Code Name: Gypsy Virgin

Code Name: Gypsy Virgin, by Max Nortic

No month stated, 1971  Midwood Books

A big thanks to Johny Malone, who recently left a comment on my review of Black Swan #2: The Cong Kiss, and suggested I read the source novel for that series, Code Name: Gypsy Virgin. His suggestion hit me at just the right time, and now I’ve read the book and by god I’m here to tell you about it! 

As I mentioned in my review of The Cong Kiss, author “J.J. Montague” of the Black Swan series was clearly the same person as the “Mac Nortic” who wrote Code Name: Gypsy Virgin (and whose real name, as Johny so helpfully informed us, was James Keenan, of whom I can find nothing). This is because the plot of Code Name: Gypsy Virgin is the same as the plot of the first Black Swan novel, The Chinese Kiss: a hotstuff nympho secret agent takes a crash-course in lesbianism so she can take down a hotstuff nympho Commie secret agent who has “an obsession with cunnilingus.” 

I read The Cong Kiss nearly ten years ago, so memories of it are dim. Per my review I found it overly literary and stilted, and also per my review I’d given up reading Code Name: Gypsy Virgin not long before I read that Black Swan novel; I’d read it recently enough that I was able to detect the same writing styles, characters, and plots between the two books. I’m not sure why I stopped reading Gypsy Virgin at the time, because reading it all these years later I thought it was pretty great – perhaps proving once again that the more pulp you read, the more your brain rots. Well, brain rot is very popular now, as anyone who has a kid will know, so I’m fine with that. 

I went into the details in my review of The Cong Kiss, but simply put, Nortic/Keenan published Code Name: Gypsy Virgin via Midwood Books in 1971, focused on hotstuff brunette spy babe Erica Wilson, who had sex every Friday with a random pickup, exclusively focusing on well-hung guys, given her “obsession with big pricks;” even her apartment in Newport Beach was filled with phallic sculptures. 

Then in 1974 Keenan changed Erica Wilson’s name to Shauna Bishop, changed his by-line to “J.J. Montague,” and retitled Code Name: Gypsy Virgin as The Chinese Kiss, sellling it to Canyon Books and getting a series deal in the process. Yes, the exact same thing J.C. Conaway did when he switched publishers and turned Nookie into Jana Blake, and when Nelson DeMille switched publishers and turned Ryker into Keller. So, a pretty common practice in the wild and wooly world of ‘70s paperback publishing! 

So then, Erica Wilson in Gypsy Virgin is the same character as Shauna Bishop in the Black Swan series, just with a different name – her code name is different, too. Per the title of this Midwood publication, Erica’s codename is “Gypsy Virgin,” and Shauna’s codename is “Black Swan.” Regardless of her name, she is 24, a trained spy who has killed (but only in self-defense, we’re told), incredibly beautiful and built, the daughter of “a Polish janitor and a Swedish maid.” She is not patriotic and works only for the money, and has total control of her emotions – and, we’re informed, her, uh, womanly parts. 

She is also “obsessed with big pricks” and has littered her home on Newport Beach with phallic sculptures and paintings. She lives a quiet life of solitude, but every Friday she lets out her pent-up energy by spending the afternoon looking at her “vintage erotica books” and then going out at night to a bar to pick up a guy…and, somehow, she’s always able to get a guy with a huge dick. Perhaps she has X-ray vision which Nortic/Keenan has not informed us of. Her most recent lay was over ten inches long(!), and we’re informed Erica implored him to take her in the rear, so she could be “hurt.” Good grief! 

We know about these backdoor shenanigans because the agency Erica works, ICS, has bugged her home, something Erica is well aware of; Nortic deftly injects a ‘70s paranoia into the yarn, as Erica figures that everything she does and says is being watched by someone, and she’s always right. Code Name: Gypsy Virgin opens with our heroine being stymied out of her usual Friday tussle, much to her mounting chagrin, suddenly summoned by her agency for a top secret assignment – flown off to Baltimore where she will spend the next several days locked up in a room and learning to become sexually attracted to other women(!). 

Nortic displays a gift for dark humor with the sardonic Erica knowing she is being subjected to head-fuckery, being monitored in her private room and laden with aphrodisiacs in her food as she watches lectures on lesbianism on closed-circuit TV, complete with female models acting out lessons in cunnilingus. And plus there’s that stacked blonde beauty Shirley who brings Erica her food and looks at her with those limpid blue eyes...Erica knows she’s being brainwashed into going lez, and she also eventually knows there’s nothing she can do to stop it from happening. 

