Showing posts with label Man From Planet X. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Man From Planet X. Show all posts

Thursday, April 23, 2020

The Man From Planet X #3: The Devil To Pay


The Man From Planet X #3: The Devil To Pay, by Hunter Adams
August, 1977  Pinnacle Books

A little over two years after the second volume this third installment of The Man From Planet X finally came out, and I can’t imagine too many people across this great land of ours rushed out to buy a copy. There’s no internal evidence that two years have passed, and neither the front nor the back cover mention it, so my assumption is this book was ready to go in 1975, to be published shortly after the first two volumes, but was held back due to the oil crisis. Per Michael Newton in How To Write Action-Adventure Fiction, the men’s adventure market came to an abrupt halt in the mid-‘70s because publishers, facing an energy crisis, whittled their lines back to just the most essential titles. I figure The Man From Planet X wasn’t anywhere near a top seller for Pinnacle, so it was put on hiatus a few years.

So I’ll proceed with my theory that James D. Lawrence (aka “Hunter Adams”) wrote this one around the same time as the previous two, as the book just feels more mid ‘70s than late ‘70s. All the topical references are to mid-‘70s stuff, and there’s no mention by hero Peter Lance (aka alien Pritan Lansol) of any passage of time since Tiger By The Tail. But then at this point Lawrence is writing a straight-up comedy series, so there’s no focus on any sort of recurring storyline; Pinnacle proclaims this a “New Erotic Adventure Series” on the covers, but really “Adventure” should be replaced by “Comedy.” Peter Lance is so superhuman that there’s absolutely no drama or suspense to any predicament he finds himself in, thus everything plays out for laughs; even a part where he has to escape some scuba divers fails to engender any tension, given that, “like all Tharbians,” Peter has gills implanted in his lungs, so can breathe underwater.

Random musing: With this volume it occurred to me that “Tharb,” the planet Pritan Lansol is from, sounds similar to “therb,” the whip-weapon employed in the Balzan series – which was also “produced” by Lyle Kenyon Engel, and which also ran for only three volumes. The similarity of the two words makes me assume Engel himself came up with the terms when he farmed out each series; my assumption is Engel devised the concept, characters, and any recurring gadgets or gimmicks, and then his various ghostwriters delivered to spec. Anyway I’m only noting this because, sadly, the Tharb/therb thing proved to be more interesting than practically the entirety of The Devil To Pay. Because honestly this is a novel that starts with the mixed metaphor “the antlike humans were like fleas,” and that’s just the first paragraph. So you already know from the get-go that you’re in for a book where the author doesn’t give a shit.

Another thing clear with this volume is that Lawrence is bored with writing standard sex material. This already started with the previous volume, where the greater focus was on foreplay and gross-out situations. The initial boink is the most graphic in The Devil To Pay; Peter is walking along Manhattan one night and senses danger – he looks up at the skyscraper he’s walking by and sees a nude hotstuff brunette screaming for help. Peter scales twenty floors and enters the opened window to find the brunette about to be raped by a multiracial trio of thugs, leading to the unforgettable line, “…the Negro prepared to impale her with his huge, clublike ebony phallus.”

Without any effort Peter dispenses of the three, knocking them out and tossing them aside…he unties the brunette, a model named Solange, and when she complains that her arms are numb from being tied up, Peter does what any guy would do – he whips out his whang, which folks is sixteen inches long. You see, Peter’s dick pulses “ultrasonically,” thus he explains to the gal that all she need do is hold onto it and the pulsing will take care of that pesky numbness. Of course one thing leads to another, and soon enough Solange hops up on Peter so his whang is “wetly sheathed,” which causes the gal to scream out what is yet another unforgettable line: “My whole twat’s ultrasonic!” As mentioned this is not only the most explicit sex scene in the book, but it also features the first of many gross-out moments, with detail on Peter’s “spewing geyser” which is so, uh, climactic that it actually suspends Solange in mid-air!

Humorously this “geyser” is witnessed by Solange’s muscular and simperingly gay photographer, Brute Smoot, who doesn’t puke when he sees it, but instead starts checking out Peter, who of course quickly puts on his pants – the Man From Planet X might be an alien, but he’s no switch-hitter. Smoot just freed himself from a closet (unironically, I’m sure); he reveals that the thugs put him there before going after Solange, and Peter discovers that the entire building is crawling with other thugs who are looting the place. This promises a Die Hard situation, but instead Peter calls his boss, crotchety billionaire BG Wyngard, who sends in a private ‘copter to pick up Peter. BG is more concerned with one of his many companies, one that happens to have an office in this building; this place was working on a new energy project called Project Q, and when Peter checks the office on BG’s orders, sure enough the plans for it have been stolen from the vault.

