The Peking Dossier (Nick Carter: Killmaster #84)

The Peking Dossier, by Nick Carter

No month stated, 1973  Award Books

The first of two Nick Carter: Killmaster by an author named Linda Stewart, The Peking Dossier is from the unfortunate era in which series packager Lyle Kenyon Engel had let go of the reins and Award Books was fully in control, turning the series over to an army of ghostwriters with none of the unity or continuity that Engel had maintained for the series. Even worse, the series is now in first-person, with “Nick himself” relaying his adventures to us. 

This is problematic enough for me; I mean Nick Carter is this super-agent who is always “on the job,” so how the hell does he have time to write books? And indeed, The Peking Dossier is a slow-as-molasses read, another of those deceptively-slim ‘70s paperbacks. This sucker has some seriously small print and, despite “only” being 188 pages, it took me forever to finish the book. This is because Linda Stewart has a tendency to draw things out a little too much at times…and also, she makes the even worse mistake of putting her tongue a little too far into her cheek. 

It's the sort of thing Engel never would have allowed: Nick will often refer to himself as a “hero” when telling us his story in The Peking Dossier, usually in a “taking the piss” sort of vibe. Like a part where he scales a wall, and Stewart has an exhausted Nick tell us, “Sorry, I know heroes aren’t supposed to get tired.” There’s other stuff, like later on where Nick knows someone’s broken into his hotel room, and Nick informs us he has his own special way of monitoring this – and it isn’t the “hair on the doorway” trick Ian Fleming wrote about in James Bond. Nick further complains that Fleming gave too much away, and Nick himself isn’t going to give away his secrets “for ninety-five cents.” Ie, the cost of a Nick Carter: Killmaster paperback in 1973. 

This breaking of the fourth wall (or whatever the literary term for it is) might be fine in something like The Destroyer, but Killmaster is supposed to be more of a “straight, no chaser” affair…or at least it was when Lyle Kenyon Engel ran it. As Engel himself noted, he did not like the first-person narrative for the series, but it was insisted on by Award Books. One can see Engel’s point, as ultimately first-person narrative will lead to this…a writer thinking himself (or herself) too clever for the material, and poking fun at it in the narrative. Also the entire “Nick Carter is also the author” conceit is ridiculous, as one must imagine super-hero Nick Carter traveling the globe as he stops villains and beds exotic babes…and yet somehow finding the time to write a 188 page book of teeny-tiny print. A book that is then published under his own name! 

Another issue is the first-person narrative makes Nick seem altogether too gabby, as Manning Lee Stokes frequently demonstrated in his own first-person offerings for the series, a la The Red Rays. Since Nick narrates the entire story for us, he comes off like a neurotic fusspot, and it’s hard to square with the image of a virile man of action. But then, it all depends on the narrative voice, and again given the army of solo ghostwriters working on the series at this point, “Nick” comes off as a different narrator every time. In the hands of Linda Stewart he suddenly sounds more like a private eye in a bad ‘50s film noir, as Nick’s “voice” is decidely hardboiled in The Peking Dossier. 

That said, Linda Stewart wins the Leigh Brackett award for “female author who can write almost exactly like a male author.” Folks, if I hadn’t known going in that a woman wrote this one, I never would’ve guessed it. Speaking of Stokes, Stewart makes her version of Nick just as aggressively macho, and there’s none of the pussyfooting around certain subjects that one gets from other female authors invading the world of men’s adventure, like for example Blood or The Peacemaker. Unlike the few other female authors in the men’s adventure genre I’ve read, Linda Stewart knows to keep things moving, with a focus on action – of the violent and sexual variety. Even more so than the previous female author on the series, Valerie Moolman. 

That said (again), Nick does fall in love in The Peking Dossier, and indeed only has sex with one girl in the book (the one he falls in love with, naturally), so there is that giveaway that our author is a woman. Otherwise, Stewart knows enough to not emasculate her Nick Carter too much; we still get the topical description of women and there’s a fair bit of action…though, again, the sex is for the most part off-page or relayed in metaphors, and the violence is not gory it all. This is one of those books where Nick tells us he “shot” someone and leaves it at that. Or even, “In ten seconds they were all dead.” 

Again like Stokes, Linda Stewart has a little fun with some in-jokery; just as Stokes would often refer to himself, his pseudonyms, or etc in his own work for the series, so too does Linda Stewart. Indeed, she does Stokes one better, introducing herself into the book. The Peking Dossier ultimately concerns Nick Carter facing off against a master assassin with a clone army who is looking to kill every US senator and ultimately the President, and early in the book Nick is told to meet with the AXE agent who will be working the assignment with him…a lovely redhead with an incredible body who gives her name as Linda Stewart. 

