No Job For A Virgin!

No Job For A Virgin!, by Jock Killane

No month stated, 1968  Softcover Library

I picked up this obscure paperback original some years ago, and I believe I was under the impression it was a Lancer publication. But, having finally decided to read the thing, I saw that it was actually published by Softcover Library. “Wasn’t that a sleaze imprint?” I asked myself…and, sure enough, the first page opens with our narrator, hotstuff female hotel dective Red, engaging in fairly explicit sex with a guy. 

Yes, friends, this is another of those curious instances where an (apparently) male author writes a sleazy novel in the first-person narration of a female protagonist. No idea who “Jock Killane” was, but I’m guessing it wasn’t a lady. The protagonist of No Job For A Virgin! is a former cop turned hotel detective who manages to screw her way through a few men and women during the course of her investigation, which sees her uncovering a diamond ring that is operating out of her hotel. 

To be sure, like most vintage “sleaze” novels, No Job For A Virgin! is more so a hardboiled crime yarn, with less of a focus on the actual sleaze than you’d encounter in a later example of the genre, like for example Lorna’s Lust For Men. That said, when the sex happens, not much is left to the reader’s imagination, but this being 1968 the details still aren’t as explicit as they would be some years later in books like The Baroness and etc. 

Regardless, the sex scenes are for the most part intrusive to the plot, and seem to be there to meet a publisher requirement. Also, I obviously have nothing to go on other than my own guess, but my assumption is that Jock Killane was a serious boozer, and turned out No Job For A Virgin! during a two-day bender fueled by Jack Daniels and uppers, with the occasional snort of coke. Either that, or he just pieced together disparate subplots and storylines in order to meet a word count. Personally I like the first option better. 

I say this because No Job For A Virgin! is a crazy read for sure, akin to something Russell Smith might write, but not that crazy (no book is as crazy as a Russell Smith book). And I’m not putting forth the notion that Killane was Russell Smith; the narrative style is completely different. If anything Jock Killane writes more like it’s the 1950s and he’s publishing a novel through Gold Medal Books. There is a definite hardboiled tone to the book, and zero in the way of topical late ‘60s details, which further makes me suspect that No Job For A Virgin! was actually written earlier. And also, a pedantic note: the exclamation point in the title only appears on the cover and the spine, but not on the first page of the book itself. 

Another interesting note: No Job For A Virgin! is copyright Script Associates, the outfit that later brought us ‘70s men’s adventure paperback series like The Butcher and The Big Brain. It is for the most part a hardboiled crime novel, narrated by a tough dame who happens to be a hotel detective at the Seagull Inn, in an unspecified city. The bodies start building up, and it soon becomes clear that a diamond smuggling ring is working out of the hotel. And then later there’s a sort of white slavery angle as well. As I say, the author seems to have jammed together a bunch of unrelated plots to make a book. 

Well anyway, the book is a rocky read at best. As I’ve frequently mentioned, it’s narrated by a woman: Sally “Red” Barnes, a tough dame who was previously “on the force,” but quit when a fellow cop “tried to rape” her. Now Red works in the Seagull Inn as the day detective, but usually works nights as well, as the night detective, Charley, is off drinking somewhere. Humorously, there is zero detail on what Red looks like. Zero! We only learn through dialog that she is called “Red” due to the color of her hair. It’s a given that she’s attractive, as everyone – man and woman – wants to take her to bed. But Jock Killane does not exploit his protagonist in the least; indeed, one could read the novel and not even know Red was a female (especially when she starts having casual sex with other women). The book is narrated in the same terse, hard-assed tone as any other hardboiled novel narrated by an ass-kicking male detective…just like, it now occurs to me, the later Hatchett. 

But man, there is no self-exploitation from Red, as you’d expect from a male author turning in a sleazy novel from the point of view of a sexy female character, ie “My full, upthrusting breasts jutted forward proudly, demanding the attention of every male eye, my nipples sharp as diamonds,” and etc. (Note how I even subtly worked in an allusion to the jewel-smuggling plot, friends!!) If I’m not mistaken, Red only refers to her breasts like once in the book, and in passing. 

She does, however, talk up the guys; the novel opens with Red having sex with some guy in her hotel room: “His left hand plucked at my right nipple…I could feel the massiveness of him, pressing against my thigh.” Personally I’d take an opening like that over “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” any day. A fairly explicit sex scene ensues, though again nothing compared to what would pass in the mainstream fiction of just a few years later. And also eventually we’ll learn that this random guy Red is banging is really…her ex-husband, Hank, a lawyer who will prove useful to her in the first half of the novel, before summarily disappearing from the text when the author tires of the plot he’s been constructing for the past hundred pages. 

Red is called immediately post-orgasm to a room up on fourth, where a fight has broken out. Red runs up there to find a burly guy strangling a blonde woman, and the guy knocks Red’s purse – with its .25 automatic in it – out of Red’s hand, and then knocks her out. This will be the start of all of Red’s problems, as Detective Heller – the very same cop who once “tried to rape” Red, back when she was on the force – accuses her of stealing jewels that the burly guy claims he had in his room. 

There is a perhaps-intentional comedic tone to the novel, as soon more and more shootouts keep occuring at the Seagull Inn, happening in that very same room on the fourth floor, yet customers keep checking into the place. Jock Killane spends a goodly portion of the tale building up a crime-suspense angel in which Red, working with an accomplice on the newspaper, learns that a diamond smuggling ring has been operating in the city and is apparently using the Seagull Inn as its base of operations. 

