Vintage Pulp | Oct 22 2019 |
Unless that's a tube of sunscreen in your swim trunks, your reaction to seeing a nude sunbather is wildly inappropriate.
Imagine a beautiful woman coming naked out of the ocean like a water nymph. Sounds like the ultimate male fantasy, right? She doesn't even mind you ogling her like a perv. But after she's gone not only doesn't anyone believe you ever met her—they all think your insistence that you did signifies the onset of mental illness. Is Girl on the Beach sleaze? Romance? Actually, when it finally gets around to a tangible plot it turns out to be a mystery having to do with high end art collecting and a painting that might be worth a fortune. The fact that the lead character is a famous painter, now inspired by the beach girl to new heights of creativity, is a sly lead-in to the book's crime element. We certainly appreciate author Max Day's effort to do something different, but we wouldn't go so far as to call the result good. Extra points for taking a road less traveled, though. The copyright on this is 1960 and the cover is uncredited.