Nick will soon learn it’s a lie: the redhead’s name is really Tara Bennett, and she’s a scientist for AXE. But it’s interesting that Linda Stewart slipped her real name into the book…doubtless unaware that fifty years later some random reviewer would be writing about it on his blog. It’s also interesting that she made herself Nick’s dream girl, in a way; later Nick will tell us that Linda/Tara not only has the best body he’s ever seen, but she’s the best lay he’s ever had – and, as Nick himself reminds us, he’s been with more than a few women. But Stewart doesn’t dwell much on the juicy goods. In fact, the most we get is stuff like, “Tara was something else.” The reluctance to dwell on all the juicy material also comes off as humorous, given how gabby our narrator is about vitually every other subject. 

Another interesting thing, given that The Peking Dossier was written by a woman, is Nick’s insistence on asserting his dominance over Tara. Moments after meeting her, and learning that she’s an AXE scientist who will be working with him, Nick ensures that Tara is under no question of who is in charge. Again, Stewart’s Nick Carter has the same aggressive macho tendencies as Manning Lee Stokes’s, but then it could because Stewart’s goal is to show how Nick goes from being a macho boss to a guy who falls in love with Tara. 

And for an author who is brand new to the series, Linda Stewart really goes to bat to have Nick Carter explain himself and his philosophy to us. We are also told without condition that he’s not wealthy: “If you were out of work for six months last year, you probably earned more than I did.” Frequently Nick will confide such thoughts in us readers, and I have to admit I kind of appreciated Stewart’s self-confidence in such things…I mean here she was, the first female author on the series since Valerie Moolman, ten years before, and she dove right into it without any hesitancies. One could easily believe “Nick himself” really is telling the tale of The Peking Dossier, Linda Stewart’s narratorial voice is so confident. 

The only problem is, the novel is incredibly sluggish. It just seemed to take forever for me to finish it, and my assumption is Stewart’s word count came in higher than expected and Award just shrank the print instead of cutting the fat. The helluva it is, the main idea is kind of cool: there’s this group of assassins from Red China that calls itself “KAN,” and Nick tells us that no one’s ever figured out what the name means, so AXE just refers to it as “Kill Americans Now,” which is what the assassin group specializes in. As if a cabal of “A1” assassins wasn’t enough, Stewart also throws in a cloning subplot; one of the chief KAN agents has apparently cloned himself, and is sending out his duplicates to kill United States senators. 

This is how Tara Bennett comes into the picture; Hawk sends her to meet up with Nick, and it turns out she is a scientist who has guessed clones are behind the plot…given that the killers have all been Chinese men who look identical, even to the same mole in the center of their forehead. Stewart’s footing is a little off with her presentation of Hawk; she has the AXE boss withholding info from Nick, for reasons that make little sense other than plot convenience. For example, why exactly Tara goes through with the “Linda Stewart” charade is not properly explained, nor is how she is under orders – from Hawk – to not tell Nick certain things about the assignment. Regardless, Tara as mentioned will be Nick’s sole bedmate and ally throughout The Peking Dossier, first going with him to Nassau to get a lead on the KAN plot, and then later to England, and then finally to Hanoi. 

One thing Linda Stewart shares with other female authors in the men’s adventure genre is her reliance on knocking Nick out for the convenience of the plot; Nick Carter is knocked out or drugged into unconsciousness at least five times over the course of The Peking Dossier. It gets to be comical after a while, and it’s clear it’s because Stewart has painted her hero into a corner and has to resort to the easy way out and knocking Nick senseless. The funny thing is, Nick’s opponents just conveniently don’t kill him when he’s out cold! But anyway, poor Nick certainly picks up at least a few concussions in this one. 

At any rate, Stewart does pack in a bit of action throughout, but as mentioned it is spectacularly bloodless. Nick uses his three mainstay weapons – the Luger, the stiletto, the gas bomb – and even here Stewart, again brand-new to the series, has Nick explain to us the usefulness of Pierre, the gas bomb. You know, the one he hides by his balls. Stewart, with her tongue again in her cheek, has Nick tell us how men never search there, adding to the benefit of the bomb, yet at the same time he humorously tells us how hiding something behind your balls can be a little embarrassing if the wrong person sees it. Otherwise Nick doles out quick, clean kills in The Peking Dossier, but he does gas-bomb a group of KAN killers at one point. 

The plotting is pretty busy, and overly so, to the extent that fun stuff is unexplored. Like there’s a part where Nick is cornered by some KAN killers, and they end up fighting with each other over who gets to kill the infamous Killmaster, as apparently there’s a points reward system in the KAN organization. Nick wonders how many points he’d be worth, but Stewart doesn’t do much with the setup. Same goes with the clone stuff, which isn’t really dwelt on until the final pages. Essentially, a top KAN killer hopes to create a clone army to topple the west, and he also plans to clone Nick and Tara! Nick because he could have an army of Killmasters (we are told clones inherit the exact abilities of the source), and Tara because he would have a super-smart genetic scientist at his disposal. 

