No Wooden Overcoat by John Paddy Carstairs (Consul Books, 1961)

Good grief. Not that I'd wish to undermine my feminist principles for the sake of a cheap gag about a pulp cover, but is there an emoticon for *wolf whistle*?


Ah, for the dark days when you could stick a gratuitous leggy blonde on the front of your book, and then dismiss an entire continental coastline as being "vice-ridden" on the back, without anyone batting an eyelid.

This book also boasts perhaps the greatest opening line in my whole library.... at least until you get to the third paragraph and realise John Paddy Carstairs threw it in for precisely that reason, and is actually hellbent on opening proceedings with a far duller scenario;