Reading Roundup: Sin in the Suburbs More Fun Than Small Town Secrets

The cover for the 1962 paperback
 edition of John D. MacDonald’s
Soft Touch suggests it’s a novel about
 a vacation fling gone wrong. Regardless,
I wish the eBay seller I bought this
from had chosen a different spot for
their barcode.

As important as the setting can be to a story, I often encounter authors (and sometimes filmmakers) who treat it as inconsequential. This is especially true of books about the sexploits of the beautiful people, which usually do little more than mention the city where the characters reside/travel to (Los Angeles, New York, Paris) and a few chic locations (Rodeo Drive, Le Cirque, Maxim’s) before focusing on excessive cocaine use, backstabbing and fucking. Of course, there are other authors who go too far in the other direction and use up a lot of ink with florid descriptions of every vista observed, every street traveled, every room entered, every zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

But most authors get it just right, careful to evoke their story’s setting without writing about it to distraction. Not surprisingly, one of those authors is John D. MacDonald, whose 1958 thriller SOFT TOUCH provides a snapshot of suburban depravity, where bored couples fill their empty existences with liberal amounts of alcohol and casual flings. For Jerry, suburbia is a stifling prison, made unendurable by his wife Lorraine, described as “unhappy, shallow, lazy, short-tempered, cruel and amoral.” Lorraine spends most of her time partying with the neighbors, only coming home to sleep it off or pregame for the next night. Jerry wants to divorce her and hook up with Liz, the attractive secretary at E.J. Malton Construction Company where he works. Except, the construction company is owned by his father-in-law. If only he had the capital to start his own company, he could make a clean break and start over with Liz.

Enter his old war buddy, Vince Biskay, who now works as a pilot doing odd jobs for a South American dictator. Vince has come to Jerry with a scheme to intercept a suitcase filled with the dictator’s cash in Miami before it’s handed over to an arms dealer. Jerry is resistant at first but is ultimately swayed when assured he’ll be little more than a getaway driver.

Things don’t go as planned, and they get worse as Jerry’s increasing greed and paranoia clouds his thinking. The ever-reliable MacDonald ramps up the tension as Jerry tries to stay one step ahead of real and imagined threats, convinced he’s pulling it off despite his near-misses and total fuckups, which includes a fight with Lorraine that ends very badly and a tryst with one of the neighborhood’s bored, horny housewives who steps naked out of the bedroom at the worst possible moment.

Soft Touch is a lean, fast-paced thriller that proves once again that MacDonald was a master of the genre. I’ll also recommend the 1961 movie adaptation, Man-Trap. Though Ed Waters’ screenplay takes a lot of liberties with the book’s story, giving it a much happier ending, the movie is largely worth watching for Stella Stevens’ enjoyably nasty performance as Lorraine (re-named Nina in the movie for some reason).

The model’s expression on this 1975
paperback edition of The World They Wanted
is less “Come hither,” and more “What
 the hell do you want?”

Sticking with another tried-and-true author, I selected something from the Herbert Kastle bibliography, THE WORLD THEY WANTED, in which suburban malaise moves to center stage.

Though the cover of the Mayflower Books edition I have makes the novel appear to be about bed-hopping in the 1970s, the novel was originally published in 1962, when women weren’t expected to have ambitions beyond becoming a housewife, when $17K a year was a decent income, and when a three-bedroom split level could be purchased for $20,000. And $20 grand is what it costs to buy such a home in Birch Hills, a development that’s the brainchild of builder Matt Swain, who hopes there are New York City residents willing to make the move to a more bucolic setting.

Plenty are. Among the first to buy homes in Birch Hills are the Rands, who hope that their juvenile delinquent son George will start flying right once he’s moved away from the bad influences of the city. Joe Bialdi, who has been struggling with mental illness much of his adult life, thinks owning a home in Birch Hills will give him plenty of projects to occupy his troubled mind. Only the Lerners make the move to the ’burbs for typical reasons—more space for the kids—though Miriam Lerner wishes her husband Dave would consider some place closer to NYC, a place that is known to have a Jewish community. Dave, who wants only to assimilate into WASP circles, is drawn to Birch Hills precisely because it affords him an opportunity to deny his Jewish identity.

Of course, the move doesn’t mean their problems stay behind in the city. George Rand finds different ways to rebel, mainly by boning the Bialdis’ overweight daughter, Josie, who has decided the best way to attract boys’ attention is to put out (well, she’s not wrong). Meanwhile, his parents’ marriage begins to fall apart. Steve Rand becomes an alcoholic, and his wife Nancy reveals herself to be a judgmental, antisemitic bitch who hates sex. Is it any wonder that Steve cheats on her?

The move also threatens the Lerners’ marriage. Dave, a commercial artist, is experiencing a career slump and takes his frustrations out on his wife—violently at one point. Miriam, who’s seen how Matt Swain looks at her, contemplates having an affair. Joe Bialdi, on the other hand, seems to get what he wants out of the move, but mowing the lawn and chopping wood can’t keep his inner demons at bay when he discovers George is “taking advantage of” Josie.

