Frederick Pohl’s A Plague of Pythons

Frederick Pohl’s science fiction novel A Plague of Pythons was serialised in Galaxy Magazine in 1962.

The writing career of Frederick Pohl (1919-2013) spanned, incredibly, no less than 75 years during which time he won just about every science fiction award going. And, interestingly, he was for quite a few years the editor of Galaxy Magazine.

The story begins with a man named Chandler on trial for rape. He should be able to look forward confidently to an acquittal. He was after all possessed at the time. Dozens of people in his small town have been acquitted of crimes such as murder, rape and arson on the grounds of possession. Chandler knows he was possessed and he knows that nobody has any control over his actions in those circumstances. The law recognises this.

The problem is that the crime took place in a pharmaceutical plant, and everyone knows that demons avoid such places. So he looks certain to be convicted and shot, until events take a strange turn.

Chandler lives in a very near future world in which possession is all too common. It began very suddenly, almost overnight. Since then civilisation has been brought to its knees by an extraordinary epidemic of demonic possession. The world has reverted to a state of near-barbarism. Orgies of murder and destruction are commonplace. Terror stalks the world.

Chandler, having escaped being shot, discovers a strange little community known as the Orphalese. They believe they have found two defences against possession - pain and the writings of Kahlil Gibran (whose works were quite a thing in the U.S. at that time among those with a taste for esoteric spirituality). Maybe there is hope after all.

Chandler later finds himself possessed again and ends up in Hawaii. He hasn’t gone there of his own free will. He was driven to go. For an important project. But for whom?

The possessions are real, but it’s not demons doing the possessing. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that actual demons are not involved is debatable. Either way there seems to be no effective defence. Most people have given up even trying to resist.

Chandler slowly puts the pieces of the puzzle together and figures out what is going on. He just can’t see that he can do anything about it. And he has no idea how it is all likely to end.

There’s also Rosalie and she’s a disturbing factor. He’s not quite sure where Rosalie stands, or where he stands with her. Her loyalties are at best uncertain. Perhaps he should not trust her at all. Perhaps he will have to trust her. Having nothing to do with her is not an option.

There are no actual demons but there are things worse than demons. I don’t want to reveal what those things are because that is something that is revealed gradually and I have no desire to reveal spoilers.

This is a science fiction novel rather than a fantasy or horror novel, although there are worse horrors in this book than in most out-and-out horror novels.

The novel taps into one of the major obsessions of the period (the early 60s) but again I’m reluctant to be any more specific than that, other than to say that it taps into that obsession in a fascinating way and with a few original touches.

Pohl certainly knows how to create an atmosphere of paranoia and despair. Time and again Chandler thinks he’s found a reason to hope only to have that hope brutally snatched away from him.

And I do love the ending.

A Plague of Pythons is highly recommended.

This one is paired with The Bees of Death by Robert Moore Williams in an Armchair Fiction double-header paperback. In this case you get two very good very interesting novels so this paperback is a very worthwhile purchase.

Gardner Francis Fox's Silverfinger

Gardner Francis Fox (1911-1986) was a prolific author of pulp fiction in numerous genres as well as a hugely prolific writer of comics.

Silverfinger, published in 1973, was the third of his Cherry Delight sexy crime thrillers written under the pseudonym Glen Chase. These novels were sometimes marketed as the Sexecutioner series and they have some vague affinity with the Mafia thrillers that were popular at the time.

Cherise Dellissio, better known as Cherry Delight, is an ace agent for the top-secret agency N.Y.M.P.H.O. (New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organisation). She’s part of the elite Femme Fatale squad, highly trained in both combat and bedroom skills (both of which are equally useful in her line of work).

The Mafia is trying to take over the Italian shipping empire of the della Fanzio family. There are three della Fanzios, two brothers and a sister. Their father built the business and he was a hard man but his three children are not so tough. They’re frightened and they’re inclined to cave in to all the Mafia demands. Cherry has been sent to Calabria to put some backbone into the della Fanzios and to foil the Mafia’s plans.

Her first task is the keep the della Fanzios alive.

She also needs to infiltrate the Mafia operation, and specifically to get close to the local Mafia kingpin, a man known as Silverfinger. His mane of silver hair earned him his nickname but he likes it and he drives a silver-plated Mercedes-Benz 300 SL.

