washing, and in fact nothing more nor less than cruel and inhuman pun-

ishment.

-Tad Bruce

NAKED TO THE NIGHT by K. B. Raul, Paperback Library, 1964, 175 pp., $3.00 (hard cover).

Rick Talbot, a good looking, small town boy, goes to New York to elude his stepfather's heavy hand. He is seduced, of course, and "made into" a homosexual. He steals a car and drives to Hollywood, where he becomes, in quick order, call boy, kept boy, film star, and corpse.

The blurb would have us believe that this novel begins "where City of Night leaves off." Rot. I am strongly tempted to believe that the author does know his subject and does not merely possess a vivid imagination and a well-thumbed copy of the Rechy book, largely because Naked to the Night is poorly written, filled with cliches, bad grammar and misspellings.

Yet the trite, routine-tragic ending, and the cheap production of the volume itself would indicate that the publisher's target was the dirty book trade. An attempt has been made to lend authority to this hack job with an introduction by a Dr. S. U. Lawton, who deserves a prize for packing much drivel into little space.

-George Francis

ROUGH TRADE by Lou Rand, and SUMMER IN SODOM by Edwin Fey, Argyle Books, Los Angeles, 1964. $3.95 each.

As a book reviewer I make it an iron-clad rule to read at least 100 pages of any book that I am assigned to review, under the premise that the author, no matter how bad he is, is bound to write at least one good sentence. Regrettably, that one good sentence does not appear in either of these books. Mustering Olympian

courage, I was able to read all of Rough Trade. However, I was not able to finish Summer in Sodom. This book is so thoroughly and unrelentingly bad that it has conquered me. And that is no mean task.

Both these books are written on the assumption that the average bookbuying homosexual is a gullible, slavering, sub-normal cretin with absolutely no taste. Lou Rand and Edwin Fey are obviously pseudonyms for the same man, since it is highly unlikely that two different people could write as badly as this. The characters in these books are not people, people, but gigantic robots, bigger than life. They speak at top volume, and they move in monstrous strides. But for all their bluff and show, they are absolutely silly.

Summer in Sodom is about three perfectly-built Greek gods who cavort on a summer beach somewhere. Each of the boys is perfectand, consequently, not human at all, since a basic human factor is imperfection. But these boys move their perfect robot bodies and speak their perfect pre-taped robot language. In short, everything is faked. After the first chapter the reader knows that he is being condescended to and patronized. Unless he's a masochist, he throws the book down in indignation and disgust.

Rough Trade is a reprint of a little paperback book that was originally titled Gay Detective. It is about a gay detective. Or a detective who acts gay to get in with the gay set where a murder has been com-

mitted over a dope ring centered

around a bath house in San Francisco (quaintly called "Bay City" in the book). In this book, too, the people are merely robots. The book is so dull and silly that the reader doesn't even care if the murderer is captured. And when he is captured the reader is so bored that he doesn't even re-