It's tempting to label The World They Wanted as a soap opera and, well, it basically is, but it’s more John Updike than Grace Metalious. It has plenty of lurid parts, but they are written to make a point rather than titillate—and much less explicit than similar scenes in Kastle’s later books. Kastle certainly has the talent to pull off a more ambitious novel, and he almost does it with The World They Wanted. Unfortunately, it’s brought down with a wrap-around narrative concerning Matt Swain and his sales director Adeline Teel. I found myself way more invested in Matt’s business challenges than whether he’d finally come to his senses and marry Adeline (or whether “Addy” would finally come to hers and move on). Worse, Kastle gives the book a corny ending that’s so Hollywood romance you can practically hear the swelling orchestra as you read the final paragraphs.

Avon at least got its cover right for its
1982 paperback edition of
Family Reunion.

Still, I’ll take an OK Herbert Kastle novel over a dud suspense novel, which is what I got when I picked up 1982’s FAMILY REUNION by Joyce Harrington, an author primarily known for writing short stories.

Ten years have passed since Jenny Holland left behind her mother and the small town she grew up in for New York City. Though she hasn’t once visited during her decade away, she has kept in touch with letters to her mentally unstable mother, who never replies, and her cousin Wendell, who writes frequently, never mind that Jenny rejected his wedding proposal before lighting out for NYC. (As for that whole cousins thing: Our cousinship was far enough removed to make this union not only feasible but appropriate.) Recently (roughly 1979 or ’80) Wendell has been writing to Jenny about a planned family reunion at River House, her late grandmother’s estate that has been vacant since her passing. Jenny, who has some unanswered questions about her late father as well as hoping to make amends with her mother, decides the reunion is as good a time to visit as any, and books a flight.

Returning to her hometown raises more questions than answers. An antique straight razor appears and disappears in different places in River House. The door to the house’s cupola has rusted hinges but a shiny new padlock that is sometimes locked, sometimes not. Jenny returns to her room to find her new clothes cut to ribbons. A heavy dresser in an upstairs children’s room is mysteriously overturned while all adults are on the ground floor. Jenny hears ghostly voices calling to her from across the nearby river. The face of an old hag appears in a kitchen window, disappearing just as suddenly. Are these events supernatural, or part of a sinister real-world plot? Also, what really happened to Jenny’s father?

These mysterious goings-on and past secrets might have yielded an intriguing Midwest gothic (assuming Jenny’s hometown is a fictional stand-in for Harrington’s hometown of Marietta, Ohio), if only Harrington hadn’t written the suspense out of her story at almost every turn. The characterization of Jenny, our narrator, is uneven to the point of being annoying. She is at once quirky and independent, passive and needy, depending on what the story needs her to be. There are a few passages that imply she’s possibly unwell, such as when, seemingly possessed, she contemplates slicing her wrist with that straight razor. One could argue that revelations later in the book would explain some of her behavior, such as her becoming more unsure of herself once in the presence of her family, but Harrington never quite makes that connection.

But Jenny isn’t the only problem character. There is Wendell’s sister Fearn (probably pronounced Fern, but that extraneous “a” had me wanting to pronounce it Fee-urn), who is mildly bitchy at best, a total cunt at worst, and she’s usually at her worst. When she’s not berating Jenny like a high school bully she’s yelling at her children whenever they move, being downright abusive to her daughter Millie. However, there are moments when she’s suddenly nice to Jenny, which immediately struck me as suspicious. These moments come to nothing, though, and Fearn resumes being her usual unpleasant self. Another thought was Fearn was being set up as cannon fodder and I eagerly awaited the moment she was killed by whatever/whoever is terrorizing this family reunion, or at the very least, that someone would beat the shit out of her. Instead, Fearn remains unharmed for the entire book, with no one, not even Jenny, bothering to call her out on her shitty attitude.

Most of the other characters in Jenny’s family are written as either judgmental biddies or close-minded yokels, suspicious of Jenny and her big city ways. The few exceptions are Aunt Tillie, a sharp-tongued retired schoolteacher, and another conveniently distant cousin, David, a hot, motorcycle riding hippie who lives in Tucson with his young son Malachi. David becomes Jenny’s closest ally and eventual love interest, Harrington having a thing about keeping romance within the family.

To Harrington’s credit, she does effectively capture the setting of River House and its nearby town, though her description of the unnamed town’s named neighborhood of Muley is cringeworthy: It wasn’t quite the town ghetto, but a few [B]lacks lived there. Oof! Too bad Harrington seemed more concerned with writing about Jenny’s hometown like a high school outcast with an axe to grind than crafting an entertaining gothic thriller. Had it been kept to 200 pages, Family Reunion could have been a tight tale of suspense. Instead, it’s a long-winded and tedious 304 pages, not really kicking into gear until its final 75. Like most family reunions, this one’s best avoided.

A Bizarre (and Kinda' Hot) Love Triangle

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As Difficult to Put Down as it is to Stomach

 Trigger Warning: This is plantation porn, so there’s a lot of stuff that’s going to offend a lot of people, though I’d be more concerned if you’re not offended at all.

I thought I was done with plantation porn,
until I learned the identity of “Ashley Carter.”

