The Baroness

The Baroness.

White Flesh Black Market: Spies in the House of Lust is about three super-duper mega-over-achieving spy chicks who thwart a villain so evil, no counties espionage outfit could stop them. The three women, Porsche Worthington Marlow, Mercedes Merlin and Aston Knight are modelled after three of my favourite super women:  Modesty Blaise, The Baroness and Emma Peel. Here is a little bit of wiki detail on the amazing Baroness, probably the least known of my three homages.

(Taken directly from Wikipedia.  I've left the source numbers in to relate to the original article, which has far more information. Please visit the original site.)

The Baroness is the name of a short-lived series of espionage novels by Paul Kenyon. Eight novels in the series were published from 1974 to 1975 by Pocket Books. This series of books profiles the adventures of Baroness Penelope St. John-Orsini, a voluptuous international playgirl who is also lethal secret superspy.

Eight Baroness novels were published within the space of one year (1974–1975) by Pocket Books, all credited to Paul Kenyon, a house pseudonym used by book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel for Donald Moffitt. The book covers were illustrated by Hector Garrido. The titles were:

1. The Ecstasy Connection
2. Diamonds Are for Dying
3. Death Is a Ruby Light
4. Hard-core Murder
5. Operation Doomsday
6. Sonic Slave
7. Flicker of Doom
8. Black Gold

In 1975, Futura reprinted only the first four books in England, with different covers.

French translations were published in 1975 by Eroscope under a different series name, "Penny", the nickname of the protagonist in the novels. Eroscope published all eight novels listed above and a ninth, Photo-Phobie, which was never published in English.

Due to the high volume of output in such a short period of time under the Kenyon name, speculations abound whether Kenyon was one author or if this was a pseudonym for more than one writer, a common practice of using house pseudonyms in adventure fiction at that time. Some authors have said that Paul Kenyon was indeed a "house" name used by a book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel, of Book Creations, Inc.^[1] However, Donald Moffitt admitted that he was the sole author of the eight published Baroness novels.^[2]

Engel contracted and paid for three more Baroness titles, but these were never published.^[3] Peter Mayer of Simon and Schuster, a division of Pocket Books, canceled the series after the three manuscripts were written. He thought that action/adventure series were not selling enough in numbers to keep it going.^[1] The unpublished titles were:

1. A Black Hole to Die In by Donald Moffitt
2. Death is a Copycat by Donald Moffitt
3. Quicktime Death by Robert Vardeman in 1976

Published at a time when male characters such as Nick Carter-Killmaster and Mack Bolan dominated the paperback spy genre, The Baroness series distinguished itself by featuring an equally lethal and promiscuous female character.

The novels' sex scenes contain many examples of the graphically poetic pulp tradition:

• "She opened her mouth and the tongue, like a sly little animal, darted in."
• "His tool grew in her hand until it was a rigid club, hot and heavy to the touch..."
• "The livid pipe still protruded straight out, glistening with their mingled secretions."
• "She flicked it downward to the slippery underside and found it muscularly imprisoned."
• "Penelope felt an electric shock travel downward through the center of her body to where she was plastered wetly to the padded barstool."
• "They lay side by side like exhausted wrestlers... a single sparkling droplet trying to ooze out of his blunt tip."