Daphne Wyngard, who served as the main female character in the first volume, is again reduced to a cameo role, same as last time; when Peter goes back to BG’s rolling mansion, Daphne comes to his room to tell him she and her friends had “a little orgy,” one that led to a game of “find the olive.” Well, you know how these things go, and now a pimento is stuck up there and Daphne wonders if Peter could help remove it. “Perhaps if I use my tongue…” muses Peter, an idea which Daphne is eager to try out. This leads to off-page sex, same as Peter’s boff immediately thereafter with Wanda, BG’s insatiable, much-younger wife. Indeed, all the many sex scenes will be off-page from here on out, so while the book is smutty and sleazy it’s never outright hardcore. I mean The Baroness, another Engel production, is much more hardcore, and it wasn’t even billed as an “erotic series.”

The title and back cover copy promise a storyline involving Satanism – yet another element that places the book more in the early-mid 1970s than in the late 1970s – but truth be told Lawrence doesn’t do much to exploit it. BG reveals that one of Project Q’s main scientists, Ghent, went missing during a trip to Italy, but has finally returned and is acting weird. Peter shadows the guy – including a random bit where Ghent receives a package at the post office, Peter intercepts it, and it apparently has shit inside it – and this ultimately leads Peter to a Satanic orgy in a warehouse in SoHo. Here a guy dressed as the devil exhorts his followers to have group sex; more interesting is that Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” provides the soundtrack! This is actually the second time Lawrence has referenced Black Sabbath in a men’s adventure novel; he also did in Dark Angel #4. And also this particular Black Sabbath track, from their 1973 album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, might be another indication that The Devil To Pay was written in ’75, not ’77 – but then, what self-respecting Satanist would play Technical Ecstasy at an orgy?

Even here though the focus is more on sleazy comedy than action, let alone Satanic horror. (I mean if you want sleazy Satanic sex mixed with men’s adventure thrills, you seek out The Mind Masters #2.) Peter doffs his clothes to “fit in” with the others, but of course none of them have coppery red skin (“like a storybook Indian,” per one of Lawrence’s more memorable descriptions)….let alone a friggin’ sixteen-inch cock, so he’s an instant hit when the Satanists get a gander of him. And like the ol’ “dick stuck in the sink” bit from the previous book, this time Peter allows his whang to be strapped into some old piece of machinery, to be fawned over and petted by the orgiasts – Lawrence doesn’t elaborate, but it’s clear that the male orgiasts are stroking and sucking away at it, too, which makes Peter’s earlier abhorrence of Bruce Smoot kind of hypocritical – and then a fire breaks out, and Peter’s stuck. This is actually the most tense part in the book, as Peter has to choose between being burned alive or literally emasculating himself so he can get to freedom…but then our inhuman protagonist merely lifts the one-ton contraption and staggers out to the fire escape. And only after this does his “excitement” sufficiently dwindle so that he can, uh, slip out of the device.

In fact the whole Satanism angle barely fits into the scheme of things, making me suspect it was yet another Lyle Kenyon Engel mandate which Lawrence only half-assedly fulfilled. Instead, Peter figures the Satanism thing was more of just a fun hobby sort of thing for Ghent, and shortly afterward is tracking down another clue left by the scientist – a sex-focused travel agency based out of Manhattan, which has a whorehouse on the property. Peter’s getting busy with a busty Italian hooker when CIA agents raid the place – leading to yet another unforgettable line, as recurring CIA goon McDade orders his men to search the inner recesses of all the hookers: “That’s the spirit, cunthunters!” McDade comes in on Peter and the girl just as they’ve finished, and proceeds to inspect her; this bit probably has the most gross-out moment of all in the book, so gross-out that I just had to quote it in full:

[McDade] plucked from his pocket a slender-barreled optical instrument which appeared to be a battery-powered vaginascope; and after screwing one end to his eye, he inserted the other end into [the hooker’s] vulva – his face taking on an expression of deep interest. 