The finale plays out in a temple in which the KAN villain manufactures heroin (another subplot), using a group of naïve monks to do the work. We have some B-movie sci-fi stuff, like Nick and Tara seeing little jars with growing embryos in them, knowing that they are looking at clones of themselves. But a lot of it is ruined by Nick constantly getting knocked out, or dosed by drugs into oblivion. Oh, and also falling in love with Tara. After a lot of off-page lovin,’ Tara admits to Nick that she’s fallen in love with him…and Nick, after telling us that under normal circumstances he’d come up with something to tell a girl who’d fallen in love with him – basically, to get lost – tells us that instead he tells Tara he feels the same. Now, one would expect this will mean that only one thing could possibly happen to Tara, but Linda Stewart goes in an unexpected direction. 

SPOILER ALERT: Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know. But for posterity, here’s what happens with Tara. Stewart as metioned puts a lot of subplots and extranneous background detail into the book, with Nick often referring to people he knew in the past (who of course have never before been mentioned in the series). Well anyway, one such reference, which Tara randomly throws out, is to an elite AXE agent who was killed in action or lost or something (I forget). Well, despite telling Nick she’s in love with him and even that she wants to have his child…in a hasty final chapter Nick informs us that Tara, who does survive the events of the novel, is already married – indeed, to that very elite AXE agent! Turns out he's been crippled or somesuch, and Hawk at AXE is paying for his care, and Tara used the opportunity to go out in the field and briefly fall in love with Nick and let herself imagine what it would be like to be with him. But she’s staying with her crippled husband. Or something. Nick for his part doesn’t seem much fazed, telling us a married life isn’t one he thinks he’d even want. 

Overall The Peking Dossier is entertaining, though a bit ponderous at times and certainly bloated. That said, Linda Stewart proves herself a better series writer than many who worked on Nick Carter: Killmaster, and perhaps one of these days I’ll seek out her other installment, 1975’s The Jerusalem File.

Orgasm

Orgasm, by Brian Richard Boylan

July, 1973  Dell Books

Now here’s a book on a topic I think we all might find some interest in. Subtitled “The Ultimate Experience,” Orgasm is part of the glut of sex paperbacks turned out in the early ‘70s; author Brian Boylan gives no bio for himself, but in the book he does reveal that in 1972 he published another sex-themed Dell PBO, Infidelity, which was taken from his interviews with a few hundred married couples who had cheated in some capacity. 

In his intro to this book, Boylan states that he personally has noticed that the orgasm itself is rarely focused on in these sex books; it is the end goal people work toward, and writers and researchers leave it at that. Or, “The last taboo,” as Boylan puts it. But what does an orgasm feel like? And how would women or men describe it? This apparently is the germ idea for Orgasm, but Boylan loses the plot, and for the most part the book comes off like any other early ‘70s sex book. 

This is humorous, given that Boylan spends the intro chapter of Orgasm ranting about the glut of sex books in the marketplace and how they are all essentially retreads of one another. That said, this is a good idea of how the market was responding to the sex glut of the early ‘70s; even the researchers were getting burned out. That is, if Boylan was indeed a researcher. His occasional self-references give the impression that he was, but there was no biographical detail about him I could find in the book. He’s certainly done his homework on the sex research front, though, but humorously he never refers to himself, maintaining an objective view and just telling us what the people he spoke to said. 

So then, Orgasm is not like How To Be A Tiger In Bed, but more like The Groupsex Scene, in that the majority of it is comprised of ribald dialog from early ‘70s men and women on how they like to get down. Boylan notes in his intro that he did not take notes nor record anything when talking to his subjects – saying that this often kept them from being totally open with him – and he admits that the dialog is filtered through his own writing style, which explains why all the characters “sound” the same. In other words, Boylan didn’t invade the privacy of his subjects like Robin Moore did in The Making Of The Happy Hooker. 

Occasionally Boylan does move away from the dry, factual tone, especially when complaining about all the misleading sex books of the day, or imagining how the average guy would describe an orgasm. There’s also a lot of complaining about sleaze novels, which Boylan asserts is the level to which most “sex books” stoop to. And yet, Orgasm also stoops to those levels, if only due to the sometimes-crazy comments Boylan’s subjects tell him. Oh, and given the lack of the male imagination in describing a climax, the majority of the commentary in Orgasm is from women. 

As with most of these books, Orgasm provides a glimpse into the era in which it was written: an era in which women were coming out of the shackles of the early twentieth century and were on The Pill, freely gabbing about their extramarital affairs and their love of the male genitalia (see below). Speaking of which, I am currently working on my time machine. 