Somewhat to her surprise Cherry also finds herself dealing with devil-worshippers. In this part of Italy the old pagan beliefs and superstitions have survived and gradually morphed into Satanism. Cherry has to attend a Black Mass and while she’s horrified she’s also rather excited the sight of so many naked bodies. Sex is something that is never far from Cherry’s mind.

There’s plenty of action and plenty of sleaze, Cherry has some narrow escapes, she has an epic cat-fight with Silverfinger’s now discarded mistress, there’s a very high body count. It has to be said that Cherry does most of the killing, quite a bit of it with her bare hands.

Cherry is a ruthless and efficient agent although there are times when perhaps she should concentrate more on the job in hand and less on satisfying her sexual urges. She’s a feisty likeable heroine.

Fox’s prose style is pure pulp but with plenty of energy.

The plot is pretty straightforward. It’s mostly an excuse for the action scenes (which are very good) and the sex scenes (which are quite explicit). But that’s the sort of book this is. It’s a violent sleazy sexy action thriller and it’s not trying to be the least bit literary or the least bit subtle. There’s no message and the characterisations are basic. We don’t get any profound insights into Cherry’s personality or motivations. We know that she’s tough and resourceful and dedicated and she likes to get laid as often as possible. We really don’t need to know any more about her than that.

If this is your thing then Silverfinger delivers the goods. I enjoyed it. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Gardner Francis Fox’s books including the first two Cherry Delight thrillers (the excellent The Italian Connection and Tong in Cheek), several of his Lady from L.U.S.T. sexy spy thrillers (Lay Me Odds, To Russia With Lust and Lust, Be a Lady Tonight) and one of the Coxeman sleazy spy thrillers, The Best Laid Plans. And I’ve reviewed his superb sword and sorcery/occult thriller The Druid Stone which shows what he could do when he tried to be a bit more ambitious. He’s always entertaining.

Scott C.S. Stone's The Dragon’s Eye

The Dragon’s Eye is a 1969 spy thriller by Scott C.S. Stone published by Fawcett in their Gold Medal series. I’m afraid I know nothing about the author other than that he had certainly spent time in the Far East.

This is an amateur spy tale. Michael Hawkins is a reporter covering the war in Vietnam. When his best friend, a fellow war correspondent, is killed in the fighting Hawkins decides he has had enough. He’s getting out of Asia and he’s going home. He gets as far as Hawaii and falls in love with the place. He’s going to settle down and write a book. And maybe get his chaotic love life in some sort of order.

Then an old buddy, Leslie Trent, shows up. Trent is now a spook. The mysterious intelligence agency for which he works wants Hawkins to do a job for them. Hawkins is informed that he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.

An English journalist, Malcolm Leigh, has become rather a big wheel in the Red Chinese hierarchy. He’s an intelligence analyst but he’s highly placed politically. Now he’s considering defecting to the West. And he won’t negotiate with anyone but Michael Hawkins.

Leigh’s defection is not going to be a simple matter. The Chinese don’t know that he plans to defect but they do know that something is up, and they know that Leslie Trent and Michael Hawkins are involved. Hawkins’ cover is blown right from the start. And the Chinese do not entirely trust Malcolm Leigh and they never have.

A further complication is that Leigh wants to bring his Chinese girlfriend Choy-Lin with him to the West. Getting two people out will be more difficult than just getting one out.

And then Trent’s contacts start getting killed. What’s worse is the strong probability that at leas one of them talked before being killed. The Chinese intelligence services do not know the exact plan that Trent and Hawkins have in mind but they’re now in a position to make some shrewd guesses.

Most of the book is taken up by an extended chase through South-East Asia. Trent, Hawkins, Leigh and Choy-Lin are never more than a short step ahead of their pursuers. It’s also the middle of the monsoon season. And everything that could go wrong seems to go wrong.

There’s a fair amount of action and suspense.

The plot is really a fairly standard defector plot. It’s handled with some skill and there is one extra complication (which I can’t reveal for fear of spoilers) that adds a slight touch of originality.

Hawkins is a typical amateur spy. He doesn’t want to be killed and he doesn’t want to kill anybody. He just wants to go back to Honolulu and resume work on his book. He’s moderately brave and moderately resourceful. He’s not cut out to be a spy but he does his best. He’s likeable enough. He’s just a regular guy.

There’s no one particular villain who stands out. The bad guys are rather anonymous which is probably a lot more realistic.