“Judas Priest, boy!” he muttered. “Talk about giving somebody the Deep Six! You got her pumped so full of pecker juice, I may need scuba gear and sonar to find out what kinda subversive-secret weaponry she’s got stowed up her snatch!”

After this the novel becomes mired in a tiresome espionage-comedy thing; Peter heads over to Rome to further research what happened to Ghent, only to find himself attending another Satanic orgy. While again trying to fit in, Peter is quickly outed, leading to a bit where Lawrence both indulges in the goofy sleaze vibe of the series and his penchant for obscure terms:

The third [Satanist girl] fastened her lips around [Peter’s] genital. But instead of sucking, she seemed to be blowing something up through his meatus! 

Too late, Peter Lance realized what was happening. They were injecting him with some sort of vaporous drug!”

I mean nothing says “New Erotic Adventure Series” like “meatus.” And also “genital” is a recurring term, to the extent that it makes the book seem like it was written by a robot with a limited understanding of human sexual intercourse. But then this appears to have been the idea, as Peter himself has no understanding of human sexual mores; when later he catches Solange, who has followed him here to Italy, having sex with a French triple agent, the girl cries because she can’t understand why Peter’s not upset that she was screwing another guy. To which Peter responds, “Good heavens, it’s your genital. Why should I object to what you allow inside it?”

Ultimately the Satanist angle drops and more focus is placed on Kontides, a Greek shipping magnate clearly based on Onassis who goes by the colorful nickname “Superkunt.” He’s very much in the Bond villain mold, with gold teeth and an army of henchmen. Peter runs afoul of him, is briefly captured and interrogated – he easily escapes, of course – and also Peter manages to pick up a parrot, per Bruce Minney’s cover. As we’ll recall, Peter can telepathically communicate with animals, leading to some humorous exchanges with the bird. And also this whole bit reminded me of a novel Len Levinson told me about back in 2014; he said in the ‘70s he wrote an unpublished novel titled The Parrot “about the world from the viewpoint of a highly intelligent parrot who has various adventures with people,” but it never got past the first draft. He’d recently rediscovered the manuscript and I practically begged him to send me a copy, but he said it needed too much work.

Anyway, that too is more interesting than anything in The Devil To Pay. There’s more espionage stuff, all of it revolving around goofy sex, like when Peter gets a bj from a hooker in an Italian whorehouse and afterwards his whole nether region is numb – metal fillament implanted by the woman’s mouth, connected to electrodes which she controls from a button on the bed. One touch of the button and Peter’s sixteen inches will be fried. There’s also the outrageously-named Tex Happyfeller, a redneck agent for OPEC, but he vanishes from the narrative almost as soon as he’s introduced.

The plot gradually centers around cacatroleum, the (literally) shitty substance Peter discovered in that package he intercepted from Ghent at the start of the book. This material is on the property of lusty Rosa Volterra, and all the action and intrigue have been a result of various factions trying to gain control of it. And also Brute Smoot keeps showing up everywhere, on one pretense or another, and clearly Peter Lance isn’t too smart because it takes him until the end of the book to realize that Brute’s involved in everything. And it’s ironic if the oil crisis really did postpone publication of this book, given that cacatroleum is a newly-discovered natural fuel that has the potential of replacing oil. 

The novel (and series) ends with Peter heading off for more time with Rosa – honestly he sleeps with so many women in the book that the reader needs a scorecard to keep track – and it was with much relief that I closed the book for the final time. Even the funky ‘70s details weren’t enough to save this one, and in fact they’ve dwindled as well…we read about, say, “purple hip-huggers” on Solange, or a denim suit for Peter, but really Lawrence saves all his “sleazy ‘70s fashion” ammo for Dark Angel. So the sex is pretty much nonexistent, the “thrills” are lame and tame because the hero’s superhumanly strong and fast, and the writer clearly isn’t taking anything seriously…which altogether means that there’s not much return on investment in either collecting or reading The Man From Planet X.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

The Man From Planet X #2: Tiger By The Tail


The Man From Planet X #2: Tiger By The Tail, by Hunter Adams
June, 1975  Pinnacle Books

Whereas the first volume of The Man From Planet X at least made the pretense of being a men’s adventure sort of spy-and-sex thing, this second volume drops all such pretenses and goes straight for a comedy approach. James D. Lawrence, once again serving as “Hunter Adams,” appears to already be bored with the concept “producer” Lyle Kenyon Engel has handed him – a red-skinned alien with a monstrous-sized member who has come down here to Earth to “study Earthlings,” which is shorthand for banging tons of babes. All in the name of science, of course.

