“Nine people were on the island, so conflict erupted into a conflagration of sex, jealously and death. Then there were seven.”
Here’s a quick Pulp Friday offering before I retreat to the bunker I’ve dug in the backyard to await the results of Saturday’s federal election.
Island of Flames was published by Horwitz Publications in 1967.
According to the Austlit database, Geoff Wyatt quit high school at 14 and joined the Royal Australian Navy at 17. He also worked as a labourer and factory worker before becoming a journalist.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s he published stories and articles in the skin magazines that had popped up in Sydney in the early sixties, before going on to write a dozen or so books for Horwitz.
The plot line for Island of Flames is a deranged, counter-cultural version of the hit show, Survivor, featuring every archetype in the arsenal of sixties pulp fiction. But the back cover blurb can explain it way better than I ever could.
“Nine men and woman isolated on a tropical island.
Kay Perry – a prostitute.
Miles Nash – an editor, fire from his job.
Leon Hudson and Arthur Fell – two petty criminals.
Rex Hamilton – a journalist with ambitions.
Eric Rigby – an artist from the Cross.
Fiona King – whose husband has been unfaithful with
Janis King – her daughter.
Norma Dyson – a middle aged lesbian.
After less than a month, two are dead in the emotional explosion that is a natural result of them coming together. ISLAND OF FLAMES is a story of conflict, a study in violence, a revelation of human sexuality.”
