Tue 13 Apr 2021
ROGER BLAKE (John Felix Trimble) – Commie Sex Trap. Art Enterprises/Boudoir, paperback original, 1963.
Let me confess up front, I cannot resist a book with a title like Commie Sex Trap. And having said that, I might add that back in my college days I was assigned books that seemed to me no better-written than this, and certainly much duller.
Not that Commie Sex Trap is much good, but there are indications here and there that Blake/Trimble could write with some style, if the spirit moved him. Lines like: “Long arms moved up to his neck and pulled him down to the twisting mounds of flesh that played an undulating game of mobility with her restive body.†Show flickers of talent, and the story is set up reasonably well.
Ah yes, the Set-Up. Sgt Joe Guthrie works in the decoding section of US Army headquarters in West Berlin, and he’s involved with Erika Lang, a blonde fraulein with parents in the Eastern sector. The relationship is against Army regs, but these kids are in love and whaddaya gonna do?
Well it seems somebody knows just what to do. Guthrie shows up one night at Erika’s room, and walks into a situation straight out of Woolrich: Erika is missing, her clothes and personal effects are gone, and the bed they shared is occupied by a voluptuous American redhead who says she’s been there for weeks — a story backed up by the landlord, even under duress from Joe. Then, before you can say achtung, the landlord’s killed and Joe is in the clutches of Russian spies who offer to return Erika and keep Joe from being fingered for murder — in exchange for decoding room secrets.
From here on out, it reads like a Men’s Sweat magazine, as Joe bounces from improbably-cantilevered seductresses to neolithic Russian agents snarling threats in fluent gutteralese and playing patty-cake with our hero’s face.
As for Sex… well there isn’t any till page 90 of a 160-page book. Up to then, it’s just a plethora of scantily-clad ladies flinging themselves, knees akimbo, at the manly GI, only to have things interrupted by spies jumping out of closets and the like. We get a guest appearance of a Rosa Klebb clone out of From Russia with Love, a bit of torture, some slug-festing, and all the sort of thing teenage minds of all ages once considered “adult.â€
As such, Commie Sex Trap is just about perfect, but readers with a mental age over 15 should approach with caution.
April 13th, 2021 at 2:26 pm
Surprisingly enough, this book has been reviewed once before online. Not too surprisingly, it’s on James Reasoner’s blog:
https://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2015/03/forgotten-books-commie-sex-trap-roger.html
In the comments over there, there’s quite a bit of additional bibliographic import, some provided by me.
April 13th, 2021 at 7:35 pm
These books are as much snapshots of a time period as any photograph or memoir. The writing is competent in a workman like way, and sometimes a little better than that.
The set up isn’t bad, they were called “Honey Traps” and both sides used them, the Soviets even had a special school for “Swallows” trained for so called sexpionage.
Ah, those were simpler days. Not better, but simpler, and that plot is still around in one form or another.
April 13th, 2021 at 8:56 pm
Probably good to pair this with Maxwell Grant’s ‘The Red Menace’ (The Shadow, #7)
April 13th, 2021 at 10:02 pm
The title seems to fit, but can you tell us more? I haven’t read a Shadow novel in over 35 years.
April 16th, 2021 at 8:47 pm
As some of the above comments suggest,this sounds like a very dated book,a product of the cold war 50s and 60s. On the other hand some aspects of the plot and characters might have survived and evolved in other cold war dramas, such as the novels of LeCarre and series like THE AMERICANS. Your review is very lively and shines a light what otherwise might be invisible.