Look behind the soap-opera-like title and the soft-core porn cover of this book published by Monarch in 1961, and you’ve got . . . well, for the most part a soap-opera-like, soft-core porn novel. Which isn’t too much of a surprise considering that “Tom Phillips” was really Thomas P. Ramirez, who wrote dozens of Nightstand Books and Midnight Readers under the pseudonym Tony Calvano.
What makes this book a little better than it might have been is its behind-the-scenes look at a gigantic construction project, in this case an oil refinery and the company town that goes with it. Ramirez worked in the construction business, and those sections have an air of gritty authenticity about them. The corporate intrigue and sabotage and big business atmosphere make this book resemble a John D. MacDonald novel at times, although without MacDonald’s talent and storytelling ability. The numerous lurid romantic entanglements are actually the weakest part of the story.
I don’t know if Ramirez wrote any other Monarch Books as Tom Phillips. I’m not going to go out looking for them. But if I ever run across another one, I’ll probably pick it up.
2 comments:
When not busy doing (unrecreational, alas) damage to myself over the last week or so, I've been reading Clark Howard's DIRT RICH, which is also a bit more sexually explicit than his EQMM and AHMM stories, and a (perhaps MacDonald/Gormanesque) broad-sweep historical (not as precious as Doctorow, not as dull and lazy as Michener, generally just better than Jakes, as one might expect from Howard), and also is focused around the post-WWI Texas oil industry. That and a Muller McCone I had managed not to catch before, LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR WILLIE. So at least the literary part of life has been pleasant...
DIRT RICH is one of those books I've been meaning to read for years. I have a copy of it in my shelves but just haven't gotten to it. I've liked all of Clark Howard's shorter work that I've read, but I haven't tried any of his novels yet.
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