Kitten With a Whip / Kiss Her Goodbye Paperback – September 9, 2013

Read this because I enjoyed the cult film. Ended up loving it. The other story in this set had an even better sticking effect. Nice to read something written and set in an earlier time - just as much punch and humanity as in anything else I’ve read, with interesting characters and settings.I will give it a 4 only because the supporting cast in the first book wasn’t as strong as in the second. Both great reads.

Wade Miller was a pen name for a team of two friends and two writers Bob Wade and Bill Miller. Together at the beginning of the paperback boom they wrote some fantastic crime noir and suspense novels. Stark House Press has released another pair of their novels in this large over-sized format.Rick Ollerman writes a very informative introduction that explores the lives and the writing of this duo comparing it to the cousins who wrote as Ellery Queen.Both stories are rapid fire page turners that will keep you guessing up until the last minute. The lead characters in both stories face a sense of impending doom as things start to go wrong and then get worse and worse as the protagonists try to figure their way out of an ever growing mess.In the first novel Kitten With A Whip, a happy Husband and Father gets wrapped up in a situation when a beautiful juvenile delinquent crashes at his suburban home. Things start innocently but soon spin out of control. The motion picture with Ann Margaret is based on this novel.Kiss Her Goodbye is the story of a brother and his beautiful 18 year old sister. His sister has a mental handicap which keeps her socially aged as a child. To make matters worse any man making a move on this beautiful girl sends her into a psychotic violent rage. Trying to escape increasingly more frequent episodes he is forced into a transient life style trying to make a home for the two of them and fleeing when a rage incident occurs.I think these two books are an excellent read with lots of twists and turns. I highly recommend this collection.

First published in 1956, and written by Wade Miller, the pseudonym of the writing team of Bob Wade and Bill Miller, this is a noir story of a man trapped by circumstances beyond his control, but with a twist.As the book opens we meet a twenty-eight year-old Ed Darnell who's on the road with a very sexy eighteen-year-old girl named Emily. Clearly, they're on the run from something, but we don't know what. At a stop at a gas station, Ed's temper flares when the pump jockey pays what Ed deems to be too much attention to Emily. He's mad both at the attendant for leering and at Emily for posing in what Ed deems to be a seductive fashion.Shortly thereafter, Ed and Emily check into a ratty motel in a small town named Jimmock, not far from Bakersfield, California, and when the fat slob of a motel owner gives Ed a knowing glance, Ed insists that he and Emily are brother and sister. The motel guy says it's no skin off his nose and so Ed pulls out the birth certificates to prove it. Once in the room, he sets up the wooden screen that he always carries with them to divide his twin bed from Emily's.It turns out that they really <I>are</I> brother and sister and that their parents are both dead. Emily, sadly, is mentally challenged--an eighteen-year-old woman with the body of a sex kitten and the mind of an unsophisticated twelve-year-old. Emily is innocent and out-going and the boys are naturally crazy about her. But then whenever one of them makes a move on her, Emily acts out in a way that puts her and her brother on the run again.It seems like a never-ending cycle. Ed loves his sister but has no idea how to handle these situations, except to hit the road. Now, in Jimmock, he senses a chance for them to put down roots, but can this really be possible?This is not a crime novel in any traditional sense, but it is an interesting story and one really feels for the dilemma in which Ed finds himself. He has essentially sacrificed his own life so that he can care for his sister, but the obstacles in his path seem overwhelming. The book has been reprinted by Stark House press in a volume along with another Miller book, [book:Kitten With A Whip|675151], and fans of this genre might want to seek out this edition.

Really enjoyed both. First is about a psycho teen girl who foists herself on a married man and recruits her delinquent friends to help. Second is about a guy and his homicidal psychopathic sister. He tries to protect her and make a life for them with help from an unlikely ally. Really topnotch reads if you're into downbeat fiction and femme fatales. Liked the book so much I bought Branded Woman by the authors too. Not quite as good.

I loved both stories. I immediatly identified with the characters and have bought more of the writers novels. Well plotted, ingenious.