The Many Faces of John Dexter #10: Miami Call Girl by Al James (Reed Nightstand #3019, 1973)

We read the 1973 Reed Nightstand edition of this one, which had the same title of an early Nightstand, a Dexter penned by Al James.

Al James generally published all his softcores under his own name, with Cornith, Midwood, Novel, etc. (we have a stack of them here, ready to get to).  He was the son of popular crime noir author Day Keene, a Harry Whittington buddy and compatriot. The crime element influenced is present in Miami Call Girl.

Mandy is a young, hot hooker who works the hotel racket with her pimp, Philip. Phillip found her in the stix, a backwoods girl doing ten dollar tricks with a bad home life and a molesting father. He took her out of the hay and put her on the beach, where she commands $100 a throw, entertaining 3-5 men a day/night.

She meets Jim, a dashing lawyer who rescues her from being “raped” twice, by a pimply teenager with hot hormones and a room full of fat ugly businessmen who want to gang bang her.

She sees Jim as her knight in shining shields, a man who will whisk her away from her sordid life as a whore. He claims he loves her and wants to marry her.  She goes for it.  So long, Miami call girl life, hello to easy life as a big time Chicago lawyer’s bride.

Or so she thinks…

Once she gets to Chicago, she finds out differently. One, Jim has never really touched her, made love to her, not even on their quick Miami wedding night. Two, he expects her to sexually service anyone who wants it, from his driver to all the mob guys he represents.

Seems he wanted a hot hooker wife for two reasons: as flesh for his mob clients to exploit, so they can trust some floozy isn’t recording them for criminal info; and as a “beard” to cover up the fact that Jim is gay, as a front for his more legitimate clients.

A quirky book, fun at times, with a too-smoothly and unbelievable ending (as if any of these books have believable endings, but you know what we mean). A B-minus and worth checking out, and well see how the other Al James titles fare…

Motel Sex Club/The Wild Ones by Andrew Shaw (Lawrence Block)

A Lawrence Block-penned Adrew Shaw novel — has Block’s tell-tale clipped noir style. A fast read with short chapters that feels like Block wrote this in several days.

A prevelent theme in 60s sleaze is the sex club — suburban swappers, college sex clubs, wild teens — this is a wild teens sesx club.  A 17 year old girl runs the family motel outside Syracuse while her dad is away for the summer; she soon invites all her friends from college for partiesand sex romps, and sleeps with traveling salesmen and any other men who fancy her delight.

Motel guests sleep with each other, not knowing each other’s names — the set-ups are absurd and more like Debbie Does Dallas situations.

There are wild parties with pot, drifting into reefer madness.  The night they all drop LSD, things go nuts…well, in Motel Sex Club, 1960, it’s speed pills…in The Wild Ones, the 1973 reprint, it’s been updated to acid — the language is updated too: “tits” for breasts” and “fuck me” for “give it to me.”

Not Block’s best, not as good as Lust Damned.

Sundown Reader Titles

Sundown Reader s was one of Greenleaf/Hamling’s many imprints…