Sex, Pseuds, and Spare Cash

While Curt Purcell’s comments about a pair of “pseudonymous sleaze” novels--Lust Dream (1962), by Dean Hudson, and Harlot Hater (1965), by Don Holliday--at Beyond the Groovy Age of Horror are interesting in and of themselves, what makes his write-up especially noteworthy is Purcell’s end note, in which he states that Lust Dream “was almost certainly written by hard-boiled master Evan Hunter/Ed McBain.”

Following up on this at his own blog, author, editor, and critic Ed Gorman explains: “A number of now famous writers”--including Lawrence Block--“did the dirty back in the ’60s. Most of them don’t want to talk about these books now and I understand that. Certainly there are stories of mine I hope never surface again. Not because I’m shamed of them but simply because they’re so bad. As you may have noticed, I’m not famous. I don’t have people digging around in dusty magazine stores for my men’s magazine junk. But prominent writers do and I’m sure it gets tiresome telling [fans] they just don’t want to talk about it. (And as always this qualifier--these books are to porno what Dick Cheney is to mental stability.)”

Both Gorman and Purcell point us to a February 2006 issue of the Webzine eI and an essay by Earl Kemp in which he recalls the machinations Hunter went through to keep his identity as a spinner of pornographic tales a secret, even asking that he be paid in cash for his work, with no records kept. Evidently, Hunter--writing in character as Ed McBain--later denied being Hudson, but Kemp passes that off simply as an older, famous wordsmith “cleaning up his past.” An accompanying pair of articles by Lynn Munroe (“The First 20 Dean Hudson Novels”) and Tobe Rinkler (“APB: Dean Hudson”) further flesh out the character and talents of Hunter’s secret pseud.