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Wanted: Sin Men
Twisted passions amok in a night of lust!
190 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1963
About the author
Don Holliday
124 books5 followersA pseudonym used by Lawrence Block, Victor J. Banis, Sam Dodson, Hal Dresner & Donald E. Westlake. Books positively identified as any of the above will also have his name in the author field.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 26, 2019
Wanted: Sin Men was my second David Case sleaze/softcore book and is a good example of the benefits of writing in such a lurid genre. Since the audience was guaranteed to some extent for this early 1960s smut by the genre and cover art, the writer had some real freedom to just tell a story about troubled folks. In this case, those folks are five very different escaped convicts who banded together underneath an alpha male, aptly named "Bull", after a prison bus wrecked en route from a work detail.
The book explores these five erstwhile prisoners, both their past crimes and their current transgressions, and each individual is quite distinctly rendered. A lot of the prose details the concerns and irritations and hopes and shames circling inside of each man's head.
The sexual component in this book is far less than in Case's Beast of Shame (and most sleaze/softcore books I've read), and had these few sequences been toned down or removed this could have been a Gold Medal Paperback, albeit a loose and depraved one. Much of what ensues in Wanted: Sin Men has a real time urgency with the quintet on the run, so it's always engaging.
While the conclusion of one story/character feels contrived, the storylines of Bull and Sonny are very evocative, somber, and unpleasant experiences. An encounter one man has with a wretched prostitute named Hazel ranks amongst the most squalid illicit sequences I've yet read, and the final moments with Sonny and Bull are quite memorable and emotional in very different (and surprising) ways.
Under the guise of smut, Case wrote a propulsive, unpredictable, and occasionally agonizing novel that may appeal to fans of Jim Thompson, the cult film Welcome Home, Soldier Boys, and those Vin Packer (read: Marijane Meaker) Gold Medals about "troubled folks."
The book explores these five erstwhile prisoners, both their past crimes and their current transgressions, and each individual is quite distinctly rendered. A lot of the prose details the concerns and irritations and hopes and shames circling inside of each man's head.
The sexual component in this book is far less than in Case's Beast of Shame (and most sleaze/softcore books I've read), and had these few sequences been toned down or removed this could have been a Gold Medal Paperback, albeit a loose and depraved one. Much of what ensues in Wanted: Sin Men has a real time urgency with the quintet on the run, so it's always engaging.
While the conclusion of one story/character feels contrived, the storylines of Bull and Sonny are very evocative, somber, and unpleasant experiences. An encounter one man has with a wretched prostitute named Hazel ranks amongst the most squalid illicit sequences I've yet read, and the final moments with Sonny and Bull are quite memorable and emotional in very different (and surprising) ways.
Under the guise of smut, Case wrote a propulsive, unpredictable, and occasionally agonizing novel that may appeal to fans of Jim Thompson, the cult film Welcome Home, Soldier Boys, and those Vin Packer (read: Marijane Meaker) Gold Medals about "troubled folks."
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review