In the opening chapters of the 1976 “Lance Horner novel by Ashley Carter,” MASTER OF BLACKOAKS, set in the antebellum South, we meet Baxter Simon, a Mississippi slave breeder traveling with Gree, a 14-year-old slave boy whose tongue has been cut out as punishment for lying. Simon, searching for one of his escaped slaves, stops at the Blackoaks plantation in Alabama, where he suspects she might be hiding. The plantation owner, Ferrell Baynard, takes an immediate dislike to Simon and insists the escaped slave is not at Blackoaks, yet permits the slave breeder to look around. During Simon’s tour of the plantation, he sees the Baynards’ “pureblood Fulani” slave Blade hard at work castrating hogs and immediately makes an offer to buy him. Ferrell Baynard refuses to sell Blade but allows Simon to thoroughly inspect Blade (Simon worked Blade’s foreskin back and forth several times. Blade’s…rod stiffened, blood pulsing into it so it stood thick and rigid in the breeder’s fist.), arousing—and outing—Ferrell Baynard’s arrogant son-in-law Styles Kenric while doing so. Simon’s visit to Blackoaks concludes with the slave breeder finding his escaped slave, Vinnie, who was indeed hiding on the plantation. When she attempts to flee, Simon kills her and, to the horror of the Baynards (and reader), throws her corpse into the hog pen, her value reduced to nothing more than food for swine.

And we’re not even 60 pages in yet.

So, yeah, Master of Blackoaks is not for the delicate, full of cruel acts and vile language, with characters using the N-word so frequently and so casually you’d think you were on Twitter. Yet, as difficult as Master of Blackoaks is to stomach, it’s just as difficult to put down, delivering everything a reader would want from plantation porn. If you’re not that reader, you probably backed out during the first paragraph of this post. For the rest of you, let’s continue.

After Baxter Simon departs, Blackoaks is visited by a slave trader who is just as despicable, Eakins Shivers. Shivers arrives with a coffle that “looked diseased, half-starved, exhausted. The ankles of every man, woman, and child bled from the unrelenting bite of their shackles with every step they took.” Though the Baynards find his treatment of his property distasteful, Ferrell Baynard invites Shivers into his home, where the two men talk within the confines of Ferrell’s office. Shivers is allowed to camp on Blackoaks property for the night. The next morning, Shivers is gone, and with him, two of the Baynards’ slaves.

Ferrell admits to his mistress, house slave Jeanne D’Arc (often addressed as Jahndark), that the missing men were sold, but tells his family that the slaves ran away, mostly to hide the truth about the plantation’s shaky finances. His oldest son Ferrell-Junior deduces what happened, however, and he does not approve. His father insists he had to. “That’s what Baxter Simon said, Papa,” Ferrell-Junior replies. “He cut out a slave child’s tongue because he had to.”

Even before the sale of the slaves, Ferrell’s son-in-law Styles intuits Blackoaks has a cash flow problem. Ferrell’s side hustle of distilling his own blend of corn liquor is what keeps the plantation afloat now that the over-farmed land only yields low-grade cotton. Styles, who heard the high offers Baxter Simon was making on Blade, thinks Blackoaks should turn its attention to slave breeding, becoming more resentful each time his father-in-law rejects the idea.

Meanwhile, his wife Kathy is driven to tears by Styles’ physical neglect. We know why he won’t touch her, and I might’ve spared a little bit of sympathy for him if he was merely a closet case, especially when coming out is not an option, but Styles is a sadistic, social-climbing asshole, who only married Kathy for her family’s position in Southern society. When he forces himself to have sex with his wife, he can only get aroused by causing Kathy pain. Kathy’s mother, Miz Claire, is concerned by her daughter’s unhappiness, though she totally misjudges the situation, worrying that Styles is too sexually demanding. “The ugly, depraved things men demand of women. I thanked God when I became ill—yes I did!—when your father moved out of my bedroom,” Miz Claire tells a disheartened Kathy.

The arrival of Hunter “Hunt” Campbell, a young, attractive Yankee hired to live at Blackoaks and tutor 15-year-old Morgan Baynard, provides a distraction, as well as an outsider’s point of view. Hunt has little interest in living in Alabama, but it’s crucial he put as many miles as possible between himself and Massachusetts since his cousin found out Hunter had been fucking his wife. To the Baynards’ credit, even though they don’t understand their new employee from the North, they are fairly accepting of him—provided he understands his place. Namely, that he keeps his abolitionist views to himself. Hunt rebels against this requirement in small ways, though not always successfully. His attempt at ingratiating himself with the kitchen slaves is merely awkward, with Jeanne d’Arc politely but strongly encouraging Hunt to take his white ass out to dining room with the other white folk and leave the kitchen slaves be.

Hunt makes greater inroads when teaching Morgan. Morgan is, in today’s parlance, intellectually disabled and struggles with his lessons, but Morgan’s “body slave” Soapy (a.k.a. Sophocles) is a quick study. Ferrell is none too pleased, telling Hunter that he’s wasting his time and Ferrell’s money. “I won’t tolerate it. There is a law against teaching Negro slaves to read. The state legislature passed that law upon deliberation. In many ways it’s a good law,” Ferrell says.