Branded a “New Erotic Adventure Series” by Pinnacle, Tiger By The Tail is more akin to the goofy sleaze novels that were so common of the era, a light-hearted sexual romp that encompases both purple prose and straight-up explicit material. But even though there’s the occasional fight or chase, none of it is treated seriously and hero Peter Lance, aka Pritan Lansol of the planet Tharb, is so superheroic there’s never any question of him getting killed or even injured. I mean the dude’s super strong, hyper fast, can do all sorts of bizarre mindblowing stuff in the sack, plus he can even talk telepathically to animals. Not only that, but he’s as patient as a zen master and as polite as Mr. Rogers.

Well anyway it’s a few weeks after that previous book and ol’ Peter is heading out of New York in his station wagon(!) for another excursion into human relations, when his ESP senses detect nearby danger, right across the border in New Jersey. Turns out to be a sexy young housewife who is being threatened by a tiger on her own front yard. Peter first literally (and lamely) catches the “tiger by the tail” and tosses it, then telepathically communicates with it. The tiger is a female named Tanya, and Peter calls her off, but then some dudes with machine guns show up, gunning for the animal. Peter easily defeats them, disarming them and beating them up in the blink of an eye. Then he and the housewife repair upstairs for some casual ‘70s sex – Peter’s sexual magnetism is such that these Earthling babes immediately think of getting him bed as soon as they meet him. (I happen to have the exact opposite affect on Earthling babes.)

But Lawrence seems to have gotten sick of all the intermittent banging in the previous volume, so this time his focus is on weird gross-out stuff. We get our first indication of this when, after their quick screw, the housewife notes that Peter’s extra-long and thin member has an injury on it, Peter having been knicked there during the fight or somesuch, and insists that he clean off the wound. Anyway to cut to the chase, Peter’s dick gets stuck in the sink. It’s just one of those books, folks…then the lady’s husband shows up, and he is, naturally, a plumber, but Peter with his superhuman strength is able to pull the entire sink out of the wall as he beats a hasty retreat.

Tanya escaped from a zoo run by Velma Thorp, brunette babe with beehive hairdo who is running the place in the mysterious absence of her great white hunter father, Hugh, a former movie star. But upon his arrival at the zoo Peter is again attacked by men with machine guns, and after quickly knocking out these ones it occurs to him that perhaps they are tracking something hidden within the animal. Ultimately he will of course be proven correct; Velma reveals that her dad brought Tanya back from Russia a few months ago, and mentioned something special about her – it will develop that something has been surgically inserted in Tanya’s hide, a device which could trigger WWIII or somesuch.

For the most part this main plot – which just barely categorizes the novel as men’s adventure – is cast aside and more time is spent on the “jungle porn film” Peter is roped into filming by drunkard director Burk Fontana, who declares upon seeing Peter’s dick: “That fucking whang of his is a potential goldmine!” Burk you see has been hired by Velma in a desperate bid to track down her missing father, who has been gone for three months but who is known for random, unexplained disappearances…Velma’s muddled hope is that this film, to be shot on the zoo Hugh Thorp opened, will somehow capture the attention of her father, wherever he might be, and he’ll come back home. Upon seeing that awesome whang, though, Burk demands that the flick needs to be a porn.

Burk, who steals the novel, calls in a former sword-swallower turned porn starlet to feature in some test footage based around fairy tales in which Peter screws a bevy of gals, capping off with this sword-swallower managing to contain his entire girth in her mouth. But she turns out to be a commie spy who has something hidden up in a certain part of her anatomy, something which latches onto Peter’s dick while he’s enthusastically boffing her, to the extent that Peter’s dick swells up to crazy levels. Enter the CIA agent from the previous volume, who has been tracking this sword-swallowing spy, Fifi, and informs everyone that she’s known for this trick – cue more gross-out stuff as Fifi again has to blow Peter, but this time it’s to suck that poison out.

