Pagan Summer by Dallas Mayo (Gil Fox), Midwood, 1965

There were two editions of this novel, each with a great Paul Rader cover to drool over.

Muriel is a lesbian nurse.  She thinks she has her perverted lesbian desires beat with the beatnik painter, Chan Crieghton. Until she becomes the private nurse of a beautiful young widow, Erin.

Erin became a widow the same day she married Barry, worth millions.  It was a car accident. In the hospital she makes a connection with Nurse Muriel and offers to hire her full-time, privately.  Mostly the two lounge on the beach in North Carolina, drinking beer…and soon having sex.

Then Chan shows up and Erin has a yen for the artist, complicating things in a bi-sexual way…

Sound good?  Boring, boring as all hell.  Gil Fox wrote under three pen names for Midwood: Paul V. Russo, Kimberly Kemp, and Dallas Mayo.  The Kemp titles were generally lesbian, and are collectible, while the Mayo books seem to be bi-sexual and tawdry.

In an interview with Lynn Munroe, Fox rags on Orrie Hitt, saying Hitt wrote unreadable “drivel.”  Obviously jealousy and the green monster, because it is Fox’s work I have found to be unreadable, whatever name he uses. His sentences are awful, his dialogue flat, his characters two dimensional. I tried to read Intimate Nurse, which I have posted the full text here: you can see how bad Fox’s writing is. The Groovy Age of Horror, however, seemed to dig it.

The only thing going for this yawner is the Rader art for both editions, to collect for art alone.  Those seeking a cool (or hot) lesbian nurse read won’t find it here.

I have a few other Mayos and Kemps here, and a coule of Russos I got in ebay lots…I’ll give them a try down the line (next year) but I don’t have any high hopes for a good read.

Fox tells Munroe he wrote books for Olympia, Grove, Masquerade and Blue Moon…I have no idea who he “was” at Blue Moon but it makes me shudder that we shared the same publisher. 😉

Kidding, of course.

Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks — The Coolness of the Past

Welcome this Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks Blog.  The purpose of this blog is to post some hot, cool paperback covers for the gaze of your eye sockets, and to review and discuss selected titles.

Most of the titles will be from Don Elliott, Lauren Beauchamp, David Challon, Mark Ryan  (all pen names of Robert Silverberg), Gerrold Watkins and Mel Johnson (pen names of Barry N. Malzberg), as “notes” toward the two monographs I am writing, one on Malzberg and one on Silverberg and his pen names.

(But I will discuss others too as I go along — Joan Ellis, March Hastings, Andrew Shaw [aka Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake], Don Bellmore, etc etc.]

I wanted to write a short monograph or essay on the Don Elliott/Laoren Beauchamp books, as they were/are of high quality, compared to many books of the time or even erotica today.  They also exhibit Silverberg’s early style. But I was uncertain where such an essay or book would find a home — best here on the net.

I have discussed Barry Malzber’s US-era Olympia Press titles under his name and Gerrold Watkins in a monograph, Barry N.  Malzberg: Beyond Science Fiction, Toward Psychoanalysis (Borgo Press) due out late 2009, but I do not have 3 of the Watkins and none of the Johnson (Midwood Books) that are hard to find…as I do locate them, I will post a blog here.

Intimate Nurse by Kimberly Kemp (Midwood Books) – Full Text

FRIEDA slept. Naked. Moaning gently in her slumber as one arm fell restlessly across the deep cushion of her breasts, her nostrils twitching daintily at the perfumed air rising from the amber-tinged skin of her own body.

Frieda slept…