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THE GIRL FROM PUSSYCAT

Candie_Penny1 Candie_Penny2 Candie_Penny3
 
Full Name: Penelope (Penny) Candie
Series Name: The Girl From PUSSYCAT
Nationality: American
Organization: Pussycat Publications
Occupation Reporter

Creator: Ted Mark
Time Span: 1965 - 1968

ABOUT THE SERIES

Penny Candie is a reporter for a romance magazine.

This series is NOT a spy series. That, of course, begs the question why is it included in the compendium. The answer is really because many other lists I have come across have included it. For that reason, I am also including it to point out that it truly doesn't belong.

When the series opens, written in the same year as the first of Ted Mark's more famous Man From O.R.G.Y. series, Candie (ok, I admit I liked the name) is a junior reporter put in charge of the romance magazine, Lovelights, for Pussycat Publications. Concerned she cannot handle the job because at 21, she is still a virgin, she goes out of her way to rectify that situation, resulting in some mighty strange failures, each one convincing her more and more that there is something wrong with her but making her more determined to achieve her goal.

The non-spy series goes crazy after that, including a totally bizarre situation where she becomes a man who is lusted after ladies just like her former self.

It seems obvious that with the initial success of the Man From O.R.G.Y. the publisher wished to capitalize on the publicity and so prompted the author to come up with something else. It had to have been the publisher who pushed the ersatz spy motif to the series because Ted Mark did not try at all to make his female protagonist anything other than a young girl embarrassed to be writing a love and sex column for women without having been in love or having had sex. Mr. Mark was after humor and to a degree he got it. And a lot of spy-loving fans bought it and certainly got confused.

BOOKS

Number of Books:3
First Appearance:1965
Last Appearance:1968

1 The Girl From Pussycat The Girl From Pussycat
Written by Ted Mark
Copyright: 1965

This adventure is largely one of Penny trying to gain the experience she needs to edit a magazine like Lovelights and failing repeatedly to lose her virginity. The strange people she meets along the way are amusing, however.

2 Pussycat, Pussycat Pussycat, Pussycat
Written by Ted Mark
Copyright: 1966

While trying to find a temporary editor for her Lovelights magazine, Penny is brought into contact and conflict with three beautiful and oddball ladies who each makes Penny's life crazier than it already was.

3 The Pussycat Transplant The Pussycat Transplant
Written by Ted Mark
Copyright: 1968

The luscious Penny is pregnant and needing a doctor to help eliminate the situation. The strange doctor she chooses, however, has a different operation in mind, literally, and Penny wakes up in the body of a very virile, much sought-after young man!

MY COMMENTS

Since these are not spy novels, they have no right to be here. Too many lists of spy series include the Girl From Pussycat, however, to leave her off so I include it just to keep people from wondering why she wasn't included. So it is mostly to prove she doesn't belong here that she is here.

The same farcical style that made Steve Victor, the Man From O.R.G.Y., so popular is in these books but they lacked something and so were not as interesting. I got bored quickly with the Victor books but the Candie books never got me interested in the first place.

As amusing tales, however, they can bring a small smile to your face. For a while.

GRADE

My Grade: D-

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