Hack’s obsession was still at it height after seeing Frances Fisher and Gregory Harrison perform James Goldman’s play. This book is nasty, even by Hack’s standards.
The Secret Loves of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Category: Music
Los Pecados De Mi Padre
Hack was surprised to discover that his books sold well south of the border, so he wrote this one in Spanish using Google Translate with his musical crush Linda Ronstadt as the heroine. Sadly it sold poorly in Mexico (where it was considered incomprehensible) but it was an unexpected hit in Thailand.
Concertina Madness
Hack went through many phases where he thought that playing a musical instrument would make him irresistible to women. The concertina era was probably the most disastrous where he would confront random women frantically pumping the bellows (which he had no concept of how to actually play) and then proposition them sexually, inevitably receiving a brutal beating from their male companions or from the women themselves (often both). He wrote this highly idealized novelization of the experiment in which the fictional version of himself was infinitely more successful with the ladies than he was in real life.
In the Arms of the Angels
Hack originally wrote this book in 1960 under the title “Horny Angels Come to Earth to Screw Horny Men,” but reworked it after his cover artist Jonny M. told him of his fondness of Ms. McLachlan’s music and especially her song “Angel.” Although Jonny created the cover for the rewrite because he was contractually obligated to, the pornographic nature of the novel drove a rift between the two men that took years to heal.
The Client was a Maneater
Kate Micucci is an actress known for her appearances on such TV shows as “The Big Bang Theory,” “Scrubs” and “Raising Hope,” and for her work with Riki Lindhome as the musical duo Garfunkel & Oates (named after second bananas from other famous musical duos). Hack developed an obsession for her after hearing their comedy song “The Loophole” about some Catholic girls getting around sacrificing their virginity with their boyfriends by engaging in anal sex. Since anal sex is one of the most prominent themes in Hack’s works, he wrote this novel in which Ms. Micucci knocks out John Oates with her ukulele and assumes his identity, taking her down a trail that is all too familiar to anyone who has read Hack’s books. Mercifully (as is frequently the case in his stories), Hack lost focus and the last hundred pages are just an angry rant about his father.
The book sold well within the Bible Belt.
The Fatal Fiddler
Hack attended a concert by a fiddle player named James Cleveland and became so hypnotized by the music that he showed up at Cleveland’s house that night for instructions on who Cleveland wanted him to kill. Hack wrote the outline for this book while he was waiting to be bailed out for that.
The Big Sleazy
One of Hack’s most exciting detective novels. He was sued by the estate of Raymond Chandler because the book is a shameless rip-off of “The Big Sleep” but the suit fell apart in court because both Hack and Chandler’s novels had equally incomprehensible stories.
The Carnal Candidate
Hack was contracted to write a teen-focused novelization of the hit TV series The Partridge Family to make a few quick exploitation bucks for the network. Only about a thousand were shipped out before someone noticed that he actually came up with a hardcore piece of smut about the singing clan’s oldest daughter Laurie’s sordid affair with a late middle-aged crooked politician. Considered a collector’s item today, it’s a surprisingly good book except for the forty pages or so where Hack inexplicably moves the story to a swamp in Louisiana so that the illicit lovers can have an anal sex marathon in the politician’s secret BDSM cabin.
Rock ‘n Roll Gal
Hack’s second novel was also the second to be reissued by John Kane with a new cover by Jonny M. and was also a smash hit. Hack always loathed Rock ‘n Roll music and blamed it for society’s downfall. This is the story of Lacie, a good girl who listens to her first Bill Haley and His Comets record and quickly descends into a world of reefer and anal sex.