Malcolm Leigh is the most interesting character because he has complex and contradictory motivations.

The author offers us some background on the workings of the Chinese intelligence services although whether any of this stuff is accurate is a question I can’t answer.

The Dragon’s Eye makes good use of exotic settings and captures the severely paranoid flavour of the Cold War, and the paranoid treacherous world of espionage, pretty well.

The Dragon’s Eye is a solid pulp spy thriller. Recommended.

The House of Invisible Bondage

Between 1912 and 1934 American authors J. U. Giesy (1877-1947) and Junius B. Smith (1883-1945) wrote a whole series of novels, short stories and novellas featuring the exploits of occult detective Semi Dual. These were serialised in various pulp magazines. The House of Invisible Bondage was serialised in Argosy in 1926.

Semi Dual is a physician but he is also a student of various forms of esoteric knowledge including astrology. He has some limited telepathic abilities. He is a rich man who lives in luxurious and tasteful seclusion in a penthouse above the 20th floor of an apartment house. He has a passionate devotion to the righting of wrongs and a keen interest in crime-solving. He does not operate directly as a private detective but he has persuaded two trusted associates, Glace and Bryce, to set up a private detective agency. When a case interests Semi Dual he allows Glace and Bryce to do the legwork and the routine investigation while he directs things from the background, making use not just of his knowledge of esoteric lore but also his keen understanding of human psychology.

Semi Dual knows that Marya Harding is about to ask for his help. He has no way of knowing this, but he knows it nonetheless. Sure enough a few hours later she shows up seeking help. The help is actually for her friend Moira. Moira’s fiancé Imer Lamb has just been arrested for launching a murderous attack on his valet. It makes no sense. Imer is a healthy, outgoing thoroughly cheerful and good-natured young man. He has no serious vices. His valet is devoted to him and relations between master and servant have always been easy-going and cordial.

Nonetheless Imer is now behind bars. And it’s worse than that. The police surgeon has decided that he is an incurable homicidal maniac. Imer Lamb is likely to spend the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum. In the short term his brother has managed to get him admitted to a private psychiatric clinic.

Semi Dual agrees that this is extremely curious and once he has cast the young man’s horoscope he perceives that the case is much more complex and much more devious. He does not yet know what is behind it all but he does know that Imer Lamb is not a murderous madman.

There are family dramas involved, a has-been Hollywood starlet comes into the picture, there are questions of inheritance, there are various financial entanglements of a dubious nature and there is also the screaming woman at the clinic. On top of this there is another inexplicable outburst of violence, not on the part of Imer Lamb but involving someone closely connected to him.

Semi Dual is a patient man. He may not know the identity of the guilty party but he is weaving a web and that guilty party will inevitably become entangled in it. Semi Dual’s patience is matched by his confidence.

It’s a solid enough plot. The paranormal and occult elements are important and add some spice and flavour but they don’t overwhelm the story. Good old-fashioned detective skills are still required. And the story doesn’t rely on supernatural evil - this is a tale of very human evils such as greed and jealousy.

Semi Dual makes a fascinating hero. In his speech and behaviour he comes across like some kind of medieval wizard. He seems out of place in the world of the 1920s but in fact he is also a man of science and reason.

Bryce is a fun character - a hardboiled ex-cop who is nonetheless a true believer in Semi Dual’s mysterious powers. Moira is a likeable heroine who is determined to stand by the man she loves. There are several villains but they’re not necessarily motivated by pure evil. In this story it’s human weakness that drives people to act badly.

It’s all very entertaining and if (like me) you love occult detective stories you should be well satisfied. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed The Complete Cabalistic Cases of Semi Dual, volume 1, which contains the first three Semi Dual novellas. Most of the Semi Dual stories have now been reprinted in paperback by Steeger Books in their Argosy Library series.

Peter Rabe’s The Box

Peter Rabe’s The Box is a 1962 hardboiled crime novel with a tropical setting and maybe a dash of noir.

Peter Rabe (1921-1990) was an American pulp crime writer who deserves to be better remembered.

The Box begins with a man in a box. It’s a packing crate to be precise. His name is Quinn. He’s a lawyer and a racketeer. The box is a punishment. The idea is you put a guy in a packing crate in New York. The crate is put on a freighter. The guy has plenty of food and water but he’s in the box in complete darkness lying in his own filth. After going right around the world the crate arrives back in New York. By that time the guy has learnt his lesson and he’ll be a good boy in future.

