I posted a review of Robert Crane’s The Sergeant and the Queen here on the Mystery*File blog not too long ago, and I kind of had the idea that it may have been the longest review ever written for either Crane or his real life persona, a writer by the name of Con Sellers. Authors of paperback originals didn’t get much coverage back in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, long before the Internet and blogs came along, that’s for sure.

   But if my review was the longest at the time, it certainly isn’t now. The people at the Conelrad website have just uploaded a review of a sleazy piece of cold war fiction called Red Rape, by Con Sellers, that has to be twice as long as the one I did of Crane’s book.

   Excerpted from the second paragraph of the review is the following:  

     “The testosterone-bursting speculative adventure begins – literally – with a Russian gang rape and submachine gun fire from the capitalist hero and rescuer of women, Danny Fare. Sellers’ immediately exposes the reader to the grim near-future realities of an America under the occupation of the ‘Reds’ or, as they are frequently referred to, ‘Ivans.'”

   You’ll have to read the rest of the review on the Conelrad frequency (follow the second link above) along with a huge image of the cover. Some additional details are given about Sellers’ life, along with a bibliography of some of the work he did that weren’t chronicled here.

   And, for those of you who may be wondering, here is part of the Conelrad mission statement:

Conelrad

   What is CONELRAD? CONELRAD is a site devoted to ATOMIC CULTURE past and present but without all the distracting and pedantic polemics.

   The end-all five-o-clock shadow CONELRAD is the creation of writers who grew up in the shadow of the BOMB and all its attendant pop culture fallout. We wish to share our collected interest, experience and obsession with this strange era and thereby provide as much information as possible to the public.