Along comes wealthy socialite Crystal Warrick, a blonde vixen who demands, “Take out your cock!” promptly upon meeting our hero. She’s seen the test footage, you see, and through some chicanery she’s managed to buy out the Thorp zoo so she can have a controlling interest in the jungle porn. She is now running the film, and declares that they’ll be filming in Africa, not on the zoo itself, and that further she will star in the film and Velma can co-star if she’d like – there is a simmering jealousy between the two, not that this stops them from shooting girl-on-girl scenes for the movie! But Crystal, despite coming on strong to Peter, always refrains from full-on sex with him; it later develops, in another of the novel’s many arbitrary subplots, that Crystal’s a virgin – and of course Peter takes care of that for her.

Lawrence hits all the bases, so to speak: promptly upon arrival in Nairobi Peter is being propositioned by a sexy native: “Peter’s first real contact with a black Earthling.” And boy is it a memorable first contact. Later on, Peter, realizing that Crystal is hiding things from him, decides that “A simple little rape might do the trick,” and proceeds to anal-rape her, after which a satisified Crystal declares, “Okay, I’ve taken you up the ass, I guess I may as well take you into my confidence.” There’s also a part where Burk and the film crew are lured into the jungle by a bunch of horny native gals and screw away with aplomb, not realizing it’s a trap orchestrated by the Black Death, a big guy in black robes with a leprousy-ravaged face.

Despite the amount of sex there’s nothing steamy about any of it…particularly given how Peter’s always thinking of the women as “Earthling females.” You almost sort of get the idea that Peter would be just as game to experiment with Earthling males. But the explicit material is less pronounced than last time – I mean it’s graphic and all, but many times Lawrence spends more time on the foreplay or naughty dialog, then leaves the actual “coupling” vague. This one’s also missing those cool ‘70s touches that were frequent last time, I mean who could forget Peter Lance dancing to Led Zeppelin on a quadraphonic hi-fi?

But it does go on and on, and it’s more of a lame comedy than anything; even when Peter is briefly captured by Chicoms it’s more goofy than thrilling. But Lawrence plods away, almost desperately padding the 200+ pages; there’s even an arbitrary bit where Peter gets amnesia – a subplot that lasts all of a few pages and has no bearing on anything. For those diehards who want to know “But what’s it all about?,” long story short: Hugh Thorp turns out to be an agent of top-secret CRACK, as is Crystal Warrick, and he was on a mission to capture some doomsday tech from the Reds, and hid the schematics or whatnot in that cannister which he implanted in Tanya.

All told, Tiger By The Tail was really stupid, displaying none of the cool funky sleaze Lawrence delivered for Engel in the far superior Dark Angel series. My assumption is The Man From Planet X failed to resonate with readers even in its own day, as the third and final volume didn’t appear until two years later.

Monday, November 14, 2016

The Man From Planet X #1: The She-Beast


The Man From Planet X #1: The She-Beast, by Hunter Adams
February, 1975  Pinnacle Books

Proving there was no limit to what book “producer” Lyle Kenyon Engel was willing to try, The Man From Planet X is a mid-‘70s take on ‘60s sleazy spy series like The Man from O.R.G.Y. and such, only with a sci-fi angle and much raunchier sex. However it does maintain the goofy vibe of those earlier spy paperbacks, to the extent that The She-Beast is for the most part a sex-laden comedy with only occasional patches of violence.

According to Hawk’s Authors Pseudonyms, “Hunter Adams” was James D. Lawrence, who around this time was also writing the vastly superior Dark Angel series for Engel. Initially I never would’ve believed this, as The She-Beast comes off as very juvenile and lunkheaded in its opening pages, despite the plethora of hardcore sex scenes. But gradually I could detect Lawrence’s tone, especially given his occasional use of ten-dollar words and literary turns of phrase. (Also the juvenile bit could probably be explained by the fact that Lawrence was also one of the authors of Tom Swift.) I now suspect that Lawrence was the mystery author of another Engel-produced sleaze masterpiece, Memoirs Of An Ex-Porno Queen.

But the reader must be prepared to accept that The Man From Planet X is not to be taken seriously, and really is an XXX-rated spoof of James Bond or somesuch…again, like those earlier spy paperbacks, but a lot more explicit. And weird! For our hero, “Peter Lance,” is in reality a friggin’ alien from the planet Tharb, his real name Pritan Lansol. Under the guidance of Dr. Kaarg, Pritan has descended to the Earth in his UFO, which hides back in the Catskill mountains as Pritan attempts to gather first-hand knowledge of the Earthlings in New York.

