Vintage Pulp | Dec 27 2019 |
This pretty orange cover for Ken Barry's Executive Boudoir is better than average, we think, which is fitting because the book is better than average sleaze. Often these tales are terribly written, but Barry tries and succeeds in building a realistic backstory dealing with a battle over a corporate presidency between a patriarch's inexperienced daughter, Lisa, and Jim, the VP who always expected the role would be his one day. Complicating matters is the fact that the two are in a long term relationship. When Lisa supersedes her ambitious boyfriend he's greatly dismayed, but things go from bad to worse when an oily opportunist begins super seeding Lisa. It turns into musical beds with a big business flavor, but some fairly realistic emotion to carry the concept off. The book's main flaws are its presumption that women can't run businesses, and its stupidly pat ending. But you can't ask for too much in this genre. It works fine, for the most part. The copyright on this is 1962 and the cover is uncredited.