Sin Camp

Having enjoyed that Nightstand Book by Robert Silverberg that I read a week or so ago, I pulled down another one from the shelves, not by Silverberg this time but by Tony Calvano instead. According to Earl Kemp, Calvano was the pseudonym of Thomas P. Ramirez, who also wrote a few sleaze paperbacks for Monarch Books as Tom Phillips but was most prolific under the Calvano name. There was also a Thomas P. Ramirez who wrote several of the Phoenix Force books (a spin-off from the Executioner series); I assume he was the same author, but I don't know that for sure.

Anyway, SIN CAMP is the first thing I've read by Calvano/Ramirez. It's an Army novel, set on and around the fictional Camp Coulter in Texas. The narrator, GI Tom Staton, falls in love with a young Mexican prostitute who works in a brothel in nearby Harden City. He discovers that she's being forced to stay there and decides to rescue her. Naturally, things do not work out well, as Staton also hooks up with a rich nymphomaniac (lots of those around in Fifties and Sixties sleaze novels). There are quite a few sex scenes, and they're slightly more graphic than the ones in the Silverberg novel I read. I'm sure some of that is due to the natural differences in authors, and also SIN CAMP was published two years later, so some of the editorial restrictions may have eased up. There's another main storyline in SIN CAMP that involves the conflict between the enlisted men in Staton's company and the brutal non-coms in charge of them, and these sections read more like a mainstream novel.

The writing is certainly not as good as in the Silverberg book, but there's a lot of raw vitality and fast-paced storytelling to keep the reader turning the pages. The Calvano books have a reputation for a certain amount of violence and sadism, and although it takes its time getting around to it, SIN CAMP has its share. There's also one plot development late in the book that comes out of left field. Despite its flaws, I enjoyed this one quite a bit and intend to continue sampling the various Nightstand Books that I have on my shelves.