By CON SELLERS (Novel Books; 1961)

Behold: emerging from the smut book underground of the 1960s, the “latest sellout” by the prolific trash-meister Con Sellers (1922-1992), a novel its publishers predicted was “going to make headlines from one end of the country to the other!”  Obviously that didn’t occur, but you have to admire such misplaced enthusiasm (as evidenced by the title’s three—!!!—exclamation points).

…a novel its publishers predicted was “going to make headlines from one end of the country to the other!” 

As the back cover makes sure to inform us, Sellers allegedly spent a week working in an actual female psycho ward, with this book being the supposed record of what he witnessed.  Sellers’ depiction of life in a mental hospital does indeed have the ring of direct experience, as in the detailing of the then-in vogue practice of electro-shock therapy: “After the salve was smeared on Bee’s temples just at the hairline, I attached the electrodes and buckled the heavy straps into place over the girl’s middle.  When the shock hits them, there’s always a convulsion.”

Karen Gregg is a seductive nurse in the female psycho ward of the California based Elno State Hospital.  Her first person recollections alternate with those of her companions, each of whom is afflicted by a distinct, easily defined mental issue.  Thus, each is a suspect when a series of killings commence.

There’s Bee Dudley, a nymphomaniac possessed by “whatever terrible urge that drove her to the mechanical act of physical love with any object that happened to be handy and somehow phallic”; Ceil Bradford, an oversensitive beauty who suffers from unchecked aggression; Joe Cort, a lecherous orderly who can’t keep his hands to himself; and Dan Garry, the none-too-virtuous head shrink, who lusts after Karen.  Karen herself is another suspect, as her sexual exhibitionism rivals that of Bee, and she has a highly checkered past involving a suspicious death.

This being a hastily written smut paperback, nuance is not something we can reasonably expect. 

This being a hastily written smut paperback, nuance is not something we can reasonably expect.  All the narrative voices, both male and female, sound the same, and the characters’ many psychological conundrums are left mostly unresolved (not least because those characters all tend to die before that can happen), with the prose tending toward the purple end of the spectrum (“I cried for Jerry, for Auntie, for cherry blossoms dripping enchantment on a summer wind”) and the emphasis on lurid sensation.

Such sensation encompasses many lovingly described killings, and sexual content that won’t raise too many eyebrows these days but was quite startling by 1961 standards.  No, FEMALE PSYCHO WARD!!! will never be mistaken for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, and nor does it satisfy as a whodunit, but as the exuberant blast of unadorned sleaze it is this book works just fine.