Succubus

Succubus, by Irving A. Greenfield

September, 1970  Dell Books

Leave it to Irving Greenfield to write a paperback original that comes off like a sleazy, X-rated, “in the tradition of” take on William Blatty’s The Exorcist, with the added bonus that Greenfield’s novel was published the year before Blatty’s novel! Now that’s an impressive feat. 

I picked this one up many years ago, along with a concurrent PBO Greenfield published with Dell, The Sexplorer, and it seems to me now that the two novels are connected in a way. Not in the repeating characters or situations – like with Greenfield’s later Making U-Hoo and Julius Caesar Is Alive And Well – but in how they are essentially sleaze paperbacks that were published by a mainstream outlet. 

Speaking of “in the tradition of,” one thing I’ve always meant to mention on here is that Harold Robbins was the only bestselling author who actually got more explicit than his “in the tradition of” imitators…save for Irving Greenfield. For make no mistake, Greenfield’s novels are incredibly raunchy, leaving no juicy stone unturned – and it seems now that the same raunchy material repeated throughout his oeuvre, like for example his focus on “dining at the Y,” something much dwelt upon here in Succubus, just as it was nearly two decades later in Depth Force. 

Seriously, while Succubus is marketed as “horror,” explicitly so in the 1979 Manor Books reprint (where Greenfield was strangely credited as “Campo Verde”), it is in reality a piece of steamy fiction, filled with characters having sex, thinking about sex, dreaming about sex, fantasizing about sex, or talking about sex. The “possession” stuff is just an add on, with the additional note that techinically it isn’t even a “succubus” that posseses the main character! 

No, it’s a priestess from ancient Sumeria, her spirit taking possession of a lovely young brunette named Rina, she of the “tantalizing upturned breasts.” The priestess, we’re told, has blonde hair, and presumably that’s supposed to be her on the photo cover. Rina is married to Thomas, a 30 year-old professor of Etruscan history in New York City. They have only been married for a short while, and Greenfield builds up some mystery over how and why they met. Eventually we’ll learn that Rina was guided to this meeting, but unfortunately the entire plot unravels if you think about it too much. 

Greenfield keeps the reader from thinking about the plot holes by focusing on sex for nearly the entire 205 pages. Mind you, this isn’t a complaint. No one writes an explicit sex scene like Irving Greenfield. I mean, this dude himself was a teacher. I’ve always imagined what one of his classes might have been like: “Professor Greenfield, should it be written as ‘come’ or as ‘cum’?” (That’s a joke I’ve been meaning to write on here for like 13 years!) 

Proving my point, Succubus opens with Thomas and Rina lounging in their home, Thomas dozing as he reads and Rina relaxing on the couch…and soon enough Thomas is thinking and dreaming about sex, as is Rina, and shortly after that they are going at it full-bore. Here Greenfield will quickly prove his fondness for cunnilingus, with lots of detail of Thomas working on Rina’s “lips” and whatnot. It’s pretty crazy and certainly has that hardcore ‘70s vibe in full effect…again, pretty impressive given that the novel was published just as the ‘70s were beginning. 

As if that weren’t enough, we have another long sex scene as Thomas sexually fantasizes about a woman walking ahead of him on the street as he makes his way to his school; this is the material that made me think of The Sexplorer, which I started to read back in 2010, back when I started the blog, but for some reason never finished. From there Thomas goes into his office…where later he is propositioned by a sexy young student (“We’ve been talking about sex so damn much that my crotch is already wet!”), who strips for him and then, after more of the Y-dining, the two go at it on Thomas’s desk. No juicy stone is left unturned. 

Meanwhile Rina “sees” all of this, and thus is certain Thomas has cheated on her. Greenfield pulls an interesting conceit here that Rina is possessed, but does not know it…even after mental conversations with the priestess who has possessed her, and who can take over Rina’s body at whim, Rina will come out of the mental conversations with no recollection of them. Greenfield, who also plays an interesting conceit in that he doesn’t concern himself with explaining any of it, provides a few genuinely creepy moments as Rina will go “into a room” in her mind and talk to this priestess, and see things via remote vision. 

But still, Succubus isn’t much of a horror rollercoaster. It’s more of a character study; Greenfield’s narrative style is somewhat different this time around, as he is very much concerned with probing the thoughts and feelings of his characters. Very much of the novel is stuck in the headspace of Thomas and Rina, going on about their feelings and how they react to each other – and, given the otherwise formal tone of Greenfield’s narrative style, this gives the book an almost stuffy feel. 

Rina, post that beginning-of-the-novel sex, has suddenly announced her desire to go see Thomas’s estranged uncle, William. Eventually Thomas agrees, and meanwhile Greenfield has fun with Rina being bitchy and catty to Thomas, as she “knows” he had sex with that girl in his office, and thus wants to be spiteful…even though Thomas does not know that Rina knows. And meanwhile Rina will frequently go into long, pages-filling dreams about ancient Sumeria, where we learn the horrific backstory of the priestess, who betrayed her people with a foreigner and who was then raped by a few hundred slaves until she died, her corpse fed to the ravens…oh, and meanwhile her soul was cursed! 

Greenfield does not do much to bring the priestess to life, so to speak. Her goal is simple: the retrieval of a “scroll” Thomas’s uncle, a globetrotting rake, has gotten hold of…a highly-valued scroll from Sumeria that no one can read. We are to understand that the ancient Sumerians have a cult, or something, that still operates in the present day, and they want this scroll back – it is the very thing the priestess betrayed her people with, centuries ago, and thus she has now possessed Rina’s body to acquire it. 

Here’s where the plot falls apart: why didn’t Rina just go after Uncle William? A handsome older man who is unmarried and who lives alone on a castle in Antigua, William would be prime for the plucking by a sexy brunette babe with tantalizing upturned breasts. I mean, wouldn’t we all be? One wonders why the priestess even bothered ensnaring Thomas, if her ultimate goal was William. But then who can understand the mind of an undead ancient Sumerian priestess? 

It’s very heavy on the psychological tip as Rina and Thomas go to Antigua, bickering and bantering all the way, and then William comes along and there’s more bickering and bantering, and Rina decides to screw him to get that scroll, which was her plan all along. Meanwhile Thomas is hoodwinked into screwing a phantom female of his mind, created by the priestess – who seems to have whatever power Greenfield needs her to have, for the convenience of the plot. 

Indeed, Greenfield has spent so much time focused on introspection and sex-fantasizing that he must rush through the conclusion. Basically William and Thomas realize Rina is possessed like in the final eight pages, and they get a voodoo priestess, and there’s chanting and whatnot…but while the main problem is resolved, Greenfield is stingy with the details. 

For example, William mentions a “cult” that has tried to take the scroll from him. Who are these people and what happens to them? In fact, the priestess tells Rina that the leader is the literal god Enki, so what are we to make of this? The old gods still walk the earth? We also are not given a satisfactory reason why Rina was even possessed, nor why the gods had Thomas and not his uncle in their sights…and Greenfield brushes this all aside, having all three characters not remember a single thing about Rina’s possession at the end of the book. 

So while it was a frustrating read as a horror paperback, it must be stated that Succubus was certainly a success as a piece of paperback sleaze; I could imagine a horny 14 year-old kid taking notes from this damn book in the pre-internet world. “Girls must really like it when you rub on something called a ‘clit!’ I’ve gotta remember that!”