Review: Hamilton's Harem - William Kane (Ben Haas)

First of all, the fact that this book doesn’t have LUST, SIN, FLESH, SHAME, PASSION, WANTON, or ORGY in the title makes me suspect that Ben Haas, the author behind the William Kane pseudonym, came up with HAMILTON’S HAREM and the editors at William Hamling’s soft-core empire let it go. That’s my copy in the scan, and it’s in really good shape for a paperback that’s 60 years old, almost like it just came off of some bus station spinner rack. The artist hasn’t been identified.

The fact that Ben Haas wrote this means there’s a very good chance it’ll be a fine book. The protagonist is lawyer Gage Hamilton, a no-nonsense, abide-by-the-letter-of-the-law guy who finds himself administering valuable trust funds for a beautiful blond widow and her three equally beautiful, equally blond daughters (all of whom, not to worry, are of legal age). In addition, Gage also has a beautiful blond mistress who is more than a tad jealous. Sounds like a harem to me!

Gage’s life is complicated even more when each of his legal charges has some sort of soap operatic emergency that requires them to try to wheedle large sums of cash out of their trust funds. Gage has to approve such cash outlays, and in each case, the ladies pull out all the stops to convince him to go along with what they want. Throw in a lusty stable boy, a predatory lesbian, an embezzler, a hint of blackmail, and a murder, and you’ve got a book!

Some of Haas’s soft-core books are sexed-up adventure yarns, but HAMILTON’S HAREM is more of a romantic comedy, and a good one, too. I raced through it, since Haas’s prose is some of the most readable you’ll ever encounter, and there’s a great scene where a rat gets his comeuppance. The sex scenes aren’t very graphic, and most of the book is about Gage Hamilton finding some human decency under his hidebound legal exterior. I just had a really good time reading this book. It’s not much like Ben Haas’s other books, but at the same time, I think it’s one of my favorites of his so far. You’re not likely to run across a copy—Bookfinder shows only three currently for sale on-line, and they’re all pricey—but if you do, I recommend you grab it.

Flesh Fix - William Kane (Ben Haas)

Political corruption, blackmail, bribery, and multiple murders all figure in the plot of FLESH FIX, a crime novel masquerading as sleaze as so many of those softcore books are. Ben Haas’s writing is smooth and fast, as always, and kept me flipping the pages in this tale of a formerly honest reporter trying to regain his self-respect after being roped into a crooked politician’s inner circle. And to be fair, there actually is quite a bit of sex in this novel, and it’s fairly graphic for 1964. It’s a good yarn and I enjoyed it.

Passion Web - William Kane (Ben Haas)

Years ago I owned a copy of this book, but I never got around to reading it before it was lost in the Fire of ’08. At that time, I had no idea who William Kane was, although I figured it was a pseudonym. I just bought all the Pillar/Ember/Nightstand/etc. books that I came across, especially if they were a reasonable price. I believe I paid a buck for that copy.

Time passed, and I never replaced that lost copy of PASSION WEB. Then I found out that none other than the great Western and adventure novelist Ben Haas wrote most of those William Kane books, including PASSION WEB. I’ve been on the lookout for an affordable copy ever since and came across one recently. I read it within a few days of getting it. Not going to miss out this time!

The cover by Robert Bonfils makes this look like a Western, and it sort of is a contemporary (1964) Western, set mostly on a dude ranch in West Texas and in the nearby small town. The protagonist is Lois Frost, a beautiful, ambitious young secretary at an oil company who has been promised a promotion to an executive job if she can weasel some vital information out of geologist Kirk Parsons, who works for a rival oil company. Lois is willing to do the job no matter what it takes, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. The dude ranch where Lois stays while pursuing her goal is owned by beautiful Tess Welch, who struggles not only to keep the ranch going but to control her burgeoning feelings for Lois. The neighboring ranch is owned by champion bronc rider Clint Sandifer, who has a violent streak, a fondness for whips, and a hankering for beautiful young Maria Galindez, who’s married to one of Clint’s ranch hands.

Most of the book is taken up by Haas’s skillful mixing and matching of those characters, plus a mystery of sorts over the location of a fabulously valuable pool of oil, before everything comes to a head at a rodeo. (Where else?) His smooth prose is a joy to read, as always, and keeps things moving along at such a fast pace that I raced through the book and enjoyed it quite a bit. There are a lot of sex scenes and they’re fairly graphic, but they’re well-written and actually have to do with the plot most of the time. Not only that, but there are several scenes of unexpected violence that would be right at home in one of Haas’s adventure novels, and his descriptions of the West Texas landscape are excellent. He’s just one of those writers whose work really resonates with me, no matter what the genre.

So I’m glad I finally got my hands on another copy of PASSION WEB. I really had a good time reading it. I found another William Kane book that wasn’t too pricey for my taste and ordered it. I figure I’ll enjoy it, too.