In closing, I think this is one of those books where a bunch of random excerpts will do a better job of describing the book than I ever could:

The Penetrator #44: Deep Cover Blast-Off

The Penetrator #44: Deep Cover Blast-Off, by Lionel Derrick

December, 1981  Pinnacle Books

Man, how have I gone over a year without reading a volume of The Penetrator? For a while there I was reading a few books a year. Well anyway, at this point we are in the homestretch, with less than ten installments to go in the series. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been reading The Penetrator for 14 years now; it’s like it has become a part of my life at this point. 

Fortunately, the series refresh seen in the previous volume continues with this one; Chet Cunningham seems to come out of the doldrums that he was in for the past, oh, I don’t know, 15 or so volumes. Maybe series editor Andy Ettinger told Cunningham and series co-author Mark Roberts to get their shit together. To be sure, Deep Cover Blast-Off is not a return to the violent form of early Cunningham entries like #4: Hijacking Manhattan and #12: Bloody Boston, but at least Mark “The Penetrator” Hardin kills a bunch of bad guys this time, instead of just knocking them out like some TV detective. He also lives up to his name, uh, “penetrating” not just one but two sexy babes in the short course of the novel, though for the most part Cunningham leaves the sexual material off-page. I’ve often thought of doing the opposite of Bowdlerizing, ie adding explicit sex and violence to books. 

Curiously, Cunningham in this one seems to recreate Joanna Tabler, Mark’s casual girlfriend of earlier volumes (and a character Cunningham introduced to the series). Joanna was a tough but beautiful federal agent…and in Deep Cover Blast-Off, Cunningham introduces another tough but beautiful federal agent who becomes involved with Mark Hardin. This one’s named Malona and she’s an Intelligence officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which we’re informed is Canada’s version of the FBI. Also curiously, Cunningham never once refers to Joanna Tabler in the course of this book – other than vague mentions of “women” who have suffered for becoming involved with Mark – but it’s funny because Malona is pretty much the same character, only she’s Canadian and she’s a brunette. 

But then, Mark suffers another female loss early in the book. Up in Windsor, Ontario to investigate the murder of an old ‘Nam pal who went on to work for the CIA, Mark becomes involved with a hotstuff waitress named Beda. She’s soon caught and suffers the ultimate price for being with Mark, but Mark spends about a hot second mourning her…and then Malona is literally introduced a few pages later. Cunningham clearly has his tongue in cheek, with the bonus that Mark takes the first girl’s death in stride and is promptly checking out Malona. But as I’ve already mentioned Cunningham for the most part ends the scene when the hanky-panky gets started, and in fact doesn’t even dwell much upon the ample charms of either Beda or Malona. 

A funny thing about Deep Cover Blast-Off is that Mark Hardin heads to Canada to research the death of an old ‘Nam pal…but spends more of his time investigating the death of some other guy. It turns out that three CIA agents have been killed while investigating affairs in Canada, Mark’s ‘Nam buddy being the most recent. Humorously, the Agency isn’t much concerned over the deaths, chalking them off as random murders or somesuch, so it’s up to The Penetrator to do his own investigation. 

Curiously, despite this being the 44th volume of the series, we get the usual brief rundown and recap of who Mark Hardin is and some of his past exploits. We even get that recurring note of how his voice lacks a regional accent; this time Cunningham humorously refers to Mark’s accent as “CBS neutral.” Man, if only CBS was neutral! But another curious thing is the stuff Cunningham forgets. For example, there’s a part where Mark uses this new concoction of Professor Haskins to knock someone out without harming them or killing them…which is weird, given that this is what Mark previously used his dart gun “Ava” for. But Ava seems to have been written out of the series, and I’m not sure the last time the Penetrator used it. 

Cunningham delivers some fun stuff this time around, as if he’s finally invested in the series again. Most notably is a bit early on where a lead takes Mark to a gay bar (“There wasn’t a woman in the place”), one that’s filled with “swivel-hipped males.” Raise your hand if you remember when Mark, in an earlier Chet Cunningham offering, once posed as “the Pierre?” But Cunningham doesn’t do much with this scene, other than Mark acting incredily aggressive toward the patrons (“Which of you queers here pulled the trigger?”), and for the most part it’s all just setup for an action scene, as Mark finds out the owner of the place is somehow involved with the murders. That said, the chapter is titled, “Mark Three, Gays Zero.” 

