Sin King

by Clyde Allison

PASSION TIME...was any time under the Mediterranean sun for a young American expatriate. Al was just the guy to lie back on the sand & enjoy to the hilt any love that washed his way along the beach. There was plenty of it with Erika, the uninhibited blond Swedish girl, & Nancy, the cornfed Kansas tourist who was out for a ball & Al filled the bill. There were others, a harem of bikini-clad dolls with eager eyes & aching arms, & life was never better. But that was just the beginning, for when word got around that Al was a descendant of the great lover, Casanova, the ball became an orgy that led all the way up to the shocking parties of the Countess of Delphi, parties where Al had to prove he was an insatiable lover!

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Clyde Allison was a pseudonym for William Knoles. Most famous for the 0008 series, Knoles has often been regarded as one of the few great sleaze writers. He mostly published with William Hamling's various houses, writing a book almost every month between 1960 and 1968. Knoles was a reader for Scott Meredith Literary Agency when Meredith began supplying Hamling with manuscripts. Beginning with The Lustful Ones (NB1525) in 1960, Knoles became one of Hamling's most prolific and creative authors. He felt hemmed in by the sleaze genre, but his hopes of writing more literary fiction were consistently quashed by the need for a quick paycheck. As far as hack writing goes, in the early days of sleaze writers were paid extremely well, but Knoles still spent it faster than he could bring it in. Bipolar and by some accounts an alcoholic, Knoles committed suicide in 1970.

Reviews

[Sloweducation · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another fun one by Clyde Allison. It seems like nearly every one I read I end up calling one of my favorites, but this one is really among the more clever Allison novels I've yet read. Al is an American bohemian in Italy. He calls himself a composer, but in nine months he's composed a single chord and he supports himself by scrounging off his uncle. He lives a beach bum lifestyle with two other expatriate bohemians, seducing women and running up his tab at the wine bar. He enjoys himself but feels that he's idling. Famed French director Rudolph Robespierre comes in search of the descendant of Casanova, who supposedly resides in the fishing village where Al lives. Rudolph was a popular director, and has lately turned to high art. "So serious and so artistic were his plays that they made Beckett and Ionesco seem like a couple of slapstick comics." He has run out of money, however, so he plans to mount a musical about the life of Casanova, attracting attention to it with the descendant of Casanova. Al pretends to be Alberto Casanova, Italian fisherman. Rudolph immediately sees through this, but considers Al enterprising and offers him the chance to pretend to be Casanova. He becomes famous. Millions of women want him desperately. His fame, he discovers, is hollow: he is loved only by the middle and lower class, and the upper class has not heard of him. Rudolph has planned to kill him and collect insurance money, but when Al escapes with a broken nose, Rudolph convinces him never to repair his nose in exchange for a million dollars of insurance money. Though he is initially angry at Rudolph, he quickly realizes the wisdom of going after the money and gives in, retiring to a life of beach bum luxury.