By TINY ALICE (Brandon House; 1970)
This was the follow-up smut novel by Tiny Alice (a.k.a. Alice Ramirez) to her infamous Essex House publication THE GEEK (1969). Based on an idea dreamt up at a pot party by Harlan Ellison, THE GEEK was described by Philip Jose Farmer as “An adventure novel told by a sex bent mini-pygmy.”
NAKED IN HER COFFIN was likewise supposed to have been an Essex House publication, but the imprint was shuttered, and its editor Brian Kirby fired, before that could occur. Thus, the book ended up seeing print as a Brandon House Library Edition (Kirby’s other major imprint) in 1970, before it too went belly-up. Furthering the bad luck, this book was supposed to be reprinted in 1997 by Masquerade Books, but I’ve found no evidence that said reprinting ever occurred.
The novel, in any event, doesn’t work. Taking the form of a grade-Z horror-fest, shot through with ham-fisted mythological references, it’s most interesting for the oft-outrageous erotic content, which showcases a real flair for the outrageous.
That flair is on full display in the opening chapters, detailing acts of necrophilia perpetrated by Hermes, a cannily named New Orleans based taxidermist who steals the corpse of a young woman from a mortuary. He immediately falls head over heels in love with the dead woman (despite not having known her when she was alive) and seeks to become the Orpheus to her Eurydice. Luckily for Hermes, Marie Laveau, an ancient voodoo queen, needs the seed of a necrophile to regain her youthful appearance and attain immortality, in exchange for which she promises to resurrect Hermes’ dead love.
The resulting narrative is simplistic and repetitive. I lost track of all the potions and powders the characters ingest, and of the occasions they die and return to life; adding to the awfulness is an ironic twist ending that’s straight out of the pulp era.
NAKED IN HER COFFIN is ultimately most interesting as a bridge between its author’s early career as a pornographer and her later one as a writer of romantic potboilers (published under the nom-de-plume “Candice Arkham”). Two of those later books, DEADLY FRIENDSHIP (1973) and ANCIENT EVIL (1977), qualify as standout examples of neo-gothic excess, and deserve to be tracked down. NAKED IN HER COFFIN you can skip.
(Note: The Bedlam Files cannot locate a link for novelist Alice Ramirez or for her pen name, Candace Arkham.)