Red gets in a few shootouts, but truth be told No Job For A Virgin! is not an action thriller by any means. And, for that matter, nor is it a jokey, takes-nothing-seriously type of novel, like I initally assumed it would be. You know, like one of those Man From O.R.G.Y. books or whatever. Again, the impression is very much that this is one of those vintage “sleaze” paperbacks that are really crime yarns with occasional detours into somewhat-explicit sex, ie Vice Row. 

But boy, the sex scenes sure are frequent. Red does her ex-husband, then later hooks up with Olga, the sexy traveling businesswoman who stays in the hotel room across from the one on fourth. Olga invites Red over for “dinner,” and the two are soon dining someplace else entirely, if you get my sleazy drift. Humorously, Red’s sapphic pursuits are treated almost casually by the author; initially Red is anxious about how Olga makes her feel, but after Olga starts giving her a nude massage our narrator is jumping right into it. Olga is the main female character to get exploited in the text: first she’s making drinks, “her large breasts juggling” with the act, which of course gives a completely different (and anatomically-impossible) mental image than what the author likely intended. Later we get the classic line, “Her big, milk-white breasts were firm and upthrust,” which is straight out of Harold Robbins. 

Jock Killane is only getting warmed up on the sex front. After Red and Olga’s lesbian fun, there’s yet another shootout in the hotel, in the same damn room on the fourth floor, and then we have a hilariously-unrelated subplot in which Red, on her day off, goes on a yacht cruise with a wealthy couple who also stay at the hotel…and soon enough she’s engaging the sexy wife in some lez action, after which she’s screwing the husband. 

As mentioned, Jock Killane struggles to meet his word count…and the book’s only 154 pages, by the way! But this whole middle sequence has nothing to do with anything, and even after Red has slept with the couple, another couple comes aboard the ship, and Red’s having sex with that wife, too! Then later she also does the husband, and again it’s the men who get most detail; Red uses her ex-husband Hank as her reference point for the male anatomy, so that we are often informed, “He was big, almost as big as Hank.” 

Killane does try to tie this part into the overall plot, as they all end up on an island, and Red suspects that the diamond smugglers might be using the island. But then it’s back to the Seagull Inn, where another firefight ensues – and Red gets raped. This guy is bigger than Hank, she tells us, and it hurts – or, as Red tersely informs the hotel doctor: “He tore up my guts,” spreading her legs to show the damage. “Doc” meanwhile tells Red to have a stiff drink and informs her she’ll be fine, but she’ll “walk bowlegged for a few days.” 

You win a no-prize if you guess that Red will have sex posthaste, regardless! This is courtesy Sid Bartlett (whose name of course made me think “Syd Barrett”), a businessman who is thrust upon the readers in the final stages of the narrative. He’s another traveling business person, and Red is surprised to see him at the Seagull Inn (business at the hotel doing fine, despite all the shootings and killings). Red informs us that things “have never worked out” between her and Sid…until now! 

Sid takes Red out, this just a few nights after her rape, and there follows the most egregious plot-filler yet in No Job For A Virgin!. They go to an amusement park, and there a barker is promising a live sex show, and Sid gets in an argument with the guy, calling him out for his lies, saying there’s no legal way actual sex acts could be performed, etc. The barker lets Sid and Red in for free, and there follows a several-page sequence in which Red details every moment of the live sex show, which does indeed feature actual sex (you win another no-prize if you guessed that, by the way), and it goes on and on, having nothing to do with anything. Then Red and Sid go back and have sex – and Sid’s “even bigger” than Hank, by the way – and folks this ultimately even includes some backdoor shenanigans: “Sid raised me onto my knees and gently spread the cheeks of my buttocks…and then wham!” 

The final quarter of No Job For A Virgin! seems to come from a completely different novel…same as the live sex show bit did, now that I think of it. But Red wakes to find herself nude and locked in a cabin room on a ship at sea, and soon she befriends kindly Chinese guy Wang, who seems to be part of a white slavery group that has apparently gotten Red in its clutches. This is all apropos of anything that has come before in the narrative, mind you. But this is the homestretch of the story; the captain – whose member is the biggest of all, by the way – keeps trying to rape Red, and Red keeps fighting him off, while slowly gaining the trust of Wang so that the two might escape together. 

On the very final pages Jock Killane ties all this stuff into the diamond smuggling plot that he spent the previous half of the book developing. In a way I was impressed by his ability to pull off such a brazen act of connect-the-narrative-dots. But it goes without saying that the finale is wholly unsatisfactory, as Killane throws the “big boss reveal” on us in a way that would even take Norvell Page aback. 

Curiously, Killane also goes for a downbeat ending for the novel, with Red telling the dead villains, “See you in hell” as she walks off. There’s no resolution to the storyline at the Seagull Inn…and in fact, Killane pulls a total trick on readers, as he has us suspecting that other characters Red works with are involved with the smuggling ring, but he doesn’t follow up on these plotlines. Of course, there was no reason to, once he had hit his word count. 

Overall, No Job For A Virgin! was a fast read, fun mainly due to its madcap vibe (Syd Barrett again), but I suspect the story behind the book was even more interesting. Oh, and the title has nothing to do with the book – it’s not something Red ever says, or any other character says. For that matter, the cover photo could’ve been pasted on any other paperback of the era – I mean, the cover model doesn’t even have red hair! She does have a red dress, though, so maybe that counts for something.