Foreword
One of man's nastiest and most hated crimes is blackmail. When it is perpetrated against a beautiful woman, it becomes even more hateful.
Our story concerns two suburban housewives who are sisters, one married to a policeman and the other to the lustful operator of a gas station, who gives grease jobs to her female friends. These sisters, Barbara and Joan, become enmeshed in an evil scheme to extort money from them, and they are driven to amazing lengths in an effort to satisfy the blackmailers' insatiable demands.
As we observe them squirming desperately, like insects impaled on a pin, we are struck with the deeper significance of blackmail.
This crime would not be possible were it not for the commission of acts by respectable persons which those individuals do not wish to have revealed. In some cases the acts are criminal and harmful. More frequently, however, they merely involve violations of society's prudish moral code. A question then arises: Might not blackmail, and all the suffering attended to it, be best averted by changing the outmoded code of sexual conduct that makes it possible?
If persons were free to do what they desired sexually, with whomever they wished, without fear of social ostracism, blackmail would largely become a crime of the past. People would be happier and less frustrated, as well.
Perhaps the solution is too simple and logical to prompt ready acceptance. We tend to suspect easy answers. Anyway, the puritanical don'ts which proscribe a free enjoyment of sex are deeply embedded in our attitudes and way of life.
This explicit modern novel at least gives us pause to ponder a sense of values which suppresses harmless acts between consenting persons while giving rise to crimes, such as blackmail, that produce torment and suffering.
If it promotes a thoughtful consideration of this question, the book will have achieved its purpose. If it entertains, in so doing, that is all to the better.
-THE PUBLISHER