In his real appearance, Pritan has red skin and a hairy face. But Dr. Kraag has “biochemically” changed Pritan into “Peter,” and now he’s a good-looking stud with glossy black hair, piercing blue eyes, and tanned skin. But the biochemical stuff hasn’t extended to Peter’s nether parts, and this being a sleaze series, we get right to it; when a hitchhiking Peter is picked up by a sexy blonde named Daphne, he takes out her pursuers in somewhat gory fashion and then proceeds to give in to her demands for immediate sex, right there in the front seat of her sportscar.

Well, friends, Peter Lance has some unusual equipment. Not only is it wide at the base and pointy at the top, but in its fullest extent it goes all the way down to his knee…plus he can control it as easily as a normal man controls his finger. Oh, and it vibrates. “Man, I’ve gotta have that in me, but quick!” Daphne thinks to herself as soon as she’s gotten a gander at it. Their first boink is sleazy alien sex for the ages:

Their initial coupling had proved even more exciting than Daphne could possibly have anticipated. His pointy whatchamacallit had slid in as smoothly as a greased speculum, but its increasing girth toward the root had swiftly opened her as wide (it felt) as the Lincoln Tunnel. 

And the length of him – oh, my gosh! Every thrust felt as if he were ramming it clear up to her tonsils. 

But it wasn’t only the size and the stroke – there was something else, still more sensational, that Daphne could scarcely even put into words. She and her girlfriends had often titillated themselves or each other experimentally with electric massagers. But talk about vibrations – holy cow! His thing positively seemed to thrum at supersonic speed. She could feel shuddery, burning waves of chills and thrills radiating all the way up and down to her fingernails and toenails until her whole being seemed about to burst into fire.

Within a few pages Peter’s scoring again, in just as detailed fashion, with Wanda, hot young wife #4 of Daphne’s mega-millionaire father, BG Wyngard, who lives in a secluded mansion. Mind you, Peter’s just going with the flow throughout this; unlike your average men’s adventure protagonist, he’s on no special assignment other than gathering data on humans, in particular their sexual behavior, naturally. But Wanda (“this Earthling’s titties were something else”) comes on strong to Peter, and when Daphne almost catches them in the act, Peter reveals yet another of his superhuman qualities: he hefts Wanda on his shoulders and runs at over sixty miles an hour across the courtyard, deposting on her bed and racing back to his room in a blur of motion.

Peter Lance has other superhuman qualities as well – he’s telepathic, able to read minds and communicate with animals, in particular dogs. He has the strength of ten men. And he’s got “miniature lungs” surgically inserted in his ears or something, which is the norm for all Tharbians, having eons ago made the land, the sea, and the air their natural habitat. Oh, and he has this “third eye” gizmo he can hook up to his forehead to boost his telepathy, so he can speak with Dr. Kraag back on the spaceship, and with minor “brain waves” from other Tharbian gizmos he can become immediately fluent in any Earthling language.

Lawrence lays the groundwork for the novel’s main plot, with wily BG Wyngard untrusting of this new young stud, and yet hiding the fact that someone’s out to get him and his family – something Peter’s picked up via ESP, not to mention the two thugs who tried to kill Daphne when Peter met her. Meanwhile Daphne’s called over two of her equally-sexy friends to check out Peter’s inhuman endowmnet. After dancing to Led Zeppelin on quadraphonic stereo, Peter sneaks over for more explicit naughtiness, with the gals arguing who gets Peter’s vibrating cock and who gets Peter’s vibrating tongue. Meanwhile Daphne makes a “sex movie” with her film camera and then takes her second helping of Peter when her two pals pass out mid-climax.

Despite the goofy tone, the sex scenes here are much more explicit than those in Lawrence’s Dark Angel, which for the most part went more for a sleazy vibe than anything outrageously hardcore. Not so here, with the seeming intent of the series itself just being hardcore shenanigans with a slight spy-fy overlay. Unsurprisingly then, the main plot also has to do with sex; after our hero has staved off yet another attack on BG Wyngard and family, BG informs Peter that someone desperately wants control of a no-name company called Novitol which BG recently acquired in a business deal.