Not wanting to be sent back to Boston, the Yankee tutor acquiesces. Soapy is distraught, as there was one book (never named) that he wanted to continue reading. Hunter tells him not to worry. “Maybe I could lose it, Soapy. Somewhere you can find it. Only, you’ve got to be careful. If anybody finds you got it, they might fire me—but it’ll be much worse for you.”

But Hunter Campbell isn’t exactly a hero. When his employer extends the offer of a bed wench (“I’ve never believed it was healthy for a man—young or old—to be too long denied a sexual outlet”), Hunt balks, knowing the woman offered him would be forced to do so. But when he retires to his room and finds a nervous 15-year-old(!) slave girl, Sefina, waiting for him, Hunt takes full advantage, his principles no match against his blue balls.

‘I Must Test You…for Viscosity’

The text on the back of the book teases an affair between Hunt and Kathy (“He found solace and torment with Kenric’s wife”), but beyond a make-out session in the final chapters of the book in which Kathy seriously considers an affair with the hunky Yankee, the pair never hook up. The teaser text on the back also suggests Styles Kenric’s homosexuality would be featured more prominently, but it’s not addressed again until the last few chapters, though it does so in a most spectacular fashion, when Kathy spies her husband through her dressing room door “inspecting” Blade’s teen-aged brother, Moab.

“Lawdy, Masta Styles, you keep whipping my snake like that, it gonna be mighty easy to get that juice you wants.”

Styles nodded. His fingers tightened and he slowly stroked the boy’s penis until Moab’s hips tightened and writhed in helpless reflex. “Do you like that, Moab?”

“Lawdy, masta…lawdy…”

The stroking motions increased in intensity and Styles gripped the pulsing penis tighter.

Trembling with horror and outrage at war inside her, Kathy saw that Styles was shaking visibly, like a young boy with his first lover.

She heard Styles mumble something unintelligible about “fluid.” His breathing quickened and he sank to his knees before Moab. Moab’s eyes widened in disbelief at the white man on his knees before him. Moab was almost deranged with overwhelming passion. He could only stand, legs apart, as Styles caught him about the hips and pressed his face against his thighs. Styles gasped, “Viscosity.”

“What masta?”

“Viscosity, Moab.” Styles mumbled fanatically, his face pressed into the boy’s crisp black pubic hairs. “I must test you…for viscosity…. Do you see, Moab? Oh my, God, Moab, do you see?”

“I see, masta,” Moab whispered helplessly as the white man crammed the dark and distended penis between his lips, nursing it furiously.”

So, yeah, that happens. When Kathy confronts him, Styles alternately tries to blame her for spying then gaslight her, apologizing that she’s so upset about what she thinks she saw. But Kathy isn’t having it: “Think I saw! I saw you on your knees, Styles—sucking—that Black boy’s—cock!”

Kathy lobs the expected epithets at her husband (“Homo! Homo! Homo!”) before adding: “Being a homosexual is not nearly as rotten as your lying—your pretense.”

But Styles is unmoved. Since divorce isn’t an option, the pair split in the only acceptable way: Styles moves into a separate bedroom, just like his father-in-law had so many years ago.

Road to Tragedy Paved with Boners, Bored Rednecks

Kathy’s oldest brother Ferrell-Junior has his own issues. FJ knows Lorna June Garrity is not of his class, hers being in the lower-middle, but her social standing has no bearing on her beauty. Lorna’s mother, Lucinda, bitter ever since her husband was cheated out his inheritance by his conniving cousin Leander (all these L names!), is determined to claim her place in Southern society and is not above whoring her daughter out to get what she wants. (Mr. Garrity just drinks.) Lucinda gives her daughter advice that should be familiar to fans of Bobbie Gentry (or Reba McEntire or Orville Peck): “You be nice to Mr. Baynard now, Lorna June. You want him to come back again, so you be nice to him.” 

British publisher Pan Books’ cover
for Master of Blackoaks emphasizes
the book’s cruelty over the sex.

Lorna June is indeed real nice to the Baynards’ hot oldest son, making sure FJ is good and hard when she starts negotiating a more prominent place in his life, and by extension high society. Ferrell-Junor ultimately reasons that “the exchange was totally fair—her beauty was worth far more than all the dull parties his mother and her friends would ever throw.” Also: the power of boners.

His post-nut bliss later turns to regret when he sees his odious “friend” Gil Talmadge at the local watering hole. The book makes clear that FJ doesn’t really like Gil but goes along with his antics—like having a mentally disabled slave girl masturbate for the guys’ amusement—just so he’s not shunned by the group. Gil tells FJ that Lorna June is the town lay. “Hell, if you didn’t screw her the first time out, you’re in a new minority, old pal,” Gil says. “Every white guy in Calvert County has had ole Lorna June Garrity—at least once.”

FJ later confronts Lorna June about the rumors. She confesses he’s not the first man she’s been with (“I might have made a couple mistakes, but that’s all they were—mistakes”), but she quickly silences Ferrell-Junior’s concerns, as well as get him to again promise to invite her to an upcoming party at Blackoaks, with a blowjob. Girl knows how to negotiate!

