opening lines:
Sitting in the passenger seat of the maroon E-type Jaguar, listening to the flow of conversation emanating from the walkie-talkie in his right hand, Gus Saunders mopped the sweat from his brow.

JT Edson, of course, was pretty much the ultimate British pulp writer, producing hundreds of books. Since, however, these were almost exclusively Westerns, they don’t turn up on my site, ‘cos I have no interest in Westerns; nothing personal, just don’t do anything for me.

This, on the other hand, is most certainly not a Western, and is – I believe – something of a Holy Graal amongst Edson collectors. It’s the tale of a school teaching young girls to be criminals, a kind of St Trinian’s in extremis. I think it’s supposed to a wild kind of satire on the standards of our times, but I’m sorry to report that it’s not actually what you’d call funny. Much too heavy-handed for that. Nor is it much of an adventure thriller. In fact, I reckon it’s really not very good at all. But what do I know? Not a lot, and certainly not who Peter Clawson is.