Book Review: 'The League of Grey-Eyed Women' by Julius Fast
Julius Fast (April 17, 1919 – December 16, 2008) was the younger brother of well-known writer Howard Fast. During the 40s and 50s he primarily wrote mystery and drama novels, but with the advent of the Sexual Revolution in the late 60s, and the immense popularity of 'The Joy of Sex', he made a shrewd move to capitalize on prurience, and issued a stream of self-help titles on sexuality. These include 'What You Should Know About Human Sexual Response' (1966), 'The New Sexual Fulfillment' (1972), 'Bisexual Living' (1975), 'The Pleasure Book' (1975), 'The Body Language of Sex Power and Aggression' (1977), and 'Sexual Chemistry: What It Is, How to Use It' (1983).
'The League of Grey-Eyed Women' first appeared in the August 1969 issue of Venture Science Fiction Magazine. This Pyramid Books paperback (224 pp.) was published in November 1971; the cover illustration likely was done by Robert Pepper.
'League' is set in New York City in the late 60s. As the novel opens, our protagonist, an advertising executive named Jack Freeman, has learned he is terminally ill with gastric cancer. As a specialist in medical advertising, Freeman decides to research cutting-edge cancer treatments and finds a paper by a scientist named Steiner, whose Montreal laboratory has reported curing cancer in rodents via the administration of DNA.
Freeman invents a pretext to travel to Steiner's lab, only to be told by Steiner that the treatment is too experimental and untried to risk being administered to a human. It seems to the hapless Freeman that all is lost, and the end of his life is near at hand. But then Steiner's laboratory assistant Stephanie Douthright, a cool and composed woman with unusual, grey-colored eyes, agrees to clandestinely give the DNA treatment to Freeman.
Freeman soon discovers that he may, in fact, be cured of his cancer. But the cure comes with a cost......and the realization that Stephanie Douthright might not have been acting solely with benevolence. For she, and the other grey-eyed women with whom Jack Freeman comes into contact, have an agenda of their own, and it involves him........
'The League of Grey-Eyed Women' is a solid three-star thriller with a sci-fi flavoring. Although author Fasts's prose style can at times be a bit florid (Again and again he forced the soundless screams from his throat, and then he was fighting his way out of sleep, moaning and whimpering as he came awake), in the main, his prose is straightforward and the narrative moves at a satisfactory pace.
[ There is a bit of an in-joke within the pages of 'League', in that Clifford, Jack Freeman's best friend, is a fictional stand-in for Julius Fast himself. ]
I imagine modern-day readers will find the scientific premise underlying the novel to be a bit contrived, as it was even by the standards of the late 60s, but those willing to overlook that contrivance may find 'League' to be a presentable representation of its time and place (everyone smokes like a chimney, and drinks prolifically). In that regard, those dedicated to collecting late 60s sci-fi will be interested in picking up 'The League of Grey-Eyed Women'.
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