The day of the party arrives, but the Garritys don’t. FJ had pleaded with Kathy to invite her but learns later that Kathy “accidentally” lost the invitation, conveniently finding it the morning after the party. A guilty FJ rides to town to apologize to the Garritys. Though her mother is royally pissed about the snub, Lorna June is forgiving and suggests she and Ferrell-Junior go for a ride out into the country. FJ doesn’t understand why she still wants anything to do with him, but it seems Lorna June finds him as hot as he finds her. Like they have on all their previous buggy rides, the couple pulls off the road to bang. But, as we’ve seen time and time again, the road to tragedy is paved with boners and bored rednecks:

They were so engrossed in each other they did not hear the rustling in the underbrush. It was not until they reached a driving climax, almost struggling off the blanket in their frenzy, and Ferrell fell away from her exhausted, that he saw Gil Talmadge and the others standing just inside the small clearing.

“Get out of here,” Ferrell said to her. “Get in that buggy and get the hell out of here. Dress on the road. Anything. Get the hell out of here.”

Lorna June isn’t quick enough. FJ is beaten and tied to a wheel of his buggy, powerless as Lorna June is gang raped. In the aftermath, Lorna June marries homely bank clerk Luke Scroggins and FJ, who heretofore has shown zero interest in his mother’s Catholic faith, becomes a motherfuckin’ priest.

A Steady Stream of Depravity, Debauchery and Dicking

I thought my days of reading plantation porn were behind me. I had waded into the slaveploitation cesspool in the latter half of the aughts, first with Kyle Onstott’s Mandingo, then its early sequels, Drum and Master of Falconhurst. I was drawn to their lurid content, the books being in questionable taste only increasing my fascination. I was offended by the subject matter, sure, but then I should be. Slavery is offensive. I take greater issue Gone with the Wind, which is, to quote director and What Went Wrong co-host Chris Winterbauer, “Civil War fan fiction.” At least plantation porn doesn’t try to romanticize the antebellum South.

It was when I sampled some slaveploitation lit outside of the Falconhurst series that I began reconsidering my interest in the genre. Richard Tresillian’s The Bondmaster (“Harder than Mandingo! Louder than Drum!”) was OK, even if it’s basically a retelling of Mandingo, re-locating the story from the American South to sugar plantations in the Caribbean, but novel’s implication that slavery wasn’t that bad so long as the slaves knew their place (a.k.a. the DeSantis narrative) did not sit well with me. Worse was Dragonard, a book I learned about through The Colbert Report, of all places. By virtue of focusing his novel on its repugnant main character, who aspires to be a slave master, author Rupert Gilchrist downplays the plight of the slaves. I also got the distinct impression while reading it that Gilchrist relished every N-word he typed. When I came to the end of Dragonard, I came to the end of my exploration of planation porn.

But then I learned “Ashley Carter” was yet another one of Harry Whittington’s pseudonyms. Whittington had been signed to continue writing the Falconhurst series in the early 1970s after the death of Lance Horner, who’d been writing the series after originator Onstott’s 1966 death. This accounts why some “Ashley Carter” books from this period include the credit “A Lance Horner Novel,” though Master of Blackoaks has nothing to do with the Falconhurst series.

Anyway, I sought out Master of Blackoaks because of its author, not because of its genre, and I was not disappointed. Whittington again proves he was good at his job, giving readers what they wanted, no matter the genre. Still, this book’s not for everybody. If you do pick it up, maybe don’t break it out while waiting in line to see a performance at the Apollo (or anywhere in public, really).

Master of Blackoaks is still trash, and Whittington cranks it up to 11, making it the best kind of trash, the book delivering a steady stream of depravity, debauchery and dicking. Whittington adds some redeemable touches, however. He makes sure that the plight of the slaves is known, and that while some, such as Jeanne d’Arc, are able to achieve some modest privileges (one of the perks of banging her master), they will always be denied the ultimate privilege of freedom, as Jeanne d’Arc discovers near the end of the novel. The Baynards may be “good” slave owners (i.e., they prefer their field boss Bos not whip their property, thank you), but Whittington doesn’t let readers forget they’re still slave owners all the same. The Baynards’ slaves are thought of as part of the family—until money’s tight, and then they’re chattel that Ferrell Baynard has no compunction about selling to a heartless slave trader like Eakins Shivers.  

As the book goes along, Whittington focuses more on sex than servitude. In addition to detailing Hunt Campbell’s night with a teen slave girl (yeah, that’s all kinds of wrong), FJ’s romps with Lorna June and Styles blowing Moab, he devotes several chapters to the field boss’s sexually frustrated wife Florine finding satisfaction with a very eager Moab (he’s a slave, but he’s also a horny teenager). While these chapters increase the novel’s prurient content, they add little to the narrative and reduce Moab to little more than a walking hard-on long before Styles tests the viscosity of his load.

