The Ecstasy Connection

The Baroness #1

by Paul Kenyon

Book by Paul kenyon

Genres: Pulp, Fiction

223 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1974

About the author

Paul Kenyon was a house pseudonym used by Pocket Books for the short-lived series of espionage novels, The Baroness published from 1974 to 1975.

Reviews

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well...okay, first let me apologize for allowing my "currently reading shelf" get so backed up. My adult daughter and I have been moving (she's lived with me since her mom passed, I think she's concerned about the "old man"...maybe). Anyway we were moving back in Feb. (and going from her living with me to me living with her). It took most of March and just as we were getting everything out a series of tornadoes hit Nashville, and got the roof of the place we were leaving (good for us it wasn't the new place.) So there have been lots of things to pay attention to (I mean things to which we needed to pay attention) including getting internet, cable, phone etc.

Anyway, I'll try to start catching up...a bit.

So, the Baroness #1 The Ecstasy Connection. I like the old pulp novels from the '60s and '70s (primarily). The Executioner, The Destroyer, Nick Carter and others. This includes (for me) the James Bond books, the Man from U.N.C.L.E. books and other "spy-fi" novels. This one I got used on line among some other series books I'd missed.

What can I say here? Well sexual content was far from rare among these books (it was major content in some) but what we have here would have to be called "soft core porn". Now don't get me wrong I don't have a problem with some sexual content but The Baroness seems to be...mostly about that. It's one of those every girl and every woman is the most beautiful, the most sexy the "hottest" possible. The Baroness (and of course her "crew") are the best of the best and only known to one government contact who calls her when ALL ELSE FAILS.

The Baroness herself of course is a master of all forms of combat but mostly chooses to wear out friend and foe alike in bed...or any other convenient surface with sex. Yep lots and lots...and LOTs of sex.

The book can be fun but frankly (and humorously) there is so much overt sex it almost becomes boring (unless of course that's why you bought the book). So the Baroness and her "crew" set out to find out who has found a way to kill with excessive ecstasy (this is long before the drug here the word means what it says sexual and other forms of "ecstasy" somehow induced right in the brain...till you DIE !)

So okay, not bad. I doubt I'll dig up any more of the series (unless I find I already ordered them in a group of other books) but still I guess it fits into the genre. Try it if it sounds like it's for you.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haute couture meets backroom peep show sleaze. The Baroness is a James "Blond" type who is used ( and uses) by a secret part of the government to battle all sorts of evil. In the first book she is up against a grossly obese crazy in Hong Kong who is practicing in ultimate pleasure. He wires people's brains with a little transistor that, when they do what he wants, they get a jolt of pleasure like none they have had before. It's up to the Baroness and her team to pull the plug on his plans.

I was looking forward to reading this for a long time. I'm a fan of all these 70's and 80's dime store action pulp books. I knew coming in to this that it was full of sex and action, but I was pretty shocked at the total amount of sex. Also, the very graphic depiction of it for the early 70's. This has to be one of the more raunchy books that I've read in awhile. One thing you have to say though, is that at least the perverts and sex fiends in the 70's were more literate than the sickies of today with their sordid dirty material at the touch of a finger on the phone or computer.

[John Keillor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dumb violent fun. Very 70s. Too smutty for kids.

[Tom Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Baroness #1: “The Ecstasy Connection” by Paul Kenyon (Donald Moffitt). There is an ecstasy drug showing up in America, and the CIA, FBI, and all the other government intelligence agencies want to know where it’s coming from. They contact the mysterious “Key”, the only known contact to the top-secret agent code-named “Coin”, requesting the end of the supply and supplier, as well as the formula. “Key” (John Farnsworth), contacts the beautiful Baroness Penelope St. John-Orisini, model, millionaire, and international playgirl. She brings her well-trained team in: Dan Wharton, ex Green Beret, Tom Sumo, the Japanese electronics whiz, Joe Skytop, the Cherokee unarmed combat expert and ex Greet Beret. Also on the team are Paul & Yvette, black models: Paul is into explosives while Yvette is a costume and disguise expert. Other team members from Penny’s modeling agency, International Models, Inc., are Eric, Fionee, and Inga. When they aren’t modeling, they are fighting terrorists and bad guys around the world.
Although this is listed as issue #1, it was actually written after the second published story, as reference is constantly made to that case. Mr. Sim, a grossly fat man in Hong Kong runs drugs from China to the rest of the world. He is also experimenting with drugs and the brain. Discovering what drugs do to certain areas of the brain, to bring pain or pleasure. He’s found the ecstasy drug that can make a person do one thing, and never want anything else, whether it is food, drink, starvation, or sex. The first hundred pages is little more than drugs and sex, and can be left out of the book for my part, except The Baroness does have her agents do some investigative work, which many authors fail to do. The real story kicks in with the second half of the book when they travel to Hong Kong, where the real action is. Unfortunately, this series appears to be little more than soft porn, as the pace is slowed every few pages by descriptive sex scenes only of interest to boys in their puberty. The author was supposedly a science fiction writer, and you can see this in the many gadgets and science in the story. If the porn had been left out, it could have been a good spy novel. In fact, it appears to be patterned after Modesty Blaise and other female spies. I give the book a 3-Star rating for the action, but really debated a lesser rating due to the extreme use of sex and drugs that were not needed to tell a good story – at least to adults.

[Ralph Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun and adventurous read.