Ladies Man (Beacon, 1957; Softcover Library, 1968)

Nicky Weaver, the narrator of Hitt’s first novel, I’ll Call Every Monday, (read Frank Loose’s excellent insightful comments on that book on James Reasoner’s blog)returns in Ladies’ Man, except the story here in told in third person, not first as in Monday.

This is the same Nicky Weaver — there are references to the events in Monday, which has made him weary of women; the lady he winds up “happily ever after” with at the end of Monday…well, that didn’t seem to last. She cheated on him with some hired help and he lost the $11,000 investment he made in the possible summer resort they planned.

There’s also reference to another woman, another sour relationship, that makes me wonder if Nicky Weaver is in some other novel I haven’t read yet.

Women’s Ward (Softcover Library, 1966)

I wanted to like this one. I started off liking this one, until half-way through and then it unraveled and didn’t seem at all plausible — granted that any Hitt (or sleaze) novel is possible.

First, the cover is quite misleading, with the sultry incarcerated woman, and if this might a nympho-sex-nightmare romp in prison or an institution.

There is a woman institutionalized for mania — a bit of a loose canon wild gal who has been placed in the hospital’s crazy bin by her sister and brother-in-law, who happens to be a doctor there.

The narrator is a tall tough Hitt hero working part-time as a night orderly, and day as a radio DJ on a small station. He falls asleep at the console and is fired — the radio job angle is never fully developed.  Radio guys appear now and then in Hitt’s books because he worked radio himself, but so little information is given that we wonder why — the ins and outs of a radio seems more interesting that life of an orderly, or maybe not…

Orderlies can fool around with female inmates. Or the wives of doctors, as out hero soons discoveres, while he has a girlfriend out there who keeps pressuring him to get a stable job at the local factory so they can get married.

But it’s the usual juggling three women, except one of them is emotionally unstable and one mentally unstable — which sister really belongs in the cuckoo’s nest?  And how crazy is the girl who wants to marry a going- nowhere heel like out hero?

Written toward the downward turn of Hitt’s career, post-1965…the sexual situations are a little more involved since the censors were not breathing down publisher’s backs as much…

On the Hitt Scale: C+.

Hard to Find: CINDY aka The Sex Pros

The U.K. Softcover Library edition, Cindy, is known as The Sex Pros in the U.S., a rare Softcover double with Mel Johnson’s Love Doll. Mel Johnson is Barry Malzberg.  That one is also near impossible to find, as are many Mel Johnsons, for  some unknown damn reason.

Leads on either is appreciated.

images courtesy of Jim Mix.