But PANDORA'S BOX isn't a Gold Medal by Gil Brewer or
Charles Williams. It's not even a Beacon or a Midwood by Orrie Hitt. Instead it
was written by someone using the pseudonym Jack Pine and published by Pendulum
Books, a small Atlanta-based publisher in the late Sixties that specialized in
sleaze novels. And if any book ever deserved the label "hardboiled
sleaze", it's PANDORA'S BOX.
The Pandora in question is Pandora Lockwood, a beautiful
redhead who seduces hunting guide Mike Dawson into helping her and her husband
Nick recover a treasure buried in a collapsed mine shaft in the Idaho
mountains. The plan is that once they have the loot, Dawson will kill Nick
Lockwood and he and Pandora will share the money. That's just the beginning of
the plot, though. A beautiful underage girl just out of reform school also
figures in, as do a couple of hapless flunkies recruited to help dig out the
treasure. Before you know it, everybody is scheming to kill everybody else and
wind up in sole possession of the money, but before they can do that, they all
have to have sex with each other, too.
This is a somewhat awkward amalgamation of noir novel and
pornography, and the frustrating thing is that there's a pretty good novella
buried among the exceedingly crude and graphic sex scenes. Handled differently,
this could have been a Gold Medal, and a decent one, too, because "Jack
Pine" could write. There are clever lines throughout, some groan-inducing
puns reminiscent of the Western series Edge by George G. Gilman (Terry Harknett),
and a surprising amount of black humor interspersed with all the bleak
nihilism. Plus a twist ending that's not really surprising but is still
effective.
I used to know who Jack Pine really was. I believe his name
was Sherman Smith, or something like that. I can't find anything about him on
the Internet now. But he wrote more than a dozen novels for Pendulum Books, all
of them evidently with crime plots. Any recommendation I give to PANDORA'S BOX
would have to be a qualified one – it certainly won't be to everybody's taste –
but if I ever run across another novel by Jack Pine, I won't hesitate to pick
it up.
8 comments:
I haven't read the book but I'll bet the worst pun is the name "Lockwood"
Oh, Deah Load, Mistuh Reasonahhh--this just sounds scandalous!
I wonder where I can acquire a copy.
Rose Wood
I like your placement of this book in the well know, hardboiled sleaze, area. Gave me a smile when I read that. Might be fun to read.
I've read a lot of this stuff over the years, but can't remember one author from another. Some were good writers and others sounded like they took parts from one book and added them to another just to make the page limit.
Sean,
There are worse puns in the book, believe it or not.
Pete,
There used to be e-book editions of several Jack Pine novels on Amazon, but they don't seem to be there anymore.
I see that abebooks.com has two copies for sale. Both for around $20.00 each.
I wonder what happened to the ebooks. They have a preview but not the entire book. I'm assuming a copyright problem. I hope they iron it out.
I have all the Jack Pine Pendulum ebooks if anyone is interested.
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