Another returning gimmick from earlier novels is that Mark gets hurt in the ensuing action; he’s shot, but manages to get away, and later hooks up with the busty waittress he literally said only a few words to, earlier in the day. This would be Beda, who gamely takes Mark in and nurses him to health, with the expected shenanigans resulting: “[Mark]…kissed her pulsating breasts.” Man, she must be in the X-Men or something! “I shall unleash my pulsating breasts!” But as mentioned (frequently, now), Cunningham leaves the actual sordid details off-page. Mark’s a slow learner, though, as sure enough Beda is captured by the bad guys the very next morning, suffering fatally for it, but Cunningham spends more time detailing how Mark escapes the police once he has dealt with Beda’s captors. 

And like a few pages later Mark is already salivating over hotstuff Malona Mitchell, RCMP Intelligence. Cunningham has the two get down to it posthaste, with a lot of saucy banter between then but again fading to black during the actual sleaze. Malona becomes Mark’s companion for the rest of the novel, under the impression that he works for the CIA. The RCMP also suspects something is up with these agent murders…and meanwhile we readers know it’s the Russians, in particular a deep-cover agent named Ustinova, who was implanted in Canada back in the 1960s to research germ warfare and was gradually forgotten by his superiors in Russia. Now Ustinova has gone insane and plans to carry out an attack on DC; to this end he sends out his sadistic thug, Turgun, to dispatch anyone who gets in his way. 

Action is more frequent than previous volumes, and again Mark Hardin once again kills most of his opponents, rather than just knocking them out. He’s also picked up a gift for very lame one-liners, like when he tells a guy, “Don’t be a nerd.” This might be the earliest usage of that word I’ve encountered in a book…and no, the guy Mark calls a nerd isn’t a dweeb in Coke-bottle glasses, it’s a dude with a gun, so either “nerd” meant something else in 1981 or Chet Cunningham just didn’t know what it meant. 

Despite being a sadistic thug, not to mention the guy who killed Mark’s pal, Turgun is the victim of Mark’s “kill-free” takedown: a concoction of tear gas and ether made by the Professor. Curiously though, not much is done with this concoction despite much build up. And besides, Mark does eventually deal with Turgun…in a sequence that seems to come out of the Penetrator of old. Vowing to get brutal justice for his slain pal, Mark uses a tractor’s manure spreader to mete out Turgun’s comeuppance, though Cunningham doesn’t get as gory as he could in the sequence. 

The finale of Deep Cover Blast-Off further demonstrates the détente of the early ‘80s, as Mark takes down Ustinova’s missile-firing silo with…a group of KGB agents. There is a friendly rapport between the group and the reader can tell much has changed in the world since the series started in the early ‘70s. And the novel ends on this sequence, with a quick capoff noting that Malona has gone on a fishing trip with Mark…which, curiously, was the same thing the never-mentioned Joanna Tabler used to do. So, one wonders if Malona will return in future Penetrator installments.

The Numbers Man

The Numbers Man, by David J. Gerrity

May, 1977  Signet Books

The “Cordolini trilogy” by David Gerrity wraps up with this novel, which was published two years after the first volume (hard to believe I reviewed that one over ten years ago!). As with the other two books it’s a slim paperback, coming in at 153 pages, and as with The Plastic Man most of the running time is given over to Mafia types bickering and bantering with each other, with “series protagonist” Frank “The Wolf” Cordolini essentially reduced to a walk-on role. 

The action occurs about a month after The Plastic Man. Gerritty does not seem to have any grand intentions in mind and I get the impression he was turning this book out solely because the first two sold, and accordingly he wings his way through the narrative. The Numbers Man is dull and unnecessary, and doesn’t even have an eleventh-hour twist like The Plastic Man did to liven things up. Given that a lot of the dialog either recaps what happened in previous volumes or is given over to random musings on the life of a Mafia thug, my assumption is that Gerritty’s heart wasn’t in this one. Also my assumption is that Signet wanted more “Mafia” books, so Gerrity was catering to the publisher to make a sale, or hell maybe he just wanted to write a third novel so he could have a “trilogy.” 

The only problem is, The Never Contract told the complete story; the second and third volumes kind of just spin their wheels, dwelling on the ramifications of that first book. The Never Contract established Frank “The Wolf” Cordolini as an almost mythical character in the Mafia, a killer who went after the Family and got his revenge. In The Plastic Man, Cordolini was shuffled off to the side, with even major incidents – like his starting a family after the events of the first book, and then losing them to the Mafia – given short narrative shrift. The Numbers Man goes one better, by killing Cordolini himself in the opening pages! 

But then, even someone entirely new to the trilogy will doubt Cordolini’s truly dead. As it is, we get a harried opening sequence in which some Mafia thugs ambush Cordolini’s car in upstate New York, blasting it and sending car and driver into a lake, where the car submerges, with Cordolini’s body conveniently inside. Apparently this is like a few weeks after The Plastic Man. From here The Numbers Man turns into an oddball book in which a bunch of low-level mobsters shoot the shit and plot against each other while a mysterious figure begins to sow trouble between two families in New York City. 