The reason behind all this is Erica’s latest assignment: Nitro Five, another hotstuff secret agent, but one who works for the Chinese. She is, however, Caucasian (hence the title of the retitled Shauna Bishop story is a bit confusing), and while the woman’s background is known – roughly the same age as Erica, a hardship life that saw her essentially raised into becoming a merciless field agent who uses her beauty and body to ensnare victims for the Chinese government – we also learn she has never been photographed. 

Nortic opens up the tale with chapters from Nitro Five’s perspective; or, Loraine, which is the name she happens to be going by as she sets her sights on a scientist who specializes in ultrasonics. Posing as a socialite in DC, Nitro Five corners the professor at a lecture, coming on to him and taking him back to her place where an explicit sex scene ensues, but as with the Black Swan books, the author brings a literate touch even to the sleaze. We also learn that Nitro Five is deadly, as she takes out a man who inadvertently snaps her photo via some sort of mind control; an eerie scene that has the man waking up, after a short visit from Nitro Five, receiving a phone call from her, and then, his mind panicked, jumping out of a tenth-floor window. 

Like with a lot of these sleaze novels, Keenan/Nortic writes a worthy novel, to the point that the extensively-detailed sex scenes become a nuissance…something I rarely complain about. But as we know, sleaze writers were expected to deliver sleaze, and Nortic does throughout, with a focus on girl-on-girl. He varies it up with occasional scenes of straight sex, in particular with the ultrasonics professor, who is seduced by both Nitro Five and Gypsy Virgin, in sex scenes that are pretty similar, the good doctor under the effects of cantharides (aka Spanish Fly) and unable to orgasm, even after superhuman bouts of sex, all of which is detailed. Erica’s success at getting him off is pretty crazy, involving her fondness for those backdoor shenanigans. 

The author works in a grim Cold War storyline that concerns Gypsy Virgin being assigned to find out how Nitro Five assassinates from afar and to also try to get her to defect; meanwhile, Nitro Five’s assignment is to lure an ultrasonics scientist into defecting to China, seducing both him and his virginal teenaged daughter in the process. These characters all engage in sex either together or in groups, the longest sequence featuring both female agents making use of the professor’s daughter in an all-girl three-way that would press a lot of readers’ buttons, given that the girl is underaged. 

But then there is a strange focus on adolescent girls, par for the course in the grimy world of ‘70s sleaze paperbacks, I guess. Nitro Five is obsessed with adolescent Chinese girls and there is a lot of stuff about the excitement of deflowering the professor’s virgin daughter. Even Erica, who we’ll recall just got into the sapphic scenario courtesy agency programming, finds her heart pounding in excitement at the thought of sharing the girl with Nitro Five. 

What’s crazy is that, as proven with The Cong Kiss, the author is quite capable, delivering a narrative style that is more refined than scuzzy. He has a definite knack for dialog and for characterization, and the sex scenes are more erotic than repugnant, as is too often the case in a lot of these dirty books. I find it interesting that he did not write mainstream trash under his own name, but we do know from this Pulpetti post by my man Juri that Keenan was quite prolific as “Max Nortic.” 

I don’t have a copy of The Chinese Kiss, but it would be interesting to read it, for the ending certainly had to be changed. Code Name: Gypsy Virgin has a mega-downer ending that to be honest isn’t very surprising, as novel maintains a mean-tempered vibe throughout. 

SPOILERS: Well basically, Nitro Five’s grim backstory has it that she was taken in as a child and abused thoroughly by her trainers in Peking as they molded her into a remorseless killer, and this same fate awaits the professor’s daughter and Erica/Gypsy Virgin; Nitro Five has traded the two of them as well as the Professor in exchange for her own freedom (as an extra dig of the knife, we learn that Erica’s agency was in on the exchange from the start), and the novel ends with the villainess going off to her Happily Ever After while our heroine (and a teenaged girl) are shipped off to be raped, abused, and trained into becoming remorseless spies by the Chinese. End spoilers! 

So then, clearly this was changed when Erica Wilson became Shauna Bishop, and I’d be curious to know how it was changed. Not much pickup was provided in the second Black Swan, The Cong Kiss, which as we’ll recall was a flashback story to Shauna/Erica’s first mission, four years ago, so I guess I’ll just have to wonder unless I get really stupid some day and pay the exorbitant prices for a copy of The Chinese Kiss, which isn’t very likely. 

Anyway, a big thanks to Johny Malone for suggesting I read this, and also to Tiziano Agnelli, who recently left a comment on my review of The Cong Kiss to confirm that JJ Montague/Max Nortic was in reality a writer named James Keenan!