Rader Love: “The Sins of Martha Leslie”

Part of a month-long celebration of artist Paul Rader’s work.



The Sins of Martha Leslie, by Don Holliday (Midwood, 1960). As The Pulp Fiction Project notes in its write-up about this 160-page novel (which includes an image of the back cover),

Don Holliday was a [house] name used by a number of different writers over the years, including (but possibly not limited to) Victor J. Banis, Lawrence Block, David Case, William Coons, Sam Dodson, Hal Dresner, John Jakes, and Arthur Plotnick.

That blog doesn’t pin down which of those fictionists was responsible for The Sins of Martha Leslie, but Paul Rader authority Lynn Munroe does: he says Hal Dresner deserves the credit. Dresner, if you don’t know already, was fairly prolific under the Holliday pseudonym, turning out a variety of trashy tales for publisher Greenleaf Classics, including such long-forgotten “classics” as Stud (1960), Hell’s Harlot (1961), and Circle of Sinners (1962). Using the same moniker, he penned Only the Bed for Midwood Books. Interestingly, under his real name Dresner produced The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books (1965), a roman à clef about a pornographer, Guy LaDouche, whose efforts to find the solitude he requires in order to complete his latest soft-porn work are repeatedly and comically interrupted. The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books is still in print!