Our appreciation for Elke Sommer has caused us to buy another book with her likeness on the cover—Thomas Stone’s 1960 sleaze novel Tramp Girl. Elke comes this time in the form of a painting rather than a photo, but the art, signed by someone calling himself Santopadre, is based on a promo shot, as you see.
The novel opens with a murder as seventeen year old Missy Shreve and tough guy acquaintance Harry are canoodling in the woods. Missy doesn’t like Harry, but he’s incredibly persistent in a way that would be criminal today. The two are interrupted by a local hermit—luckily for Missy. But enraged at the derailment of his plan to browbeat her into sex, Harry hits the hermit a few times and the poor guy folds up dead.
Harry threatens Missy into silence about the crime. Then a search of the old man’s rickety shack yields $30,000 in squirreled away cash. So not only does Missy have to somehow deal with a killer who thinks he owns her, but one whose lifelong greed has been rewarded. In the small town in which they reside, going to the police isn’t a simple matter for Missy. The cops have hassled her family her entire life. She’s sure they won’t believe she had nothing to do with the dead hermit.
Her goal is to escape and get something out of life. She figures with her looks she should be able to manage it, but she’s too dumb to make any decisions that would assist her in reaching her goals. You’ll ask yourself how anyone can be so dense. At least we did, and it was about then that we realized Stone had actually achieved something. He wrote a tale about a frustratingly stupid, precociously sexual teenaged girl and made it resonate. In sleaze you don’t ask for much. Tramp Girl is no Jane Eyre, but for its type it isn’t bad.
