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Hired Lover
You're Mike Callahan. Thirty years old. Ruggedly handsome and drifting from nowhere to noplace. Every girl you meet is like every other girl. All wanting and all giving the same thing. Life just seems to be standing still for you.
AND THEN YOU MEET KITTY GREY!
Kitty is more than a beautiful woman with an unbelievable figure. She's the one who is for you. The only one. She's the one you have to have.
She's also the one who's married.
Kitty's husband is David Grey, an old man of sixty, wealthy, jealous and very sick. He can't satisfy her. But you can. And you do.
Not once but over and over again.
Then comes the showdown. You've got to have Kitty, not just for a night. Not just now and then. But for always. But there's only one way to get her, if you're willing to pay the price.
YOU'RE WILLING!
AND THEN YOU MEET KITTY GREY!
Kitty is more than a beautiful woman with an unbelievable figure. She's the one who is for you. The only one. She's the one you have to have.
She's also the one who's married.
Kitty's husband is David Grey, an old man of sixty, wealthy, jealous and very sick. He can't satisfy her. But you can. And you do.
Not once but over and over again.
Then comes the showdown. You've got to have Kitty, not just for a night. Not just now and then. But for always. But there's only one way to get her, if you're willing to pay the price.
YOU'RE WILLING!
176 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1959
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 28, 2025
Mike Callahan is a three-time loser who came to Chicago without a clue of what he can dream up next and ends up being a driving instructor. It’s not much of a future,but instead of the usual teenager, Kitty Grey waltzes into his car and his life will never be the same. He explains: “WHEN I SAW her come out of the building and head for my car, I thought she was just another dizzy blonde, but I changed my mind when she got in with me. She wasn’t just another blonde. There was something mean about her and she was beautiful. I could tell she had a lot of fire in the furnace when she looked at me and smiled. It was one of those sarcastic smiles that made you want to slap her hard. But you wanted to kiss her, too. You wanted to kiss those big soft lips of hers and then slap her down and kiss her again.”
Kitty has Mike drooling over her long legs and, before he knows it, she’s convinced him to be her husband’s new chauffeur. That is, chauffeur to her old, fat, balding husband. Mike is given the little love nest apartment over the garage and, without anyone being the wiser, she’s up there every other night, melting his soul. Pretty soon, Mike is suggesting Kitty walk out on her rich husband and sling hash in a rundown restaurant Mike saw advertised.
Anyone who’s read any pulp fiction knows it’s Postman time James Cain style that comes next as Kitty can’t give up all she’s got and just live on love. Mike has to man up and take out the husband. “But if I had been smart I would have dropped the whole thing like a chunk of brimstone,” Mike tells us. You know, you just know, Kitty is going to want Mike Togo all the way with this. And what they come up with their two great brains is a pretend robbery where Mike blows the guy’s brains out with a gun which he quickly hands off to Kitty. But when Mike pulls over, feigning engine trouble, the cops are right there and it all goes to hell.
Unlike Postman, the focus here is not so much on the psychological guilt and distrust between these two lovebirds as it is Mike’s foolhardiness in trusting Kitty and his slow downfall.
There’s also a side story where Mike plays Sir Galahad to Ruth, whose sister is a stripper. He wants Ruth not to fall into a tramp life and treats her as the innocent angel. She’s the foil to Kitty though the two never meet.
“Hired Lover” is more of a straight ahead noir pulp than the general sleaze pulp Hitt often put out.
Kitty has Mike drooling over her long legs and, before he knows it, she’s convinced him to be her husband’s new chauffeur. That is, chauffeur to her old, fat, balding husband. Mike is given the little love nest apartment over the garage and, without anyone being the wiser, she’s up there every other night, melting his soul. Pretty soon, Mike is suggesting Kitty walk out on her rich husband and sling hash in a rundown restaurant Mike saw advertised.
Anyone who’s read any pulp fiction knows it’s Postman time James Cain style that comes next as Kitty can’t give up all she’s got and just live on love. Mike has to man up and take out the husband. “But if I had been smart I would have dropped the whole thing like a chunk of brimstone,” Mike tells us. You know, you just know, Kitty is going to want Mike Togo all the way with this. And what they come up with their two great brains is a pretend robbery where Mike blows the guy’s brains out with a gun which he quickly hands off to Kitty. But when Mike pulls over, feigning engine trouble, the cops are right there and it all goes to hell.
Unlike Postman, the focus here is not so much on the psychological guilt and distrust between these two lovebirds as it is Mike’s foolhardiness in trusting Kitty and his slow downfall.
There’s also a side story where Mike plays Sir Galahad to Ruth, whose sister is a stripper. He wants Ruth not to fall into a tramp life and treats her as the innocent angel. She’s the foil to Kitty though the two never meet.
“Hired Lover” is more of a straight ahead noir pulp than the general sleaze pulp Hitt often put out.
September 17, 2024
There are similarities in the plots of Hired Lover and Summer Hotel, a novel Hitt wrote under his own name for Beacon Books in 1958. The two books are both of what has become known as the James M. Cain variety, a femme fatale who entices her lover into killing her husband.
But even though many authors, including Hitt himself, had been down this road before, you don’t anticipate the twist in the plots coming in either of these novels. What’s unique and specific about Orrie Hitt’s version of this love triangle is not that the wife is beautiful and much younger—she is—and the husband is older and sickly—he is—but that the husbands in both these novels are diabetics. It’s around this fact that the plots to kill the husband revolve.
But even though many authors, including Hitt himself, had been down this road before, you don’t anticipate the twist in the plots coming in either of these novels. What’s unique and specific about Orrie Hitt’s version of this love triangle is not that the wife is beautiful and much younger—she is—and the husband is older and sickly—he is—but that the husbands in both these novels are diabetics. It’s around this fact that the plots to kill the husband revolve.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews