Suggestive Harlequins: A Romantic Threesome

To Please the Doctor

Marjorie Moore

1959

Doctor in Bondage

Jean S. MacLeod

1961

Strange Request

Marjorie Bassett

1960

Related post:

SF, not S/M

'Burns' by James McIntyre, the Cheese Poet

The Robert Burns Memorial

Square Dorchester (né Dominion), Montreal

Photograph by Wally Gobetz

BURNS 

The following ode was read by the author at the Centennial Anniversary of Burns in the year 1859.

This night shall never be forgot
   For humble life none now despise,
Since Burns was born in lowly cot
   Whose muses wing soars to the skies. 

'Round Scotia's brow he wove a wreath
   And raised her name in classic story
A deathless fame he did bequeath,
   His country's pride, his country's glory. 

He sang her hills, he sang her dales,
   Of Bonnie Doon and Banks of Ayr,
Of death and Hornbook and such tales
   As Tam O'Shanter and his mare. 

He bravely taught that manly worth
   More precious is than finest gold,
He reckoned not on noble birth,
   But noble deeds alone extolled. 

Where will we find behind the plow
   Or in the harvest field at toil
Another youth, sweet bard, like thou,
   Could draw the tear or raise the smile. 

We do not think 'twas Burns' fault,
   For there were no teetotalers then,
That Willie brewed a peck of malt
   And Robin preed like other men. 

'Tis true he loved the lasses dear,
   But who for this would loudly blame,
For Scotia's maids his heart did cheer
   And love is a true heavenly flame. 

So here we've met in distant land
   Poor honest Robin to extol,
Though oft we differ let us stand
   United now in Ingersoll.

From Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889) 

No Lady Before Judith Hearne

A Bullet for My Lady
Bernard Mara [pseud. Brian Moore]
New York: Gold Medal, 1955

As titles go, A Bullet for My Lady ain't so bad. The problem is that that narrator Josh Camp has no lady, and the only person who takes a slug is a small time crook named Domingo Jiménez.

Barcelona sets the stage. Camp, a trader in airplanes, arrives in "the biggest, roughest city in Spain" to search for AWOL business partner Harry Spoke. He's barely set foot on Spanish soil when met by a beautiful woman who reports that the missing man got drunk and fell from the balcony of a fourth class hotel. Camp doesn't believe a word. Harry, always one for routine and discipline, never strayed from a two drink maximum.

Camp takes a room in the selfsame flophouse, where he's visited by the beautiful bearer of bad news, a moustachioed marquesa, a lovely lush named Lucille and, of course, Domingo Jiménez. As it turns out, all are searching for the coffin of a cardinal who, centuries earlier, was buried wearing vestments inlaid with pearls, rubies and diamonds. What we have is a dark, violent, not so funny It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.

A Bullet for My Lady ain't so bad. While the plot isn't much and the characters cardboard, Moore's sketches of Spain are at times quite striking. (He banged out the early chapters in Barcelona and Majorca.)

The fourth of his disowned novels, it appeared two months before Judith Hearne. Back in 1955, the Gold Medal thriller was Moore's moneymaker, bringing an advance that was well over ten times that proffered by André Deutsch for the more literary undertaking.

Three more Moore pulps followed.

Can you blame him?

Object: A cheap mass market paperback with spicy cover illustration by James Meese. The back cover features a curious black and white photograph that looks for all the world like a still from a movie that was never made.

Access: The first and only printing arrived at news stands in March 1955. Very Good copies begin at US$45 and, for no good reason, go up to US$150. Non-circulating copies can be found at the Toronto Public Library, Library and Archives Canada, McMaster University, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Calgary and Simon Fraser University.

Related posts:

Brian Moore's True First

Murderers Move in on Montreal

Parisian French, not Québécois French
No Gun for Gloria

The Dominatrix of Time (and other fantasies)

There are no whip-wielding women in Masters of Time, green-skinned or otherwise. In fact, the only female so much as mentioned in the entire novel is aging spinster Nora Matheson. The 1974 Manor Books edition above is a cheat designed to appeal to adolescent boys. I was eleven when it arrived in stores.

With van Vogt, covers rarely reflect content. Publishers puff, peddling images that – four times out of five – are entirely unappealing.

Yes, four times out of five.

I present the following as evidence:

Super-Cérebro [Supermind]

Lisbon: Livros do Brasil, 1978

The Book of Ptath

London: Panther, 1975

Out of the Unknown
London: New English Library, 1970

宇宙嵐のかなた [Mission to the Stars]

Tokyo: Hayakawa, 1970

The Weapon Makers

New York: Greenberg, 1952

Related post: The Homoerotic van Vogt