George H. Smith's Two Sleazy Occult Men of Mystery

George H. Smith isn't George Harmon Smith who wrote Men's Adventure in the 70's and sleaze in the 50's and 60's. Though confusingly they BOTH wrote "swamp noir" for a bit. Past the soft-core type sleaze  George Henry Smith wrote he is mostly known as a science fiction author. In the early 60's he started two series for Pike books, the St. Germain novels about a secret agent who may be 1000 years old and writing as Jan Hudson the Jake Reynolds, the occultist/part-time private eye. These a quick books; I read both of them in maybe three sittings with little effort, they have such a kooky-Psychotronic vibe, like a VERY adult Men's Sweat Mag version of "Scooby-Doo." 

"Baroness of Blood" was first on the chopping block. Since there's so few pages in the book Smith introduces us to Count St. Germain instantly enjoying a striptease in a club. He's a quasi-famous dude who lectures and hob-knobs and who may be like 1,000 years old. Also a spy. He's duped by a hot chick and winds up in a Castle full of Nazi's including the titular (pun intended) Baroness of Blood. There's a Little Person Nazi who's married to the lesbian Baroness of Blood and a shell-shocked Nazi War Hero brother that needs St. Germain's hypnotizing powers to take command of the second-coming of the Nazi-assholes. Along the way St. Germain sleeps with the two only other women in the Castle, dodges questions about his age, hypnotizes people, sleeps with the women again and eventually kicks some ass. 

The book was in fourth gear the whole time, as St. Germain (kinda a dick) bounced from bed to bed and pokes around the spooky castle to uncover the evil plan. St. Germain is very much in the pulp-hero mode, hints of the master-magician type including having an army of Gurkha's but at it's heart this is very much a 60's pulp-spy novel with a dash of the old-school Swashbuckler. The plot could have very easily been a "Nick Carter: Killmaster" or the like. Not that I'm complaining.  I had a lot of fun with it, of course my mind was checked at the front cover. St. Germain was a bit TOO much of a Man of a Mystery type, you get to know like nothing about him, which worked for the whole "1,000 years old bit" since you don't really know the truth until halfway through and then maybe its different in the end. It sounds like I'm complaining but that was the most fun. Spies and quasi-comic-book-fantasy rarely get mixed so this was pretty refreshing. 

The St. Germain Series: 

 Baroness of Blood (1961) {later issued as Beautiful but Brutal}

 Soft Lips on Black Velvet (1961)

 The Virgin Agent (1967)  Written as Jerry Jason

"Love Cult" written under the name Jan Hudson was the superior of the two. Jake Reynolds is the classic Peter Gunn-era type P.I. who works part-time busting cults, voodoo and other supernatural shit all while running his occult bookshop, living above it and having a swank pool outback for, you know, the ladies. One night Jake gets picked up by a lady driven to a temple and they bang. Afterwards she tells him she was only doing to appease the Goddess of the temple and she wants to know nothing about Jake. Jake leaves, confused but overall happy with the experience. But the private eye in his head wants to know more about the dame. Sometime later a Hollywood Starlet comes into his shop cause someone's trying to kill her with voodoo after she got wrapped into an all-movie-star-cult-orgy one night. Which happens all the time, I'm sure. It all wraps up together like a good 60's P.I. novel. Jake's tough, snappy with the patter and gives us some interesting tidbits about voodoo and the occult, which he believes in but not in the supernatural sense, just in the sense that its spooky shit to those who believe and it can make people do crazy things or end up dead out of fear. Jake uses fear and the intimidation of the occult to rain terror down on his enemies. He still shoots at them with a .45 too though. This all boils down into an over-the-top final fight for their lives with a "monster." Great stuff.

Jake is more fleshed out then St. Germain. No where close to three-dimensional, but hey, this is a stroke-book. The occult-angle makes this book stand out in the sea of private eye books of the era. The plot is convoluted and highly unlikely but it's written smooth and clean. I'm sure the books were written real quickly but they don't have the shoddy writing of some books of this type, Smith keeps you flipping pages to see the awesomeness that comes next. 

Jake Reynolds Series:

Love Cult (1961)

Love Goddess (1961)

All-in-all I'm glad I jumped head first into the George H. Smith pool. I did the crazy book-buyer thing and picked up a chunk of books before I read a word of his, but this time it paid off. I'm certainly glad to have the rest of the two short-lived series at my disposal. You'd have to have a love of these early Men's Adventure/Sleaze books to enjoy them I'd think. There's plenty in here that its completely inappropriate for today, again its a stroke-book, but if you can get past the terrible sexual politics of the day then they are some fun books. I can picture a St. Germain Eurospy film series made in the 60's, starring maybe Ken Clark or Ray Danton, probably directed by Jess Franco, in-between his Fu Manchu pictures. Sadly, like all the stuff I seem to dig they aren't super easy to come by, but not impossible. In fact "Love Goddess" seems to be available as a cheap ebook, maybe not legally but its on Amazon nonetheless. If you like some of the regular B-level spy or detective pulp with a new spin on it, give 'em a try.