Quinn only gets as far as a small city in North Africa, a city named Okar. Someone has noticed that the box doesn’t smell so good so it gets opened. And there’s Quinn. Alive, but not very happy.

Quinn recovers but he has two problems. He has no papers, and he has no money.

Okar is run by Remal. Remal is the mayor and controls every other public office. This is his town. He has some nice rackets going, small-time smuggling mostly but profitable. He doesn’t want anyone around who might make waves. He likes Quinn and he has no wish to do him any harm. He just wants him to leave.

Leaving would be sensible but Quinn is stubborn, and then there’s Beatrice. She’s Remal’s woman but there’s a definite attraction between Quinn and Beatrice. If Quinn stays he’ll need to earn a living and the only way he knows how to make a living is dishonestly. That means muscling in on Remal’s rackets. That could cause problems, and it does.

While there’s a good plot here the main focus is on Quinn’s psychology. When he got out of the box he found he’d lost his touch. His edge. All the habits that had made him such a smoother operator. He wants to get those things back, so he can go back to being the man he was. But there’s a niggling doubt. Maybe the man he was wasn’t so great. Maybe he’d been in a box his whole life, a box of his own making. Maybe he needs to get out of that box.

It’s important to note that Quinn has choices. Unlike most noir protagonists he is not trapped. What he has to do is to decide which choices to make.

There are no clear-cut heroes and villains. Quinn is a gangster but he’s not such a bad guy and he prefers to avoid violence. Remal is equally amoral but he’s a likeable rogue. Even the Sicilian gangsters who get involved at one stage are quite pleasant. Sure, they have to have guys rubbed out sometimes but it’s nothing personal, it’s just business. Whitfield, the shipping clerk who plays a key role in Okar and in the story, just wants to avoid anything unpleasant. He just goes with the flow. He’s the kind of character who would have been played by Wilfred Hyde-White had this story been filmed in the 60s.

There’s a nice atmosphere of tropical sleaze. There’s the quiet desperation and moral corruption of expatriates gone to seed.

Every character in the novel is corrupt but not evil. They’ve made easy soft choices.

There’s not much action but there is a little and there’s some decent suspense at the end.

Is it noir fiction? Perhaps, if you define noir fiction broadly enough. I’d prefer to think of it as hardboiled crime. Either way it’s a very good entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this one with Rabe’s 1957 novel Journey Into Terror in a two-novel paperback edition.

I’ve also reviewed Peter Rabe’s excellent 1955 hardboiled thriller Stop This Man!

Robert Moore Williams' The Bees of Death

The Bees of Death by Robert Moore Williams is a 1949 pulp science fiction novel.

Robert Moore Williams (1907-77) was a prolific American writer, mostly of science fiction.

There are no bees in this novel. There is however plenty of fun strange stuff. It starts with an old cannonball, found where no cannonball could possibly be. But it turns out not to be a cannonball. It falls into the possession of Professor Featherstone.

Professor Featherstone is a phoney psychic, charlatan and con-man. Now he possesses something very important.

The story also begins with a nervous client seeking help from a private detective named Graham. Graham specialises in exposing fraudulent psychics and other tricksters. He and Featherstone have crossed swords before. The client is Mildred Whittaker, the daughter of a fabulously wealthy tycoon. She is very frightened. She brings with her a rabbit. A rabbit that will never hop again. There’s something very strange and disturbing about the rabbit, and about the circumstances under which Mildred found it.

Graham gets really interested in the case when he confronts Professor Featherstone. Featherstone is frightened. Featherstone does not frighten easily. If he’s afraid then it’s likely there is something to be afraid of.

The bees are something to be afraid of. They’re not bees. Whether or not they’re alive could be debated. They’re not invisible but they cannot be seen. No barrier can stop them. And they’re not friendly.

They’re called dreth. There is also the draal. The draal is both less scary and more scary.

Where these entities come from is a mystery. Whatever the answer to that question they must be stopped. A very unlikely alliance is formed to do just that but the odds seem unfavourable. It’s not easy to fight an enemy that you don’t understand.

It’s all very pulpy but there are some reasonably cool ideas here. There’s a sense of menace which is more effective since no-one knows the exact nature of the menace.