This figure first shows up as a cop, and later as a mailman. The title of the book refers to a particular incident in which the mysterious figure hits a numbers operation that is run by one of the families. The curious thing is that these action scenes are over and done with in the span of a few paragraphs, but Gerrity will spend pages and pages on one-off mobsters discussing the events that transpired. The two characters who most rise to the surface are Don Albert, presumably returning from the previous volume(s), who is consigned to an iron lung thanks to traumatic injuries he suffered in Cordolini’s attack at the denoument of The Plastic Man, and Mike Sachetto, a goombah with designs on becoming a don himself. 

There is (are?) a plethora of Italian names to keep track of in the novel, and as if doubling down on it Gerrity even makes the sole non-Mafia character in the novel an Italian, too! He’s a cop and his name is Gino Coletti, and given that Gerrity most often refers to him as “Coletti,” I kept misreading his name as “Cordolini.” Not only that, but Gerrity has doubled down on “C” names, as if intentionally making it hard for his readers to keep track of who is who. Seriously, we have Cordolini, Coletti, Colmo, and a guy named Cookie. What, no Cobretti? Also I should mention here that there isn’t a female character in the novel, other than the hapless wife of one of the thugs, who appears for a page or two. 

I don’t exaggerate when I say that a lot of The Numbers Man is given over to dialog. There’s even a lot of stuff with Coletti shooting the shit with his partner, particularly over Coletti’s frustration with how the Mafia gives Italian-Americans a bad name. Meanwhile everyone tries to figure out who is honing in on Don Albert’s operation, and the reader will have figured out long ago that it is indeed Cordolini; no spoiler, as one of the mobsters figures this out early on, though he’s not believed. I did find it humorous how all these mobsters kept insisting that Cordolini was killed in that upstate New York ambush, even though his body was never found and also because “The Wolf” was, you know, a friggin’ legend in the Mafia, so you’d think these people would be a little more willing to suspect he faked his death. 

And on page 75 we learn this is indeed what happened, as Cordolini is introduced to us in the narrative without much fanfare, sitting in an apartment in Brookyln and planning his next hit. He was in fact the fake cop and fake mailman, and his goal is to start an internecine war to wipe out the two New York families. We only have a cursory reminder of his war on the Mafia, started for real when they killed his wife and son, but just like last time Cordolini’s off-page more often than not. In The Never Contract David Gerrity established that Frank Cordolini was more myth than man, so apparently Gerrity’s goal was to follow through on that in the narrative itself, with Cordolini more of a shadowy figure than a protagonist the reader can root for. The problem is Cordolini is too aloof and distant from the reader. 

Even more of a problem is that this leaves the heavy narrative lifting to one-off characters, same as in The Plastic Man. And given that they all turn into a bland retread of each other, The Numbers Man quickly becomes a chore of a read. Gerrity introduces so many characters that he seems to lose sight of them; one major character dies in the final pages almost anticlimactically. And speaking of which, the “climax” itself is almost an afterthought, a quick shootout on 57th Street in Brooklyn. 

Gerrity leaves Don Albert’s comeuppance off-page, but The Numbers Man ends on a nicely-handled scene in which the don’s fate is clearly implied. But curiously the door is left open for future tales of Frank Cordolini, as by novel’s end he has more money in his pocket thanks to hitting more numbers operations, and he still has a score to settle with the mob. But this was it for Cordolini, and I believe this was it for David Gerrity’s writing career, as I don’t believe he published anything else after this one…but then, The Numbers Man seems clear enough indication that the well had run dry.

The Making Of The Happy Hooker

The Making Of The Happy Hooker, by Robin Moore

October, 1973  Signet Books

A few years ago I reviewed The Happy Hooker, a book I had been meaning to read for years and years, as I’d picked up the majority of the books Xaviera Hollander published at the time. But that review is a bit of a sore spot for me, given that Blogger for no reason whatsoever put it behind a sensitivity filter, flagging it for adult content. I tried editing the title, the image, etc, but nothing worked and to this day the review is stuck behind a privacy screen, and stuff like this makes me laugh because it’s yet another reminder of how things are becoming more and more restricted in our otherwise “progressive” age. (To be filed under: “Sex parties are for me, not for thee.”) 

Well anyway, The Happy Hooker is credited to the titular hooker herself, Xaviera Hollander, but “co-written” by Robin Moore and Yvonne Dunleavy. Published a few years after that bestseller, The Making Of The Happy Hooker is by Robin Moore himself, telling the tale of how The Happy Hooker came to be, and the fallout from the book’s publication. Interestingly, Xaveria published a few more “nonfiction books” under her own name, without Moore or Dunleavy, so I wonder if those books – with titles like Xaviera! and Xaveria Goes Wild! – cover the same ground. I’m betting not, as glancing through them they appear to be more focused on Xaveria’s robust sex life, whereas The Making Of The Happy Hooker is more focused on the uninentional criminal and federal ramifactions that were spawned in the research and writing of The Happy Hooker. 

