Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Sleaze novels that are also crime


Many people know that lots of sleaze paperbacks are also crime fiction. Just to name a few: Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, Robert Silverberg, Orrie Hitt, Barry Malzberg... And as many people reading my blog know, I just published a book on sleaze paperbacks. It concentrates on American books that were published also in Finnish, so the scope is pretty limited and haphazard. There were lots of crime-related books that have never before been called to attention of crime fiction aficionados, though. At least not to my knowledge. (The book, called Pulpografia Erotica, is available here. But mind you, it's in Finnish and there's no international sales possibility.) 

So, I think the following books should be included in the next edition (or at least the appendix) of Allen Hubin's crime fiction bibliography (if they already are, I didn't notice and apologize): 

Norman Bligh: The Sisters. Softcover Library 1966. (Includes a killing of a mob boss, though not exactly a crime novel.)

Beth Brown: Man and Wife. Claude Kendall 1933. (Includes a private eye who shakes down clients of a famous prostitute. Not exactly a crime novel.) 

Richard E. Geis: Girlsville. France Books 1963. (Private eye called Vic Kunzer is hired to find a film producer's daughter.) 

Alexander Keith: The Love Gun. Bee-Line Books, the late sixties. (Murder takes place in a hunting cabin where there are some half dozen people. Set in Canada, there's also a French-speaking lieutenant! Can't find the exact year for this.) 

Kimberly Kemp (Paul Russo): Operation Sex. Midwood 1962. (International intrigue and sex.)

Peter Keyes (most possibly Andrew J. Collins): The Love Odds. Brandon House 1967. (Hardboiled crime novel about a private eye like character Steve Wayne who tackles the mobsters running a casino.) 

Lester Lake: So Wild, So Wanton. All Star Books 1962. (Cab driver fights the shakedown ring working in an elite high school.) 

Lester Morris: Savage Lust. Private Editions 1962. (Narcissistic womanizer kills accidentally his ex-mistress and tries to keep it hidden. Great noir novel with a very downbeat ending.) 

Max Nortic: Code Name: The Gypsy Virgin. Midwood 1971. (International intrigue and sadism as two female spies fight each other.) 

Max Nortic: The Real Thing. Midwood 1970. (A classic heist novel taking place in a casino.) 

Eric Sand: The Seduction. Beacon 1965. (Noirish novel about a young woman who comes back to her home town to revenge her father's death.) 

Floyd Smith: Action Girls. Midwood 1977 (there must be an earlier edition, since this was published in Finland in 1974). (An archaeologist tries to find his wife's ring in the desert so he can't be punished for killing her.) 

Gary Tubbs: The Case of the Missing Rubber. Published in 1969, can't find the publisher. (Private eye Charlie Romp gets mixed up in the smuggling of a sex drug.) 

David Warren: Tunnel of Love. Criterion Classics, no date. (Man is in prison for killing his wife's lover, then he finds out the man didn't die after all, and hunts him down. Lots of description of prison life. Maybe Warren was an inmate himself? This is the only book he wrote, at least under this moniker.) 

Then there are also these two books that are heavily crime-related, but I can't find any info on them: 
Jason Brown: Little Girl Lost and Bob Grand: Between All of Us. If anyone has anything on them, I'll be glad to hear it. I've written about these books (and the two published as by "Ralph Hayes") earlier here in Pulpetti. 

4 comments:

Steve said...

Thanks for this, Juri. I've just sent the list on to Al Hubin. I'd say quite a few of these would be of interest to him, Steve

jurinummelin said...

Thanks, Steve, much appreciated! Glad to be of help.

Unknown said...

The Catalogue of Copyright Entries, Third Series 1975 July-December, states that Peter Keyes is the pseudonym of Andrew J. Collins.
The novel is a western, The Land Grabbers, published in 1975 by Major Books.
Best,
Tiziano Agnelli

jurinummelin said...

Tiziano: yes, I gathered as much in my previous post about Keyes/Collins.