With a title like Nest of Summer Widows we absolutely had to read this 1962 effort from sleaze author Francis Loren, with its cool (uncredited) cover art, but guess what? There’s no nest of widows. We took that to mean many widows. But there’s only Ellen and Carla. The story is mainly about Ellen, whose husband spends each week away while she summers at Lake Powhatan. Let’s stop for a sec. See, kids, “summering” is this thing people did—way before our time too, but we’ve read about it and seen it depicted in movies like The Seven Year Itch—where people left big cities for lake or beach regions and spent the hot months hanging around in swimsuits.

Ellen’s husband is a lawyer, but isn’t rich, which is the only measure of success she knows. She figures he doesn’t lawyer hard enough. Since he comes to the lake only on the weekends, Ellen has plenty of idle time to get oopsied into bed by rich lake resident Tony Marsh. When Marsh later offers Ellen’s hubby a lucrative job, lawyer boy hesitates because he thinks Marsh is a phony. The story finds Ellen torn between her husband and her sidepiece. Personally, we question a lawyer who’s smart enough to pass the bar but not smart enough to know a rival’s been dropping caseloads in his wife’s inbox, but whatever.

We found a few aspects of the book interesting, but the chief curiosity is how most of what happens is a direct result of alcohol consumption, including the job offer. Those lake summerers really drank (scotch-sours and martinis, mainly). We guess the idle time made a body thirsty? It’s a question we’d like to answer through firsthand experience one day. Cue the Pulp Intl. girlfriends: “You guys are thirsty 24/7. Why wouldn’t you be thirsty idle?” It seems a fair point until you read the level of boozing in this book. But since they mention it— *off to the kitchen to build a quick cocktail*

Back now. And by the way, kids, that was a pro move, relationship-wise. Whenever your girl, wife, partner, mentions that you drink a lot, make a drink. It’s a drinking game they won’t know they’re playing at first. It works best if you’re flawless in every other aspect of your relationship. Hah—we only write stuff like that so they’ll read it and roll their eyes at us. But returning to the book, Loren asks several questions that need resolution. What does a person do when their head says one thing but their sex organs say another? Is Ellen’s husband a loser? Is Marsh a phony? Will summer ever end? Oh what tangled sleaze Loren weaves.