Moore was an incredibly prolific writer and I’m surprised I’ve yet to review one of his books on here. When I was 10 years old I picked up a paperback copy of his early ‘60s bestseller, The Green Berets, and it’s one of the few books from my childhood that I still have. (It has a lame cover photo of a soldier wearing camo facepaint.) But to this day I have not read the book, nor have I read any of Robin Moore’s many other books. I even have some PBOs he did through Manor Books in the late ‘70s, which might indicate that Moore gradually lost his “name” in the literary world; but then, The Happy Hooker itself was a PBO, and according to this book was the number one selling PBO of all time, with 7 million copies sold. 

I only bring up the “name” stuff because Robin Moore is at pains to remind us that he’s a big-name author throughout the entirety of The Making Of The Happy Hooker. He so often informs us that he’s well-known – at one point he even has a character directly state that “[Moore] is a big-time author” – that I got the impression the guy already knew his “name” was slipping, and was trying to double down on the fame he previously enjoyed. But that’s just my impression. There’s just a level of arrogance to his narrative that is not too disimilar from Norman Mailer’s, in Of A Fire On The Moon. That said, he also just as often reminds us of how skillfully-researched his books are, but then Moore is reportedly the only civilian to ever graduate Green Beret training, all during the course of research for his book on them. 

Well anyway, one suspects he published this book as a further boon to his rapidly-fading literary star; the only reason it seems to exist is so that Moore can provide his own interpretation of the bestselling The Happy Hooker, which is strange given that he was credited as the “co-writer” of the actual book. And a lot of the same material is covered herein, with the caveat that Moore’s “making of” book becomes more of a crime thriller, or at least more of a sub-The Anderson Tapes yarn, with its focus on illegal surveillance and the ensuing fallout of such. The plot is also less focused on Xaviera’s whoring life than it is on the Knapp Commission, which was tasked with rooting out corruption in the NYPD; basically, Xaviera’s cathouse became an illegal listening post for various cops who were trying to bust people. 

But then, Moore cagily asserts in his intro that The Making Of The Happy Hooker is “faction,” stating that some of it is “the fantasy of a middle-aged man who may wish more may have happened under certain exotic and erotic circumstances.” On that note, Moore tells us straight out that he had sex with Xaviera, and a few times at that. Indeed, their first meeting led to the inevitable; Moore has it that he was finishing up work on a book titled The Khaki Mafia, co-writing it with a lovely young dish named June who apparently had nice breasts (in true sleazy early ‘70s style, Moore does indeed tell us about the breasts of his female co-writers), and Moore started getting calls from a foreign-voiced chick who wanted him to visit her. Moore quickly deduced that she was a new hooker in town (this being 1970), and she’d bought the “black book” of another hooker – one who had Moore’s name in her book. 

Well, Moore does visit, and he informs us that Xaveria “wasn’t really a pretty girl,” but she carried herself like a “superstar.” Also, according to this book Xaviera had a tendency to say things like, “I would like to suck your cock” to a man shortly after meeting him, which certainly goes a long ways in making of up for her not being “really pretty.” “[Xaveria] encouraged me into positions I had never tried…taking me deep up into her,” Moore informs us in what will be one of the very few sexual scenes in the book – and one that only lasts a paragraph, at that. We get another Moore-Xaveria boff later in the book, when a horny Xaveria insists Moore stop working on the book and come back into her room: “Xaviera was astride me…begging me to ejaculate in her.” This part is funny, though, as Xaveria’s boyfriend Larry (who wrote his own book on Xaveria, believe it or not – and yes, I have it and will read it someday) comes back, knows what Moore and Xaviera are doing in there, and gets mad – not because of Xaveria’s infidelity, but because he knows Xaveria is giving Moore a freebie! But all is well when Moore hands over fifty bucks, after which Larry’s treating him like his best friend. 

As for The Happy Hooker, Moore has it that he hit upon the idea after that first tustle with Xaveria. But then, he states he’d already been thinking about a book on prositution, and indeed the prologue of the book is perhaps the best part, as Moore relates another funny story. It’s 1968, and Moore has brought in 18 Green Berets for the New York premiere of the film version of his book The Green Berets. They ended up at a fashionable East Side townhouse after the premiere, and Moore piles on the sleazy description of the madam’s five-floor bordello…which is raided by the cops the next day, after Moore and the Berets have left. But it’s from this that Moore got the idea to do a “Hookerbook,” which he informs us was his original title for the book that became The Happy Hooker. 

