My sleaze novel

Seems like I'm more prolific nowadays doing self-published books than doing "real" books for "real" publishers. This, Lausteen himokämppä, is my second novel, an attempt at an old-fashioned sleaze paperback. "Attempt", because it turned out to be nastier than many of the old school sleaze books, like the ones written by Lawrence Block or Robert Silverberg. At times this approaches a hardcore sex novel of the later decades, but the sex scenes are always plot-related.

But Lausteen himokämppä is also a crime novel, just like many of the sleaze paperbacks Westlake, Silverberg and the other writers wrote in the late fifties and early sixties for publishers like Midwood. This is about three police officers in Turku, Finland, trying to outscheme each other. They have all fallen - not in love - for a Russian woman living in the suburb of Lauste, who seems to be working the night shift. There are many outbursts of irrational violence, which I hope shows the influence of early Charles Willeford and Jason Starr.

The word count falls under 20,000, and the format is a small paperback. The cover illustration is from an old pantyhose package. The cover didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but maybe it suits the retro sleaze feeling - the Finnish sex paperbacks of bygone days were far from professional products! (The same feeling is captured also in the end where the sex scene gets too convoluted and the dildo is in and out at the same time!)

Note that I'm using a pseudonym here. I don't know why, maybe I got ashamed - I've said for years that even the dirtiest smut must be published under your own name! "Mikael Messi" is a so-called porn name: take your second first name and the name of the street you lived in when you were a kid. The "X" is just a joke, but it's also an allusion to the pseudonym John Jakes used in his sex novels: J. X. Williams.

The book is available straight from me for 7 euros. You won't find this in any bookstore!

And oh, the title: Lausteen himokämppä might be translated as "The Lust Cabin of Lauste".