By J. JASON GRANT (Halloway House; 1979)

An enjoyable dispatch from the Halloway House paperback outfit and author J. Jason Grant, of the black western potboiler COAL (1978).  BITCH once again foregrounds a black protagonist, in this case a woman whose eponymous designation, as the author makes clear in his opening dedication, has many meanings: “The common female…The lady, and The Woman…The Epitome of utter Femininity.”  The narrative model is the heist thriller format, offering a sexier, druggier variant on THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1968).

The title character is Dallas Fox, a seductive Las Vegas based black woman whose background—she was raised by a “dedicated whore” in Oakland, CA—parallels that of the protagonist of another Halloway House release: WHOREDAUGHTER by Charlie Avery Harris.  That novel offered a sordid odyssey through ghetto, USA, while Grant takes his narrative in a more picturesque, though still quite sordid, direction.

Dallas begins the book by ripping off some Italian mobsters in Lake Tahoe.  The mob boss, a sleazy type named Ficelli, gets taken by Dallas for $30,000, although he’s not too broken up about it; rather, he simply “wanted her pussy more than a newborn baby wants a tit.”  Completely oblivious to the trouble she’s caused, Dallas shacks up with Raven DeVeaux, a.k.a. the Haitian, who’s apparently “the best master-thief that ever lived,” and affects Dallas so much that upon glimpsing him for the first time “her pussy literally twitched.”

Dallas and Raven promptly hook up, and Raven takes his new lover on a scenic odyssey through Spain (where the infamous Dennis Hopper monologue from TRUE ROMANCE (1993) is foreshadowed in a throwaway observation about how Spain’s populace had their complexion darkened by the conquering Moors), and introduces her to the joys of cocaine, marijuana and bisexuality—with the understanding that Dallas is but one of several women he’s stringing along (warning her “If you’re trying to tell me that you don’t like being one of my women, don’t,” and imploring her not to call him a pimp).  All the while the obsessed Ficelli and his goons are hot on Dallas’ trail.

The novel is eminently readable, with copious amounts of sex, drug use and violence.  Complaining about those things, or the gleeful amorality that pervades the book, won’t get you very far, as the front cover artwork, back cover synopsis (“she grew up in The Life—a Player from birth, a winner by nature, a true bitch who knew what she wanted and took it, no matter what the danger”) and title make its orientation pretty clear.  The major problem lies in the fact that Dallas and Raven are both portrayed as indestructible forces of nature who can handily outwit or outfight any comers, meaning their odyssey contains no urgency or suspense.  It’s clear from the start that these two will find their way out of whatever jam they get into, and the ending is, in direct defiance of all logic, a happy one.