The novel’s story is told in an episodic fashion, making for a fractured narrative. It’s about Ferrell Baynard—no, wait, it’s about Hunt, the Yankee tutor. Nope, now it's about FJ and Lorna June. Hey, why don't we check back with Ferrell Baynard.... It’s not hard to follow, though, just a bitch to synopsize. More frustrating, Master of Blackoaks doesn’t have a fully satisfying ending, leaving several storylines up in the air, with an implied “to be continued,” likely because Whittington knew they would be. There are three additional books in the Blackoaks series. I own two of them, meaning my plantation porn reviews are…

To be continued…

The fourth book in the Blackoaks series, A Farewell to Blackoaks,
was published in 1984 and is difficult to find today. The few
I found online had price tags of $70+, so, no, I won’t be reading it. 

Artfully Blending Gothic Seriousness with Camp Silliness

I probably would’ve never picked up a Graham Masterton novel if I hadn’t read Grady Hendrix’s fantastic Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction. I was aware of Masterton’s best-known title, 1975’s The Manitou, but only because I’d seen its cheesy/awesome 1978 movie adaptation. Even then, though I knew it was based on a book, I couldn’t have told you who wrote it.

Paperbacks from Hell covers The Manitou, of course, and several other Masterton novels get name checked as well. However, the Masterton novel Hendrix chose to highlight was 1988’s cannibal cult novel Feast (published as Ritual in the U.K.). “Wherever you think this book won’t go,” Hendrix writes, “Masterton not only goes there, he reports back in lunacy-inducing detail.” I was sold, and immediately sought out the novel, thrilled I could find the Pinnacle paperback with the die-cut cover.

Die-cut covers excite me.

Though I didn’t find Feast to be as over-the-top as Hendrix did, it’s a fun ride. It’s the literary equivalent to watching a B-grade horror movie from the same era (kind of a Phantasm vibe, but with cannibals), with Masterton keeping me guessing where the book was going and usually surprising me when he got there. Sure, it’s kind of silly in places, but Masterton’s writing ability makes the book such a fun read you don’t care.

Masterton’s 1985 novel PICTURE OF EVIL (a.k.a. Family Portrait) has a more serious tone than the pulpy Feast, yet it maintains an undercurrent of camp that becomes more overt as the story progresses. The campiness is perhaps fitting given it’s a riff on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, even going so far as to make a pun of that book’s title.

Vincent Pearson, a well-to-do New York art dealer, is the owner of the titular picture of evil, a portrait of 12 people—all hideous—painted by Walter Waldegrave, a mediocre talent at best, who was reputed to have an interest in the occult. Not only is the painting unpleasant to look at, the painting smells as well: A thick sweetish smell, like chicken skin that has decayed and gone green, only more pervasive, more cloying.

Vincent has no intention of selling the painting, telling his young executive curator Edward that it’s part of the Pearson private collection, explaining the painting was his grandfather’s. “He used to say it was like a family charm—that as long as we kept it, it would keep us safe.”

But on the same December day Vincent leaves the gallery early, a mysterious woman— well dressed, beautiful, very pale—visits the gallery. She introduces herself as Sybil Vane (the Dorian Gray references aren’t always subtle), and she’s interested in a specific painting, and it’s the one Edward can’t sell her, the Waldegrave. She doesn’t take no for an answer, but Edward, though entranced by the woman’s beauty, stands his ground, shaky though it is. Sybil Vane promises to return the next day to speak with Vincent.

Meanwhile, the gum-chewing sheriff of Litchtfield County, Conn., Jack Smith, whose job usually consists of keeping an eye on properties owned by wealthy New Yorkers, suddenly has a killer on his hands, and a very nasty one at that. The corpse of a young man has been fished out of a Connecticut reservoir, with all the skin peeled from his body. The coroner tells Jack that the skin was removed with surgical precision, mostly likely while the victim was still alive. “Otherwise, what on earth would have been the point of doing it! This is torture, in my view,” says the coroner, one of many characters whose dialog will have readers wondering if the Connecticut in Picture of Evil is a little talked about region of Great Britain.

The woman seeking the Waldegrave painting and the skinned corpse are not unrelated. “Sybil Vane” is really Cordelia Gray, who, after several decades of exile in Europe, has returned with the rest of her family to the United States to reclaim the Waldegrave painting, and with it, return fully to the life they had when the painting—a family portrait—was first completed in the late 1800s.

The Grays are undead, but they are not vampires. It’s more like they’re immortal but not ageless and are prone to decay without Waldegrave painting in their possession. To keep up their appearances the Grays must steal a new skin suit, usually taken from whatever unfortunate hitchhiker Cordelia’s brother Maurice can entice into his old Cadillac Fleetwood. Maurice then takes them back to the family home in Darien, Conn., drugs them (if they’re lucky), then carefully and expertly removes his victim’s skin. As described by Masterton, it’s the removal of skin that’s the hard part. The recipient of the new epidermis can slip into it like it’s merely a very bloody onesie. Once the skin has “settled” onto its new body, the recipient is almost good as new—on the outside at least.

Cordelia, still quite rotten on the inside, returns to Vincent Pearson’s gallery, only to again just miss him. Vincent has gotten an early start on the weekend, heading to his house in Connecticut with Charlotte, the “the youngest woman board member of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Also, by far the most beautiful.” Charlotte is literally Vincent’s lady friend, for even though they have kissed and cuddled, they are not fucking (yeah, I had a hard time buying that, too). Vincent does have a girlfriend, a 21-year-old, large-breasted editorial assistant named Meggsy, a moniker more befitting a Bichon Frisé than a person. Meggsy has absolutely no bearing on the narrative and seems only to exist to assure the reader that Vincent is a heterosexually active man, despite what might be inferred by his sexless relationship with Charlotte.