Moore also makes it clear that Xaveria Hollander did not write The Happy Hooker. He breaks it down in movie terms: “Produced by Robin Moore. Written by Yvonne Dunleavy. Starring Xaveria Hollander.” But then, Moore doesn’t even tell us much about Dunleavy’s contribution, other than her frequent run-ins with Xaveria. Dunleavy is apparently Australian, and is another lovely young thing with “nice breasts” that Moore hires to co-write with him, arguing that a book on a hooker needs a “woman’s touch,” indeed a woman who would understand that Xaveria’s blatant whorish attitude would seem alien to the average female reader. But really, all we learn of Dunleavy is she gets annoyed with Xaveria, who is constantly asking Dunleavy to “help out” at the cathouse, ie serve as a hooker for a group of men who are coming in, etc. 

The book starts off on the sleazy footing we’d expect, with Xaveria casually informing Moore and Dunleavy of her kinky customers and her history of hookering…but it’s also gross, because we get a lot on the “freak” aspect, complete with a dude who likes to eat shit. Literally. But The Making Of The Happy Hooker changes course with the introduction of “Ben the Bugger,” a wiretapping expert Moore hires to bug Xaveria’s place…so Moore doesn’t have to be there all the time, picking up material for the book. Essentially Ben bugs all the rooms, with Xaveria’s blessing, so Moore and Dunleavy can later listen to the tapes and transcribe the sleazy details for “Hookerbook.” 

The only problem is, Ben the Bugger starts tapping the phones and calling over cops, and Moore soon discovers that Ben is part of the Knapp Commission, and Moore has essentially funded an illegal surveillance scheme. This is what The Making Of The Happy Hooker ultimately becomes concerned with, and in fact Xaveria sort of gets lost in the narrative, only appearing willy-nilly, and usually being duped iby Ben the Bugger. At one point he even puts a video camera behind her mirror, controlled by “laser,” so that he can videotape Xaveria as she’s having sex…and since he’s broadcasting on “the high band” of the UHF spectrum, it so happens that one day something slips and the real-life hardcore stuff s being broadcast on “a Puerto Rican station” in New York City, until the Feds hear about it and shut it down…but really they just ask Ben to stop, given that they all are aware of him. I suspect this material could be that “faction” stuff. 

The book does take on the tone of a crime thriller, with Xaveria even agreeing to work with the Knapp boys, using her girls to ensnare people they have their eyes on…like a group of Arabs. Oh, and there’s also a subplot about Ellen, a married British lady Moore likes who takes a job secretly at Xaveria’s so she can get enough money to leave her husband, and Ben the Bugger falls in love with her. The stuff with Ben also has an unintentionally humorous aspect to it, because at one point he zeroes in on a dirty cop named…Don Johnson. And humorously, “Don Johnson” comes off exactly like Sonny Crockett in Miami Vice, just a too-cool cop, but unlike Crockett he’s essentially corrupt. So I guess he’s more like Sonny’s alter ego, Sonny Burnett. 

We do get a recreation of the scene that opened The Happy Hooker: Xaveria and her posh girls thrown in jail with a bunch of street-hardened black hookers. It’s even more outrageous here, with the lead black hooker taking a “small, phallus-shaped gravity knife” from out of her inner recesses and threatening to cut up Xaveria. Also, we learn that Xavera did not like the title “The Happy Hooker,” arguing correctly that she was not a “hooker,” but a “madam.” She wanted the book to be titled “The Happy Madam,” but Moore – who suddenly claims he was the proponent of titling it The Happy Hooker late in the book, despite his earlier statement that he wanted to call it “Hookerbook” – prevails, and soon enough they have a bestselling monster on their hands. 

Moore basically makes The Making Of The Happy Hooker a behind the scenes meets “where are they now?” affair, telling us of the fallout of the book – Xaveria on the witness stand, due to serving the Knapp commission, Ben the Bugger fleeing to England and fighting against extradition, and Moore moving on to his next book. He says nothing of Xaveria’s many other books, no doubt because he wasn’t involved with them (and also none of them were published by Signet). Moore also doesn’t tell us much about his own life, other than mentioning his various books and research for them. He casually informs us he’s unhappily married – and this only after we’ve had a few conjugal visits with Xaviera – but the wife isn’t even named. 

At 184 small, dense pages, The Making Of The Happy Hooker moves at a fairly fast clip, but be advised that the title is a bit misleading. The actual writing of Xaveria Hollander’s book is sort of the framework that Robin Moore uses to tell a tale that is more concerned with wiretapping, bugging, and other illegal surveilling techniques. It also has a topical relevance, as the wiretapping entrapment scheme with the New York-based Knapp Commission and Xaviera seems quite similar to whatever is going on with Puff Daddy today.