SEXSASSINS

A contract killer uses his bedroom prowess as a murder weapon in DeLauder’s satirical farce in which powerful people are “sexed to death.”

In 1938 Cairo, a hotel hosts two lovers passionately engaged “like entangled marionettes” until one, an engaged Iranian princess, is discovered hours later, killed during the carnal act by sheer sensory overload. Across the next half-decade, 30 similar murders of notable figures dot the European landscape (including those of French army officer Charles de Gaulle, slain in Paris, and Mohandas Gandhi, snuffed out in New Delhi), all of whom died from erotically induced cardiac arrests or aneurisms with “delight and relief” etched upon their lifeless faces. The author unleashes this preposterous sexual-murder-for-hire premise without skipping a beat or a hysterical detail, immediately introducing his killer and the detectives charged with his capture in the outrageous opening chapters. At the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) briefing are field agents Harden Weiner and Harold “Bad News Harry” James, two goofballs who seem more interested in cracking sex jokes than in collaring a prolific serial killer. The seductive “sexsassin” terrorizing World War II–era Europe is identified as Arnold Schwab, a former U.S. Army Intelligence agent capable of weaponizing his powerful copulative abilities to cash in on “sexsassinating” high-profile diplomats and dignitaries. The hilariously fumbling, bumbling duo of Harden and Harry, chosen to solve the case by the OSS chief “because he knew their names,” strategically seek out the original lethal sexsassin, Violet Madden (better known as the “Velvet Angler”), to assist in apprehending Schwab. DeLauder is a crafty, funny storyteller. The character dialogue and descriptions are comically saturated with double-entendres, witticisms, crude imagery (like Hitler’s “skid mark” mustache), and sexual innuendo and euphemisms that, while some readers may consider them to be in poor taste, are aptly uproarious in this locomotive, kooky, hypersexual detective thriller.

A bawdy murder mystery parody spoofing sex, murder, and key figures in world history.