Edward and Cordelia fuck, however. Under the guise of hiring the executive curator to help her seek out other pieces for her art collection, she makes a date for lunch, after which the pair return to Edward’s apartment where Cordelia wastes little time seducing her mark. Masterton isn’t terribly graphic (a minor disappointment as I expected more smut from the author of How to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed and The High Intensity Sex Plan), but he makes it clear that Cordelia is an incredible lay, and that maybe Edward is well-hung, or at least thinks he is:

She was yielding but cruel, continually biting his neck and his nipples, continually scratching him, but then parting her thighs widely and wantonly, or twisting around so she could take him in her mouth, so deeply he couldn’t imagine why she didn’t choke.

Once Edward drifts off into a post-nut slumber, Cordelia slips out of his apartment, taking his keys to the gallery on her way out. Once she’s gone, we learn she’s done more than drain Edward’s balls. Here, Masterton is much more graphic:

As Edward slept, a small off-white maggot emerged from the warm, sweaty crevices around his testicles and slowly made its way up his hairy thigh, its brown-tinged, sightless head weaving from side to side. Soon it reached the crest of his flaccid penis where it rested against his leg. The maggot crawled over the top of it, and then underneath it, until it found the crevice of his urethra. It waggled its way gradually inside and disappeared.

Yeah, Edward’s not coming back. Vincent does, however, discovering that the door to his gallery unlocked and his executive curator nowhere in sight. Nothing is taken, though. The Waldegrave, the one painting that was of interest to the thieves, was already gone, taken to Aaron, the “big and gingerbearded” art restorer who lives in Lichtfield County, Ct. Vincent, equal parts concerned and pissed off, goes to Edward’s apartment. When Edward doesn’t come to the door, Vincent badgers the concierge into letting him inside, where he discovers his employee’s body is now home to a million maggots. The police, understandably, don’t believe Edward was still alive when Vincent saw him three days ago and consider him a suspect. 

An Eviscerated Cat, a Clairvoyant Housewife
and a Punchable Art Expert

Vincent continues to find himself at the periphery of strange and disturbing events. After discovering the maggot-riddled corpse of Edward, he learns that Edward’s ex-fiancée Laura has disappeared and that Aaron’s cat Van Gogh was killed, found skinned and hanging from a tree. Bizarrely, the cat’s likeness has suddenly appeared on the lap of one of the women in the Waldegrave portrait. Then Vincent learns that Ben, the adult son of his God-fearing housekeeper, paralyzed after a fall suffered during a roofing job, has attempted to slice off his own face with a piece of broken glass.

Jack has heard about Ben’s self-mutilation as well, and rushes to the hospital when he learns that Ben was terrified that someone or something wanted his skin. It’s here that Picture of Evil becomes kind of goofy. Like, climactic scene of The Manitou goofy. Enter Pat, the clairvoyant housewife. Pat is a friend of Jack’s wife, and while he’s skeptical of her “gift,” he’s also desperate. His only lead has been a young hitchhiker named Elmer, who managed to escape Maurice Gray, but the sheriff's attempt—with an assist by the Darien police chief—to question Maurice go nowhere, with Maurice smugly insisting on seeing a warrant first. Upon learning that Ben has only hours left to live, Jack decides to ask for Pat’s help, never mind that it’s 3 a.m. when he does so.

It's at the hospital that Jack and Vincent finally meet. Jack is initially resentful of Vincent, put off by “the lord-of-the-manor way in which Vincent had walked into the observation room and taken over the situation as if he had some kind of royal authority.” However, upon hearing about all the events that have surrounded Vincent—Edward’s death, Laura’s disappearance, Aaron’s skinned cat—the sheriff begins to believe that Vincent might be useful in prosecuting the Grays. Furthermore, Vincent is on board with using Pat to communicate with Ben via a séance.

Pat arrives at the hospital with curlers in her hair (a detail the reader will be reminded of throughout the chapter), annoyed by the inconvenient hour she was summoned and doubtful a séance will do much good. Interestingly, she’s the only one to express any real skepticism. Even Ben’s doctor is willing to give this psychic shit a try. The séance, conducted in the doctor’s office, gets off to a slow start, but dramatically kicks into high gear, with the participants plunged into complete darkness even though the lights are on, voices heard through static, showers of white specks, and ghostly howls (it’s really hard not to visualize this scene through the eyes of the late William Girdler, clumsy composites and all). Ben dies during the séance, but not without imparting one cryptic message, because of course any message was going to be cryptic: Lichtfield Cemetery…Johnson…next to the oak.

Everyone immediately goes to the cemetery, only to be disappointed that there is nothing about the grave that implicates the Grays. Except, Vincent realizes later, there is: the Johnson grave is a tomb, a walled grave. Waldegrave.

