THIS NEVER HAPPENED

Heckenlively’s erotic novel blends sex, political intrigue, and spy-thriller action.

Mixing fiction with the appearance of reality from the start, the author frames his story as having been written by a woman he met at his mother-in-law’s retirement community who mysteriously disappeared. He then launches into the tale of Heidi Scherzinger, who realized her unique ability to manipulate men from a young age. By the early 1970s, when Heidi is only 23, she’s become a formidable madame in Chicago, drawing the attention of a mob boss who connects her with the Central Agency for Intelligence, or CAI (one of many slight adjustments Heckenlively makes to real-world organizations and characters), in order to set up a call-girl service that will gather dirt on politicians. Heidi changes her name to Catherine Darling and begins meeting with shadowy, high-level officials around Washington, D.C. “Honey, this town runs on sex,” one woman at the State Department tells her. “Always has, always will.” Among the dangerous men Heidi—now Catherine—must liaise with is Dr. Sidney Gottshalk, a scientist experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, and the handsome surveillance expert Milton Greenbaum. Heidi begins recruiting from D.C. universities, promising money and adventure to young, disillusioned women. (“All of this ‘equality’ seemed to be leading to a lot less sex,” Heidi tells them in her pitch.) Heidi starts to feel comfortable with her level of power and influence in D.C. when orders come down from President Dixon to obtain leverage over Democrats staying at the Waterford Hotel (a very thinly veiled reference to the infamous Watergate scandal). The resulting series of double crosses, legal maneuverings, and potential assassination attempts plunge Heidi and Milton into one difficult situation after another, each with higher stakes. The pair eventually hatch a spy-thriller-like plan worthy of an Ian Fleming novel in the hope of escaping Washington’s underbelly unscathed.

Heckenlively doesn’t hold back in depicting his self-proclaimed “proud hedonist” heroine. The novel is filled with outrageous and scintillating sex scenes, from encounters with gangsters in the White House to wild LSD trips that veer into S&M. The 1970s setting lends itself to some sharp reflections on gender and power, like Heidi’s observation that the complex housing the Agency “was designed so men could pretend to be James Bond.” Throughout her many titillating sex-capades, Heidi ultimately comes off as a tough but cliched femme fatale. The outlandish, sex-crazed vision of D.C. delivers some genuinely fun and funny moments, but it does feel at times as though the author can’t decide if Heidi’s story is a wild political thriller or an outright farce. The multiple slight name changes—President Nixon becoming President Dixon, the CIA becoming the CAI, LSD becoming “LDS”—register as the hallmarks of parody, while many of the dramatic scenes, such as Heidi’s morally fraught interactions with Senator Fitzgerald, feel rooted in traditional political-thriller territory, creating tonal whiplash. Heckenlively keeps the pages turning with brisk pacing and clever spins on hard-boiled dialogue, but the novel ultimately feels more episodic than incisive, never fully committing to either political critique or full-tilt farce.

Entertainingly lurid but tonally adrift, this romp gets lost somewhere between satire and spectacle.