I enjoy collecting vintage gay pulp, usually for their very over the top covers and titles. So it was tough for me to resist “Teen Slave Ring” for it’s very campy name. But when I can, I try to read them. And in my experience, I’ve found these books are generally split into two categories: just lots of sex (like a straightforward porn movie), or ones that are more plot driven, and sex just happens.
This one is mostly the latter, and it’s quite the adventure! The sex scenes, in the context of the plot, are very extraneous, forced, and somewhat silly. There’s also a surprising amount of graphic violence (not in the sex scenes), and a few genuine plot twists.
Before the book even starts, there’s a forward that mentions the Bakke vs. California reverse discrimination Supreme Court case from 1978 (the book was published in 1979), which the book “states that there may not be special quotas [in college admissions] for the who are less qualified but claim to be minorities” and “is as socially significant to the cause of gay civil rights as it is to the cause of racial minority rights”. Further:
This is the theme of Mick Stevens’ latest novel. His premise is that being a member of a socil [sic] minority, such as the gay community, has nothing whatsoever to do with one’s quality as a person or performance of a given task. Jerry Scott, the lead character of TEEN is a young gay detective. But the fact that he is gay does nothing to slow him down or hamper his style as he travel and works in what is predominantly a sexually straight society.
And that’s just the forward! The plot is as follows: Jerry is being called out to a case with a hunky Hollywood star, Bill Glover. But on his way to see him, he’s distracted by a very hot teen (age not given, but appears 18) blonde twink who jumps in front of his car, and begs Jerry for help to escape the men who are chasing him. The twink, Ken, thanks him, and once safe, they mutually decided to have sex in the car.
But afterwards, Ken tells Jerry he had been kidnapped off the highway and taken to a place where other teen boys had been captured, tied, and abused physically and sexually. Jerry decides to seek revenge and help out Ken, and tries to infiltrate the bad guys (in the meantime, I guess his original case with Bill Glover is just waiting, lol). Jerry gets into many various gun fights (often with very graphic, bloody deaths described) and seems to be winning… but in a shocking twist, Ken suddenly turns on Jerry and tries to kill him by throwing a heavy boulder on his head. Jerry has to blow off Ken’s head to defend himself. This totally comes out of nowhere, and is just as shocking to Jerry as it is to the reader!
Jerry, still reeling from this very odd detour, continues on to see Bill Glover. When he arrives at his very large estate (passing by numerous guards), Jerry is greeted at the door by two “oriental” boys who start to fight him. After a “Kung fu” scuffle, it turns out they are bodyguards for Bill, and Bill wanted to see if Jerry was truly a worthy fighter.
As this book is written in a different time, it goes without saying that there are many racist Asian descriptions. I don’t think they were intended to be intentionally derogatory at the time, but they sure do come across that way now.
In any case, Bill is pleased at Jerry’s performance, and he invites him and his Asian boys to the beach for a large sex fest. This part is pretty awful, not only for the racist descriptions, but the fact the Asian boys are explicitly stated as underage. I did not like reading this part, and I just kind of skimmed past it because I could not support that. Many gay pulp books of this time (and earlier!) seem to have no issue with this, but obviously it is not how I feel about it in the here and now.
Once finished, Bill mentions to Jerry that he received a note that there is a contract on his life, and that if he didn’t believe it, he should look into what happened to three other people that are listed in the noe. All but one of them have been killed already. Jerry makes a visit to the one who hadn’t yet died, but before he gets to him, the guy is thrown out of the window of a high rise building in front of Jerry, and his body lands and is impaled on a fire hydrant on the way down (I warned you about all the violence in this book, and doesn’t shy away from the blood and guts getting splattered everywhere). Jerry is then kidnapped by other men at the scene and chloroformed.
When he awakens, his hands have been tied behind his back, and he’s in a laboratory where a German doctor tells him that he’s been behind everything, including going after Bill, but he was also going after Jerry as well… and in fact, Ken was an attempt to get at him early on. The doctor, Kohler, then brings out a perfect duplicate of Jerry, a man named Walt who underwent plastic surgery to become identical to Jerry (I know, none of this makes any sense to me, either).
Jerry keeps Kohler talking, as his bonds are loosening. Kohler then shows Jerry that he is in charge of the teen slave ring (that Ken was a part of), and shows him five other tied up teens that are being abused and raped for pleasure. For once, Jerry is with us and is sickened by this… as is his twin, Walt, who seemed to have no idea about this. Fortunately, Jerry escapes his bondage and knocks down Kohler and escapes with the help of Walt to a remote part of the laboratory. Jerry, grateful, and tempted by having sex with himself, can’t resist, and the two go at it.
Once finished, long story short, they decide to rescue the captured teens. After many, many violent confrontations with guards (described in fairly gory detail), they do rescue them and escape…. though sadly, Walt gets shot and dies before that happens. Jerry drops off each boy to where they live and heads home.
But in a final twist, once home, he finds Kohler already there and ready to shoot him. Luckily, one of Jerry’s lovers shoots and kills Kohler first. Jerry and the lover have sex, and the book ends.
I’ve read a fair (maybe about 10?) amount of these books, and this one was not quite like any other I’ve read before. It was really more of a violent gay detective story that had sex scenes kind of randomly shoehorned in awkward places. I don’t know if I’d say I “liked” it, but I did at least mostly respect it for offering up an unexpected direction compared to other gay pulp books.
And the scene from the cover never explicitly happens in the book, but it is implied the captured teens had been drugged into complicancy by Kohler, so it was sort of related. I only mention this, because with gay pulp books, I’d say more that 50% of the time, the cover really has little to nothing to do with the book itself.
