Lust, desire, crime and betrayal in the emerging world of television in the 1950s and early 1960s are explored in these three lost, paperback noir classics.
TELEVISION TRAMP by Evans McKnight
A racy, hard-boiled, torrid novel of sex and betrayal in the early days of television.
Beautiful Eve Tremaine will do almost anything, and sleep with anyone of any sex, to become a success in broadcasting. She’s not alone. Her rivals for stardom, and more importantly the attentions of Mike Carlyle, the “boy wonder of broadcasting,” include the “pretty little mantrap” Sally Kaye and the “long-limbed mantrap” Mary Sweet. But if Eve wants to get even further in the business, she needs to win over the all-powerful producer Basil Womack. To do that, she will have to seduce Marietta Ming, “the aging by superbly attractive Oriental actress,” who is rumored to be an expert in the dark secrets of the lesbian love, which Eve knows is “the path to true ecstasy” for any woman…
The book was originally released as Television Tramp in 1952 with the tantalizing tagline “A novel of wickedness and unconventional love.” It was republished in 1960 by a different publisher as She Made Her Bed, with the new tagline “A novel of unconventional love in the off-beat world of radio and TV.” The unconventional love in both versions is, of course, lesbian sex, although those scenes are ridiculously tame and utterly conventional by today’s standards.
THE BIG QUESTION by John Kenneth
New York City. The late 1950s. Live TV. When a prime-time quiz show win could be the difference between poverty and prosperity…
And Peter Roland, making his way through the levels of difficulty, toward a half-mill win and stardom, is the perfect contestant for audience appeal and high ratings: Young, clean-cut, photogenic, smart. Especially in the wake of all the attention the producers and their team pour into burnishing that on-camera image. But his real life is proving as challenging.
Because unknown even to the image-makers—Peter Roland is a man of long-held secrets, whose ambition has invited a series of unexpected choices; some tempting, some troubling, all fateful. The wrong secret revealed, the wrong choice made, and success can instantly become scandal—for him and for the future of the very quiz show investing in his participation. Which makes The Big Question more than just the final-round, big money ask…but whether Peter Roland has it in him to navigate a prolifically perilous path to victory.
BED OF DESIRE by Doug Duperrault
A tumultuous novel of beatnik love, unbridled lust, and the torrid world of the TV.
It’s the late 1950s. Jane Martin’s skirt-chasing husband cheats on her, but she isn’t exactly faithful herself, feeding her insatiable passions by bedding her lusty boss at the TV station and indulging in forbidden ecstasy with an eager, teenage lover. It’s an unsustainable, high-wire act that will soon send her tumbling to ruin…
Douglas Duperrault, Evans McKnight, John Kenneth /
Anthologies, Crime Fiction
