top, the cover is worth the price of admission into this pad, Daddy-O.

Recommended: Motel Girl by A.E. Oliver (Olympia Press)_

Olympia Press has published, as an e-book, Motel Girl by A.E. Oliver (aka Valerie Grey). Dig that cover, kids.

Also at Mobipocket.

In this quartet of sordid and lusty stories, men and women and women and women come together in cheap motel rooms for tawdry sex and cheap thrills. They are the people you see all around you–teachers, cheerleaders, office drones–who put on a clean pubic face, but when behind closed doors in a $39/night room, they enter the twilight of forbidden pleasures and filthy desires.

The Secret Perversions of Kay Addams by Kay Addams as told to Orrie Hitt

Examined  here.

Loser’s Lust by Alan Marsh (Donald Westlake)

There’s no date printed in the book but most likely it’s 1963, for that brief period  that Bill Hamling and Earl Kemp published the Ember and Pillar titles with house names slightly changed — Dan Eliot for Don Elliott, John Baxter for John Dexter, Andrew Schole (A. Schole?) for Andrew Shaw, Alan Marsh and Alan Marshall…

Apparently it had something to do with a court case that was going on.  It’s never been clear why…

Mona ended in Las Vegas and Loser’s Lust begins in Las Vegas.  I can’t say much because I was unable to get half0-way through this one. It was just…boring…this was not one of Westlake’s best early efforts.  It centers around three characters: a woman who has come to Nevada to file a divorce, a career black jack dealer and woman player, and a waitress in a casino.

Perhaps I am too used to funny Westlake. I like Westlake’s humorous crime books.  He went through periods — I’ve yet to read his noir period stuff. In this one, the action was slow (and the sex scenes come in rather late, surprusing for a Cornith which relied of x number of sex scenes every 18-20 pages to give it “flip appeal”).  The inside information of casino workings, and how black jack delaers operate the game, was cool, but I didn’t care about the charcters and I wasn’t clear on the point of the story.

Maybe there is non point — people go to Las Vegas for many reasons: for fun, for profit, for crime, for divorce, for loneliness…

Westlake fans will find this interesting for hois early voice.

Mona by Lawrence Block (Gold Medal, 1961)

An early Block with quite a history. It’s been reprinted twice since its Gold Medal debut in 1961 — as Sweet Slow Death in 1986 from Jove, Mona in 1994 from Carroll & Graf,  and as Grifter’s Game as the the first offering from Hard Case Crime in 2005.  A lot of mileage for an old title that has now become somewhat a classic in 60s noir.

I read somewhere that Block had started this one as a Nightstand title, and $20 Lust as something for Gold Medal or Beacon, but things got switched around, and when his agent Henry Morrison at Scott Meredith read the manuscript, he concluded it was good enough for Gold Medal and under Block’s own name.  Thus, Mona became the first paperback Block had his name on the cover, instead of Lesley Evans, Sheldon Lord, or Andrew Shaw.

There’s a Mona, a dead ex-wife, in $20 Lust (aka Cinderella Sims), talked about earlier, and a number of Monas show up in Block’s Andrew Shaw books.  She’s like Harry Whittington’s Cora, popping up often in different, same soul.

Block’s many Monas are just no good…tramps, cheats, and liars all…