What do you think?
Rate this book
Sins of Flesh
"Suddenly, I became a savage animal, cut loose from everything civilized. The raw ends of my nerves screamed for her, demanding her, and I didn't care how I took her."
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
1 person is currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Orrie Hitt
221 books30 followersOrrie Edwin Hitt was born in Colchester and died from cancer in a VA hospital in Montrose, NY. He married Charlotte Tucker in Pt Jervis, NY (a small town upstate where he became a lifelong resident), on Valentine’s Day, '43. Orrie & Charlotte had 4 kids—Joyce, Margaret, David & Nancy. He was under 5’5″, taking a 27' inseam, which his wife altered because no one sold pants so short.
Hitt wrote maybe 150 books. He wasn’t sure. “I’m no adding machine”, he answered on the back cover of his book Naked Flesh, when asked how many he’d written. “All I do is write. I usually start at 7 in the morning, take 20 minutes for lunch & continue until about 4 in the afternoon.” Hitt wrote a novel every 2 weeks in his prime, typing over 85 wpm. “His fastest & best works were produced when he was allowed to type whatever he wanted,” said his children. “His slowest works were produced when publishers insisted on a certain kind of novel, extra spicy etc.”
Most of Hitt’s books were PBOs. He also wrote some hardcovers. Pseudonyms include Kay Addams, Joe Black, Roger Normandie, Charles Verne & Nicky Weaver. Publishers include Avon, Beacon (later Softcover Library), Chariot, Domino (Lancer), Ember Library, Gaslight, Key Publishing, Kozy, MacFadden, Midwood, Novel, P.E.C, Red Lantern, Sabre, Uni-books, Valentine Books, Vantage Press, Vest-Pocket & Wisdom House.
He wrote in the adults only genre. Many of such writers were hacks, using thin plots as an excuse to throw tits & ass between covers for a quick buck. Others used the genre as a stepping stone to legitimate writing, later dismissing this part of their career. There were few like Hitt, whose writing left an original, idiosyncratic & lasting mark even beyond the horizons of '50s-mid 60s adult publishing. What made him unique was his belief he was writing realistically about the needs & desires, the brutality (both verbal & physical), the hypocritical lives inside the suburban tracts houses & the limited economic opportunities for women that lay beneath the glossy, Super Cinecolor, Father Knows Best surface of American life. He studied what he wrote about. Wanting to write about a nudist camp, he went to one tho “he wouldn't disrobe”.
His research allowed him to write convincingly. S. Stryker, in her Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback, says, “Only one actual lesbian, Kay Addams, writing as Orrie Hitt, is known to have churned out semipornographic sleaze novels for a predominantly male audience.” She thought “Orrie Hitt” a pseudonym, & “Kay Addams” a real lesbian author! Orrie’d like that one.
It wasn’t just about sex. It was also about guts. “The characters,” Hitt’s protagonist–a movie producer complimenting a screenwriter on her work–says in the novel Man-Hungry Female, “were very real, red blooded people who tore at the guts of life. That’s what I’m after. Guts.” If anyone knew about guts, it was him.
Life started out tough for Hitt. His father committed suicide when he was 11. “Dad seldom spoke of his father, who'd committed suicide, because it was a very unpleasant chapter in his life,” said his children.
After Father’s death, Orrie & his mother moved to Forestburgh, NY, where they worked for a hunting-fishing club. He started doing chores for wealthy members for $.10 hourly. Management offered him a better job later, at .25 hourly. Eventually, he became club caretaker & supervisor. “Dad talked a lot about working as a child to help his mother make ends meet,” his children recalled. “He wanted his children to have a better life while growing up.”
Tragedy struck Hitt again during those years. His children explain: “Dad’s mom died at her sister’s house on the club property during an ice storm, so Dad walked to the house to get his mother & carried her back to his car"
Hitt wrote maybe 150 books. He wasn’t sure. “I’m no adding machine”, he answered on the back cover of his book Naked Flesh, when asked how many he’d written. “All I do is write. I usually start at 7 in the morning, take 20 minutes for lunch & continue until about 4 in the afternoon.” Hitt wrote a novel every 2 weeks in his prime, typing over 85 wpm. “His fastest & best works were produced when he was allowed to type whatever he wanted,” said his children. “His slowest works were produced when publishers insisted on a certain kind of novel, extra spicy etc.”
