Friday, April 26, 2013

Forgotten Books: Best Offer - Robert Calder

When I was in the used book business in the Eighties, copies of this novel from 1981 were everywhere. Now I'd hate to have to try to find one, although they can be had on-line. It was probably so popular because of that sexy cover, and the salacious subject matter probably didn't hurt sales, either. BEST OFFER is basically a sex comedy about a group of suburban couples who decide to auction off the wives for a night to raise money and save the private school all their kids attend.

I haven't read this novel since then, so I don't know how it holds up, but I remember it being surprisingly good, with some darker, more serious aspects underneath all the wink-wink, nudge-nudge sleaziness of it. If you ever run across a copy, you might give it a try, although I make no guarantees. As far as I know, Robert Calder published only one other book, a horror novel called THE DOGS that I never read.

3 comments:

Peter Brandvold said...

I don't think I've ever seen this one. But I read THE DOGS back in the 70's or 80's one summer. I remember it kept me entertained but that's about all I remember about it. Odd how he wrote only those two books and disappeared...

James Reasoner said...

Turns out he's actually this guy:

http://www.jerroldmundis.com/

Jerrold Mundis said...

He is indeed that guy. And c'est moi.

Thank you, James!

I've written some 40 novels and books of nonfiction over the years under my own name and couple of pseudonyms and continue to.

At the moment, I'm concentrating on getting those titles among my out-of-print backlist that are appropriate up as eBooks and I'm claiming them all as my own as I do.

I appreciate your mentioning this one and giving it a review here. It was fun to write and I enjoyed your comments on it.

Here's a link to the Kindle version (now under my own name) for anyone interested: http://amzn.to/yJty9m.

Thanks again.

Best,
Jerry