They Wanted to Sell Books

The title of this book was supposed to be “Mob Informant” but the copywriter who came up with the text for the cover took his conversation with publisher John Kane too literally and laid out this instead. Hack was angry until the new title sold three times as many copies as expected.

Fugitive from the Mob

A fugitive from the mob hides out in the home of a gorgeous, reclusive widow who makes him her sex slave in return for her protection. One by one, the mobsters are all killed off so she has her butler knock on her door from time to time pretending to be them in order to continue the rouse. When he finally figures it out, the fugitive turns the tables by making the widow his sex slave.

You’ve just been saved 147 pages of mind-numbingly boring reading.

Friday the 13th

Hack wrote this spy thriller with high hopes of selling the movie rights, starting a franchise that would spring to the collective mind every time a Friday the 13th appeared on the calendar. When he learned that there was already a series of horror films based on that strategy, he made another of his many failed suicide attempts by jumping out a window but broke his fall by landing on the woman who would become his sixth wife. After they were divorced three months later, Hack said that he wished that he’d stuck with his original title of “Goldfinger.”