Most of Hitt’s books were PBOs. He also wrote some hardcovers. Pseudonyms include Kay Addams, Joe Black, Roger Normandie, Charles Verne & Nicky Weaver. Publishers include Avon, Beacon (later Softcover Library), Chariot, Domino (Lancer), Ember Library, Gaslight, Key Publishing, Kozy, MacFadden, Midwood, Novel, P.E.C, Red Lantern, Sabre, Uni-books, Valentine Books, Vantage Press, Vest-Pocket & Wisdom House.
He wrote in the adults only genre. Many of such writers were hacks, using thin plots as an excuse to throw tits & ass between covers for a quick buck. Others used the genre as a stepping stone to legitimate writing, later dismissing this part of their career. There were few like Hitt, whose writing left an original, idiosyncratic & lasting mark even beyond the horizons of '50s-mid 60s adult publishing. What made him unique was his belief he was writing realistically about the needs & desires, the brutality (both verbal & physical), the hypocritical lives inside the suburban tracts houses & the limited economic opportunities for women that lay beneath the glossy, Super Cinecolor, Father Knows Best surface of American life. He studied what he wrote about. Wanting to write about a nudist camp, he went to one tho “he wouldn't disrobe”.
His research allowed him to write convincingly. S. Stryker, in her Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback, says, “Only one actual lesbian, Kay Addams, writing as Orrie Hitt, is known to have churned out semipornographic sleaze novels for a predominantly male audience.” She thought “Orrie Hitt” a pseudonym, & “Kay Addams” a real lesbian author! Orrie’d like that one.
It wasn’t just about sex. It was also about guts. “The characters,” Hitt’s protagonist–a movie producer complimenting a screenwriter on her work–says in the novel Man-Hungry Female, “were very real, red blooded people who tore at the guts of life. That’s what I’m after. Guts.” If anyone knew about guts, it was him.
Life started out tough for Hitt. His father committed suicide when he was 11. “Dad seldom spoke of his father, who'd committed suicide, because it was a very unpleasant chapter in his life,” said his children.
After Father’s death, Orrie & his mother moved to Forestburgh, NY, where they worked for a hunting-fishing club. He started doing chores for wealthy members for $.10 hourly. Management offered him a better job later, at .25 hourly. Eventually, he became club caretaker & supervisor. “Dad talked a lot about working as a child to help his mother make ends meet,” his children recalled. “He wanted his children to have a better life while growing up.”
Tragedy struck Hitt again during those years. His children explain: “Dad’s mom died at her sister’s house on the club property during an ice storm, so Dad walked to the house to get his mother & carried her back to his car"
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 20, 2024
Shad Albright, fresh off a prison term for embezzlement, is working at Flat Lake, building a dock and boats, while waiting for his divorce to Lynn to come through, and having a mad passionate affair with Rita Hagen, who keeps asking when they are going to get married, not knowing about Lynn.
As to Lynn, “She wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful. Her hair was wavy platinum, shoulder-length, and there was, I knew, nothing phony about it. It was the one thing about her that was real, no matter where you looked.” To Shad’s surprise, Lynn waltzes into town and asks Shad why he didn’t come back to her when he got out of prison. Shad’s reply was that she wasn’t worth killing. Shad believes she set him up, embezzling the money on her brother’s behalf and putting it in Shad’s account so he’d take the fall. Shad believed she drove her brother to blow his brains out. Now she insists she loves him and won’t grant him a divorce.
From Shad’s point of view, “I followed her, trailing in the wake of the saucy roll of her buttocks. Her body undulated and swayed in all the proper places.
I realized, as sweat filled my eyes, that nothing had changed. She was still my wife and I was tied to her. I could say I had for- gotten but I hadn’t forgotten— not all of it. A man couldn’t be married to a girl like Lynn and not remember some of it. There were, of course, just two things to remember about Lynn. How much I hated her. And how good she was in bed.”
Hitt sets this one up with all the proper noir dressing. Shad is trapped in a vice between what he believes to be true and where he’s ended up. It’s a trap and there’s no way out.
