The Nylon Pirates by Nicholas Monsarrat ~ 1960. This edition: Cassell, 1960. 2nd edition. Hardcover. 314 pages.
My rating: 4.75/10
Ex-Royal Navy Commander and British diplomat Nicholas Monsarrat wrote some really decent books in his alternate role as a fiction writer – such as the bestselling war novels The Cruel Sea (1951) and The Kapillan of Malta (1973), to name two of the best-regarded – and some relative stinkers. Guess where I’m placing this one?
Yup.
B-List, pretty well all the way, from the awkwardly salacious sex scenes hastily set up and then shied away from by an apparently last-minute-squeamish creator, to the gruesome penultimate scene in which ironic justice is visited upon a key character.
Published in 1960, this is a book your father might have had on his shelf, to match the Jacqueline Susann on the distaff side of the twin-bed room. It’s determinedly smutty, though, as I mentioned earlier, it seems that Nicholas Monsarrat couldn’t quite bring himself to go into the detail hinted at by his doggedly sexy set-ups.
Which was a relief, because it was blush-inducing enough as it was, albeit for the awkwardness of the plot and the single-dimension characters rather than for anything really naughty in the way of sex-prose.
Brutal panning of those last few paragraphs aside, I need to back down and fairly admit that Monsarrat is decidedly readable, even at his worst. The Nylon Pirates did have its moments, and I rather enjoyed the quietly omnipotent sea captain overlooking all of the shenanigans on his ocean liner with patient calm; the dialogue among the sailors was a high point of this minor novel.
I’ll just quickly sketch out the plot. It won’t take long.
A career criminal who has made a profession of preying on society comes up with a scheme to part a group of wealthy cruise ship travellers from some of their abundant cash.
Our anti-hero Carl assembles a small team of like-minded predators to make up a loosely connected “family group” all travelling together.
Masquerading as a benevolent uncle is 50-year-old Carl. His “niece” is Diane, a wanton, exotically-talented brunette seductress detailed to reel in the men, as “nephew” Louis, an Italian-American gigolo-type, targets the yearning-for-love older women. The Professor, an aged confidence man whom Carl has teamed up with in past scams, comes along to scout prospects, handle the proceeds and keep the books. Carl’s just-come-of-age mistress, Kathy, is passed off as his stepdaughter. She’s a cooly beautiful blonde, whom much-older Carl seduced as a 16-year-old virgin some five years earlier. The trip is supposed to be something of a maiden voyage for lovely Kathy to break into the sex-for-money/threats-of-blackmail con-game trade, while Carl uses his superior poker skills to fleece the card-playing millionaires on board.
Complications ensue.
A generous number of editions are out there in used book land, with prices varying from dirt cheap to stupidly expensive. My advice: save your serious cash for something less likely to engender the book-fling urge, which this one did with me a number of times, mostly in the first and last chapters. Once committed to the read, the middle bits were the most amusing. A beach-blanket read, perhaps?
A 1960- first edition cover. Downright restrained, this image, comparatively speaking.
My favourite cover, also from 1960.
A 1962 Pocket Books edition, working hard to entice the reader.
The back of the ’62 Pocket Book.
A 1963 Pan paperback edition, cover blurb appealing to the reader’s prurient curiousity.
Leaves & Pages 