In their own ways Graham and Featherstone are both colourful characters. Featherstone is a rogue but perhaps a bit more than a conventional villain. Mildred Whittaker is a fine feisty heroine.

It’s a short novel and as with many pulp novels that proves to be an asset. There’s no time for extraneous subplots. The plot moves along briskly.

There’s some action and a fairly exciting climax with a fight against impossible odds.

There’s no attempt to make the science plausible but the book does deal with some genuine science fiction concepts.

There’s potential for silliness here but it’s kept under control pretty well. It’s just silly enough to be enjoyable, but also just serious enough to work as science fiction.

The Bees of Death is no masterpiece but it’s an intriguing moderately scary alien invasion tale that doesn’t make the mistake of trying to over-explain things. Recommended.

This one is paired with Frederick Pohl’s A Plague of Pythons in an Armchair Fiction double-header paperback.

Ogden Fox’s Hamburg After Dark

In the 60s McFadden books put out a whole series of non-fiction sex and sin exposés focusing on the raunchy night-life of various European cities. This was their After Dark series and it included Ogden Fox’s Hamburg After Dark, published in 1968.

Of course with such books there is no way of knowing how much was fiction and how much (if any) was fact. It is however quite true that Hamburg was rather notorious for its sleazy night-life in the 60s. So while there’s undoubtedly a fair amount of gossip and rumour (and completely made-up stuff or wishful thinking) there’s a possibility that quite a bit of it was true, or at least had a basis in fact.

The book purports to be written by an American, fluent in German, who lives in Hamburg and spends his free time sampling the erotic delights the city has to offer. The book is presented as a kind of guided tour of the city’s sexual night-life. What it has to say about Hamburg’s red light district is consistent with other accounts I’ve read so I’m inclined to give the publishers the benefit of the doubt and accept that the author has at least visited the city.

The author gives us some supposedly factual background on various aspects of Hamburg’s night-life interspersed with his reminiscences of his own sexual adventures there. One assumes that these personal reminiscences are largely or possibly entirely fictional. This was of course 1968, with the Sexual Revolution in full swing, and the book deals with a very large sophisticated European city rather than small-town America, so these reminiscences would have sounded quite plausible and there may even be some genuine adventures mixed in with the fantasies.

At this time there was a whole sleaze sub-genre of books masquerading as serious sociological/sexological non-fiction claiming to have been written by eminent psychiatrists. These books were in fact pure fiction churned out by various sleaze novelists. McFadden’s After Dark books would seem to be representative of a closely related sub-genre, with the difference that Hamburg After Dark presents itself as having been written by an amateur aficionado rather than a psychiatrist or sociologist.

Since the author’s sexual interests are confined to the female of the species (both prostitutes and non-prostitutes) he adds some stories told to him by others with differing sexual interests. These provide the material for the accounts of call-boy rings and bars catering to girls who like girls.

Firstly we’re introduced to the Widows’ Club. This is a bit like an internet hook-up site but done entirely with good old-fashioned analog telephones. Gentlemen and ladies who want a sex partner for the night can arrange a meet. If the man and the woman like the looks of each other they spend the night together. No questions are asked, no money changes hands. They never see each other again.

We’re taken to the red light district in the St Pauli district. To the Herbertstrasse, where the prostitutes display themselves in windows (as they apparently still do to this day). And to the Reeperbahn. In the dance cafes professional and amateur prostitutes contact prospective clients by means of telephones connecting the tables.

There’s also the street that within a single city block boasts no less than nineteen strip clubs.

We are also treated to accounts of the wild sex lives of the young women of Hamburg. Some of whom apparently indulge in kinks I had never heard of before (the girl with the kink that involves watching television is a new one on me).

The author finds out what a kinki session entails (it entails whips) and that such sessions are available for ladies as well as gentlemen. He also samples a few blue movies and watches one being filmed. And discovers that lonely ladies in Hamburg in need of male company (either in the bedroom or out of it) need only pick up a telephone to have their requirements fully satisfied.

While the various anecdotes thrown in by the author are doubtless pure fiction much of the essential background is probably fairly accurate. While there might be plenty of fiction mixed into this book it is a fascinating glimpse into the free-and-easy mindset of the heyday of the Sexual Revolution.

And it is definitely entertaining. Highly recommended for those seeking to explore the more intriguing corners of the world of 60s literary sleaze.