Shad also has to contend with rich girl Sheila Bradley who wants control of all the land around the lake, using Ed to chase Shad off. Sheila is maneuvering to get Shad in a position where he’s forced to sell to her and he knows it. “It was all fire down there, anyway, burning up the way you’re apt to feel after somebody’s pounded you good and hard in the guts. And I’d been pounded. I’d been pounded until I couldn’t tell up from down by that Bradley dame. Not pounded by her fists but the way her lips had bruised mine, just for a second-and afterward when I’d found out that she’d pulled a real cutie on me.”
Poor Shad doesn’t know who to trust or which way to turn as the noose tightens around his life. Sins of the Flesh is one of the best written Orrie Hitt novels, more of a crime novel than merely the kind of sleaze pulp Hitt became known for.
As to Lynn, “She wasn’t pretty. She was beautiful. Her hair was wavy platinum, shoulder-length, and there was, I knew, nothing phony about it. It was the one thing about her that was real, no matter where you looked.” To Shad’s surprise, Lynn waltzes into town and asks Shad why he didn’t come back to her when he got out of prison. Shad’s reply was that she wasn’t worth killing. Shad believes she set him up, embezzling the money on her brother’s behalf and putting it in Shad’s account so he’d take the fall. Shad believed she drove her brother to blow his brains out. Now she insists she loves him and won’t grant him a divorce.
From Shad’s point of view, “I followed her, trailing in the wake of the saucy roll of her buttocks. Her body undulated and swayed in all the proper places.
I realized, as sweat filled my eyes, that nothing had changed. She was still my wife and I was tied to her. I could say I had for- gotten but I hadn’t forgotten— not all of it. A man couldn’t be married to a girl like Lynn and not remember some of it. There were, of course, just two things to remember about Lynn. How much I hated her. And how good she was in bed.”
Hitt sets this one up with all the proper noir dressing. Shad is trapped in a vice between what he believes to be true and where he’s ended up. It’s a trap and there’s no way out.
Shad also has to contend with rich girl Sheila Bradley who wants control of all the land around the lake, using Ed to chase Shad off. Sheila is maneuvering to get Shad in a position where he’s forced to sell to her and he knows it. “It was all fire down there, anyway, burning up the way you’re apt to feel after somebody’s pounded you good and hard in the guts. And I’d been pounded. I’d been pounded until I couldn’t tell up from down by that Bradley dame. Not pounded by her fists but the way her lips had bruised mine, just for a second-and afterward when I’d found out that she’d pulled a real cutie on me.”
Poor Shad doesn’t know who to trust or which way to turn as the noose tightens around his life. Sins of the Flesh is one of the best written Orrie Hitt novels, more of a crime novel than merely the kind of sleaze pulp Hitt became known for.
September 3, 2020
Some of Orrie Hitt's best writing in this sleaze-noir. One of his early books written before he went into assembly-line mode and the writing here makes clear that he could write better than a lot of his latter books would suggest. I read the hardcover edition but also have the Kozy Books paperback edition and they seem to be identical. The story starts with Shad Albright fresh out of a three-year prison stint for an embezzlement for which he was framed. He goes back to his riverfront property and tries to make a go as a fishing guide. But others want his property so he's immediately embroiled in a fight. In between making time with the four women he's juggling. The middle section devolves into some country-noir melodrama but the the plot does thicken with a murder and Hitt is on his game throughout. Needed a bit more action to be four star, but better than most Hitt books.
February 2, 2019
Some of Orrie Hitt's best writing in this sleaze-noir. One of his early books written before he went into assembly-line mode and the writing here makes clear that he could write better than a lot of his latter books would suggest. I read the hardcover edition but also have the Kozy Books paperback edition and they seem to be identical.
The story starts with Shad Albright fresh out of a three-year prison stint for an eembezzlement for which he was framed. He goes back to his riverfront property and tries to make a go as a fishing guide. But others want his property so he's immediately embroiled in a fight. In between making time with the four women he's juggling. The middle section devolves into some country-noir melodrama but the the plot does thicken with a murder and Hitt is on his game throughout. Needed a bit more action to be four star, but better than most Hitt books.
The story starts with Shad Albright fresh out of a three-year prison stint for an eembezzlement for which he was framed. He goes back to his riverfront property and tries to make a go as a fishing guide. But others want his property so he's immediately embroiled in a fight. In between making time with the four women he's juggling. The middle section devolves into some country-noir melodrama but the the plot does thicken with a murder and Hitt is on his game throughout. Needed a bit more action to be four star, but better than most Hitt books.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews