Created by Kent Hadley
Nudge-nudge, wink-wink?
This is more like nudge-nudge, clunk-clunk.
BUNNY QUEST is “the best built cop in town,” a “gorgeous hunk of woman in a man’s trade” according to the cover in her one and only appearance in Bunny Quest: Private Eyeful, a sleazy and decidedly unliberated 1966 paperback original from Bee-Line, the porno paperback house.
Yep, the title’s a rip-off from Henry Kane’s first Marla Trent book, and if you thought that that book was a little smirky, wait’ll you get a load of this one. Imagine a Shell Scott/Honey West rip-off that replaces cheerfully bawdy wit with pure wankery, and cuts all the double-entendres exactly in half.
Believe me, there’s nothing remotely subtle about this book. Or witty. Or even anything particularly arousing. Bunny, we are told, is “one of the most efficient private detectives in the business,” a vivacious, 28 year-old with “mammoth breasts” who “doesn’t give a medium-sized bowl of moose pee what anyone thought of her.” Working out of Los Angeles with her partner, expert criminalogist Marmaduke Dice, her alleged speciality is divorce, but her real passion, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to discover, is passion. In, we’re told she’ll do “anything for a buck.”
Subtle, huh?
The book is full of pink-tipped breasts, milky white buttocks and “throbbing” thighs, and plenty of over-heated but half-baked sex scenes that end up being about as erotic as a cheese sandwich. There’s also some pretty clunky writing, some seriously strangled syntax, and plenty of characters with names like J. Benjamin Squatt, Buzzy Bingo, Purry Katt and — I kid you not — Jack Hoff.
Here’s a scene they thought so much of, parts of it are spotlighted on the first page blurb. Bunny’s under the power of an unscrupulous hypnotist who suggests to her:
“You are a beautiful cow in a lovely green meadow. A man has come to you to milk you”. He fondled her breasts gently, tweaking them gently.
They sure don’t write ’em like this anymore. Still, in a weird sort of way, Private Eyeful IS a classic of bad writing, and all these years down the road, it’s actually, finally, funny.
Sort of.
But moose pee?
THE EVIDENCE
- “The pouting plumyness of her buttocks waved enticingly as she walked toward the filing cabinet.”
NOVELS
- Bunny Quest: Private Eyeful (1966) | Buy this book
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- X-Rated Eyes
Dirty Eyes & Other Not-So-Private Dicks
Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