While Jack and Vincent are participating in séances and visiting cemeteries, Cordelia and Maurice have been busy eliminating Sheriff Smith’s sole witness, Elmer, gaining access to his cell by claiming to be relatives. After they left, Elmer’s body was discovered, consumed by maggots. The Gray family also dispatch the Darien police chief, George Kelly, whom they catch snooping around their house in the early morning hours. 

Meanwhile, Vincent and Charlotte become lovers (better late than never), their afterglow dimmed by the arrival of Vincent’s neurotic bitch of an ex-wife, dropping off her and Vincent’s tween son, Thomas, a day early to spend Christmas with his father. Luckily for them, the boy is easily pawned off on family friends, allowing Vincent and Charlotte time to do research into Vincent’s family history and the Grays, making the connection that readers made before chapter five: the people depicted in the Waldegrave portrait are the Grays.

Pat’s services are enlisted once again, this time to communicate with spirits through the Waldegrave portrait, which now has a new addition: Laura, wearing a black maid’s dress, the skirt hiked up to reveal her cooch. If the description of the first séance suggested B-movie cheese, or at least an episode of Ghost Hunters, the second one is more akin to John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. Laura appears in the room and Jack tries to communicate with her, to ask where she’s being held, but Laura’s vaporous image only does a sexy dance in response. They realize too late that Pat hasn’t summoned Laura; she’s summoned the Grays’ toxic psyche. Before it’s all over, Pat is will be brought to death’s door, twice. Once when she appears to have been stabbed, and again when she vomits up copious amounts of blood. Both instances are illusions. The scars from the experience are very real, however, and Pat urges Vincent to destroy the Waldegrave portrait.

Except, destroying the portrait could mean destroying Laura. Hoping to find an alternate way to stopping the Grays and save Laura, Vincent, Charlotte and Jack pay a visit Dr. Percy McKinnon, who, per Charlotte, “knows everything anyone would want to know about art and magic.” He’s also a pompous asshole; however, he doesn’t dismiss Vincent’s claim that the Waldegrave portrait is what allows the Grays to live eternally. While his validation is gratifying, it doesn’t make the punchable art expert’s lecturing any more palatable, and when Dr. McKinnon offers a theory that things imagined by artists and writers can become real, Vincent begins to suspect this expert is talking out his ass.

While Vincent, Charlotte and Jack are trying to wrap their heads around the magical properties of art, Thomas returns early from visiting a friend. Parked in front of his father’s house is an old black Cadillac, and waiting beside it are a man and a woman, claiming to be family friends…

Nitpick? I Daren’t, but Let’s

I found Picture of Evil to be almost as enjoyable as Feast. Masterton’s writing is strong, vividly evoking a mood with his descriptions and use of spooky metaphors (“the lapels lifted up to enclose her face like the petals of a black tulip”). There are several moments that instill dread, such as the skinned body being fished from the Connecticut reservoir and Cordelia and Maurice coaxing Thomas into their confidence. The final chapters, in which Vincent enters the world of the Grays’ impressive art collection, are particularly fun, though Vincent’s entry into this fantastical realm—via a hastily painted portrait and repeating some Latin phrases—is eye-rollingly silly. However, the artful blending of the serious and the silly is part of the book’s charm.

I do have some notes, however. For starters, Meggsy has no fucking reason to exist in this book and wouldn’t be missed if cut. I’d also argue that Laura should have been Edward’s fiancé rather than his ex, just to raise the stakes. I mean, how many bosses are going to care that much about an employee’s former girlfriend or boyfriend? They don't care about employees’ current partners. Or lose Laura completely, have Vincent and Charlotte already be lovers in the book’s early chapters and then have the Grays take Charlotte. That could really crank up the tension.

I’d also argue Picture of Evil’s story starts at the wrong point. The first chapter introduces us to Maurice and Cordelia while they are still living in France. It’s not a bad chapter, illustrating Maurice’s M.O. of picking up hitchhikers and skinning them, but it reveals too much too soon. The book’s third chapter, when the skinned corpse is dredged from water, would’ve made a stronger opening, leaving a little bit of mystery. As it is, when that body is discovered, we already know the who and the why, diminishing some of the book’s suspense.

More of an issue is the book’s setting, or rather, Masterton’s failure to portray it. For all his strengths as a writer, Masterton—born in Edinburgh, now living in Surrey, England—nails the American voice about as successfully as Kevin Costner nails a British accent. Sounding British works for the Grays, but you will never believe Vincent, Charlotte, Edward or Sheriff Jack are from the United States. The author’s “Rules for Writing” article on his website notes the importance of believable dialog and using correct idioms, yet Vincent twice uses the contraction daren’t, which isn’t exactly a common part of modern U.S. speech (my spell checker sure has a problem with it). The characters of Feast sounded British as well, but not as distractingly. Pictures of Evil’s story would’ve worked just as well, if not better, had it been set in the U.K., even if it would be at the expense of a pun revealed at the novel’s ending.

Pictures of Evil may not be in the running as my favorite Masterton novel, but it’s still pretty damn entertaining, solidifying Masterton as another reliable writer to seek out when I’m shopping for paperbacks of a certain vintage. I daren’t pass up another opportunity to read another one of his books.