Fun read- don't remember what brought it and the author to my attention, but read through Archive.org (Borrow for an hour at a time). Reads like a J. McDonald non Travis book. Poor David Patton is alone - his wife and daughter are out of town and it's mid 50 so cal and he thinks he'd like a little fun and adventure. By odd chance, a chancy teenage girl shows up (Jody) in his house and begins funning with him. She is an escapee from the local girls jail and is nothing but trouble! Quickly seducing him (the old demon alcohol), he winds up "trapped" into indulging her in various ways (she threatens to out him as a child rapist), until finally her hoodlum friends drop by to beat him up and force him to drive them to Mexico where worse tribulations occur. Quite a ride! but in the end it all works out and Jody has a heart of gold after all and frees him up as she is dying. But David Patton feels he must fess up to his good wife... and so begins the last sentence of the book.... ( )

Most people are only familiar with "Kitten With A Whip" (1959) because it later became a famous motion picture in 1964 starring Ann- Margret and was her first movie to feature her as an actress rather

than primarily as a singer doing duets with Elvis. However, it was first a terrific novel by the writing team of Wade a Miller. The plot is fairly simple. David Patton is a mild-mannered aerospace engineer, all alone in his ranch home in San Diego while his wife and daughter are in San Francisco visiting his mother-in-law. It is the middle of a Southern California heat wave: "a mammoth high pressure squatted like an octopus and sent its tentacles of scorching air groping for the Pacific." It is explained in the first chapter that: "The heat touched the people too, turning some of them a little wild. Some were awakening amorous, to snuggle against their perspiring mates. Others were awakening unrested and vengeful, looking for injustice and ready to snap angrily at it." The heat gets turned on when Patton awakens only to hear a teenage girl who had violently escaped from a juvenile detention camp in his home. Acting as a good Samaritan, Patton tries to help her and winds up with a big headache. She doesn't want to leave, puts on his wife's negligee and cologne, plops in his lap so dressed when he talks to his wife on the phone, and threatens to claim rape and assault if he calls the police. Eventually, she has a gang of juvenile youths join her in his home and the story rockets to a shocking conclusion. Although the idea of the teenage temptress in Patton's home, beguiling him and alternately threatening him, seems at first blush to be a bit corny, the team of Wade Miller manages to pull it off as a good thriller and gives these characters enough life and depth that it works. It is not quite as pulpy as you would expect until deep into the story, but it is a good story nonetheless. ( )