Hired as BG’s “corporate troubleshooter,” Peter is flown over to Switzerland, where he is to find out what exactly Novitol is. As mentioned, it’s of a sexual nature, having been run by a recently-deceased chemist who was looking to manufacture various sex-scents as perfumes. The book’s uber-goofy tone is displayed yet again when Peter telephathically informs a dog that it’s humping nothing more than a dummy, the dog having been fooled by the artificial scent sprayed on the dummy’s “receptacle.” The dog grumbles in shock – dogs speak to Peter in English throughout, by the way – and then pisses on the dummy.

It’s been a few pages, so Peter scores again, this time with Brigitte, 6’2” “raven-haired Amazon” caretaker of Novitol’s main company; she has “bushy black armpit hair,” “impressive mammary development,” and likes to ride men like horses. Here Peter learns that spys are afoot, tracking his moves. While speaking to BG through a Wyngard-designed “videoceiver,” which sends coded images over the phone, Peter learns that BG’s enemy is a mysterious woman of unknown age named Serafina Buonaparte, aka “The She-Beast,” as she’s known in business circles. As wealthy as BG, Serafima got her start as a hooker in Marseilles decades ago; the last photos of her appear to be from the ‘20s, and no one knows what she looks like now, though rumor has it she’s had untold facelifts. BG is certain the She-Beast is the enemy who has been trying to take Novitol from him. 

On to more sleaze! Surprised by a “Cat Woman” while snooping around a laboratory (ie a well-endowed woman in a black catsuit with mask and claws), Peter of course has sex with her…only to discover it’s Daphne in disguise. Separately and together the two run afoul of various enemies, from agents of the She-Beast to the CIA to the KGB. This latter is represented by a sexy, busty gal (naturally) who has silicone-injected boobs that secrete – brace yourself – poison “titty-milk.” (She isn’t alone, either – check out “the lady with the killer-tits” in The Enforcer #4!) More sex is to be had throughout, both with ever-eager Daphne and a host of “nymphomaniac” women who were patients of the doctor who created Novitol.

For it turns out Novitol is both a company and a chemical, a serum composed of “sex excretions” of people in the act, combined with injections of their blood, or something. But the scientist who created it, kindly Brit Dr. Chumley, has been kidnapped by the Red Chinese, while meanwhile Daphne’s been kidnapped by the She-Beast’s men. Lawrence, as in the Dark Angel books, really brings on the lurid vibe, with Peter at one point visiting a private club where white women are raped by “Third World” denizens in vengeance for all the ills white people have perpetrated upon them; it’s run by depraved Colonel Dong, yet another villain seeking Novitol.

Indeed, the titular villainess only gets a few pages of text, thanks to all the other characters. Using a contraption of his own device, Peter Lance flies to the She-Devil’s castle in the mountains of Corsica, where he’s promptly captured by the woman’s green-leotarded minions. The She-Devil herself is a ravishing brunette who walks around her castle completely nude save for a piece of golden filament that forms a figure eight around her impressive boobs; we’ll learn she can actually control those impressive boobs, to the point that all she has to do is twitch ‘em and the filament, which is really a weapon, will fire a bullet!

Of course, the two promptly go at it on the shag-carpeted floor of the She-Beast’s quarters, but having allotted so many pages to previous sex scenes Lawrence only devotes a paragraph or two here. And talk about anticlimax (so to speak); post-orgasm the She-Beast withers away to the “old hag” she truly is, the Novitol – which turns out to be a youth serum for the very old, hence why the She-Beast looks so young and sexy – having stopped working for some unspecified reason. From here it’s all too-quick wrapup, with “the hag” turned over to the CIA (who promptly get ready to gang-bang her!) and Peter having quick sex with the rescued Daphne, after which we see Peter back on his UFO, debriefing Dr. Kraag and ready for his next adventure here on Earth.

Lawrence’s writing is good, all things considered, and despite the juvenile tone, the important thing to note is that it’s all still deadly serious to the characters themselves. In this way The She-Beast escapes the mire of those earlier sleaze-spy yarns, like The Man From TOMCAT, where nothing was serious. Lawrence also, as in the Dark Angel books, really captures the groovy, shaggy ‘70s, often rattling off the names of various rock groups (even the New York Dolls get a mention!) and always discussing the funky ‘70s wardrobes of the various characters. In that way the book is almost a time capsule of the ‘70s, same as Lawrence’s other series, and I dig that.