Here Comes TOKEY WEDGE !!! The Diminutive Hard-boiled Dick from Novel Books (Chicago) Vintage Sleaze Paperbacks




Here comes Tokey, buzzing out of the pages of pulp history from the back cover of TORRID TWINS, just one of the capers solved with his tiny fists and subtly implied detective dong  pounding. Tokey's secret weapon other than his quick wit was his manhood.  You want sex and hardboiled action in your reading?  Put down that limp "best reading" from the New York Times Book Review and grab yourself a big deep toke...of TOKEY!


A man's man and a women's dream, Tokey raced around the twirling paperback racks when the top presidential philanderer of all time, Jack Kennedy was in the White House.  Did Jack care if his "arranged" girlfriend Judith Exner was usually in bed with mobster Sam Giancana and reported back to the wise guy after every presidential performance?  HELL NO! Because Jack was a MAN'S man, just like Tokey Wedge.  Screw that, and screw THAT, organized crime.  No wonder (and no coincidence) Tokey gets involved with some  anti-Castro gun runners in BROAD BAIT...just like big Sam!   

So Tokey had a buzzcutt instead of Kennedy's Nantucket tousle...when you are racing to action in your midget muscle-car, there is no time to brush anything out of your eyes.  Here comes Tokey, nostrils flared...nay SMOKING.  Never mind that Tokey was actually no taller than 5' 4"...he was big where it mattered.  One book adds an inch to his frame...but does not specify if he had bought some lifts.

Jack Lynn wrote the Tokey Wedge novels.  Who was Jack Lynn?  WHO CARES!  This isn't about some fussy, anonymous, elite font prissy with an underwood, it's about Tokey Wedge.  The paperback community speculates who Jack was and you are more then welcome to browse around to speculate while REAL men just read the novels (from Novel Press) a sleazy Chicago outfit with questionable organized crime ties but outstandingly bad fiction! 

There were at least twenty one books by Jack and all of them had a serious problem with inaccurate perspective and unrealistic rendering on the covers.  So the real question is not who wrote this stuff, but who the hell did the art?  Check out the Torrid Twins Tokey is running down.  Not only are they twins, their burning breasts have exactly the same flame pattern!  Tokey had a thing for twins...witness Mary and Beth in another split zygote thriller "Double Seduction" which is no problem for Tokey.  He loves them and leaves them...looking exactly the same.  And yet AGAIN...there are twins in the later Desire in Duplicate...in which a $5000 a night hooker charges that much because she is...a twin! So the price is really $2500 each.  Does Tokey get a discount?  You have to ASK?

Other Jack Lynn books are listed below, but not all feature the diminutive dick Tokey.  In fact, one of them introduces a far taller character, a Danny Thomas look-a-like who actually towers over the dames who moan his name!
Tokey Wedge fears nothing as he solves the case of Nympho Lodge.  In another, Tokey struggles with a trio of "women loving women"  In Wild Women.  AS you can see, another cover with burning dames for Tokey to struggle through. 


Clearly Tokey's biggest challenge was Ten Shockingest (sic) Seductions, in which he has do do just that...seduce them all to determine which were guilty of murder and which were guilty of lesbianism.  There is only one man for the job...look down.

It's TOKEY.

1 comment:

  1. Novel Books- hardbitten/hardboiled! Great write up again, Herr Winkel!

    ReplyDelete