As his 'Lady from L.U.S.T' series began to wind
down, author Gardner F. Fox found himself a new muse in Cherise Dellissio,
better known to those who get to experience her on an intimate basis, which is
just about everyone, as Cherry Delight. Fox's new muse isn't too removed from
his old muse. Like Eve Drum, of the Lady from L.U.S.T novels, Cherry is a
sexpot spy and tough girl who works for a government agency with an
unfortunately smutty sounding name. Cherry being the lady from N.Y.M.P.H.O,
which stands for New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organization. The
main difference between Eve Drum and Cherry Delight is that while Eve was a
natural blonde, Cherry is a proud redhead. A fact that is quite literally
thrust in the reader's face throughout these books. If you like 'em Strawberry
all over, then Cherry is the fox you've been waiting for.
The first Cherry Delight outing 'The Italian
Connection' shows that Gardner F. Fox sure knew how to grab the reader's
attention right from the get go. Cherry is naked, playing dead and being
molested in a coffin by a male co-worker. What initially seems like a shocking,
necrophilia themed opening turns out to be training for N.Y.M.P.H.O's latest
scheme to bring down the mob. In order to hide a shameful sexual secret from
his fellow gangsters, Mafia kingpin Joe Turessi is having hookers being brought
to him in coffins for sexual liaisons at a mafia owned funeral parlor. Thus
Cherry is posing as a hooker and being shipped out to him in his unorthodox
manner. If you are familiar with Fox's Lady from L.U.S.T books, you'll be
unsurprised to learn that Turessi's sexual secret is a fetish for female
underwear "every capo in the outfit would laugh at me if it got out".
Such a reoccurring theme in Fox's adult fiction that there can be little doubt
this fetish was shared by the author. It's a 24/7 obsession in his books. After
she emerges naked from the coffin, Turessi has Cherry dress up in a variety of
suspenders, panties and garter belts, much to his voyeuristic delight "the
clothes, put them on, you gotta".
The Italian Connection delves a little deeper than
most of Fox's work into the roots of underwear fetishism, and if Fox was
writing from the heart, it is a rather dark, unsavory rabbit hole we go down
here. Turessi admits that he likes seeing women in sexy underwear because it
provides him with a nostalgic buzz for when Youngman Turessi used to spy on his
mother and sisters "alla time i was growing up. I used to lie there inna
dark and peek into the next room an' watch my sisters getting undressed for bed
or dressed to go out". Fortunately for Turessi, Cherry don't kink shame,
even when he is balling her in a coffin and fantasizing that she is his mother.
Cherry tries to get information out of Turessi,
which isn't easy when he is burying his face in her ass. Cherry's aim is to
manipulate Joe Turessi into taking her with him to France, where she can
further infiltrate the European arm of the Mafia. However Cherry proves to be a
little too good at her job, and ends up throwing so much energetic sex in
Turessi's direction that the old codger dies from a heart attack. Arrivederci,
Joe. Her 'Plan B' involves going to France herself and posing as his mistress,
where Cherry finds herself in a middle of a power struggle between warring
sections of the Mafia. Naturally Cherry uses her feminine charms to endear
herself to a succession of Mafia goons with one track minds. Fox's Mafiosi
characters do tend to be one note and interchangeable, yet all share the
amusing characteristic of yelling "Marrone!!" in times of crisis.
Just as softcore American movies were at the time
giving way to the likes of Deep Throat, so too the Cherry Delight books leaves
the Lady from L.U.S.T ones in the dust when it comes to explicitness. Fox's writing
was pretty much hardcore porn at this point, and the plots little more than a
connecting link between sexual encounters. Life just seems to be one long orgy
for Miss Delight, and Fox's extensive sexual vocabulary never fails to
entertain. The Italian Connection being awash with references to 'blue veined
breastflesh', 'pudendal pincers' and 'backdoor bumfiddling'.
Unfortunately as with the Lady from L.U.S.T books,
when there is padding here it really stands out as such. Long descriptions of
uneventful plane journeys, detailed accounts of where Cherry dined out at and
what she had off the menu. Yawn. Then there are the shopping sprees, and
Cherry's name dropping of the fashion brands she happens to be
wearing...Givenchy, Estée Lauder, Christian Dior. Admittedly it wouldn't be out
of character for a young, hip female character to be obsessed by fashion, but
it's baffling why Fox thought a red blooded male audience would share this
interest. Their likely reaction to these passages being "Marrone!! just a
getta on with the naughty bits, Capiche". I guess having a fetish for
female underwear gave Fox a greater insight into female fashion than the
average fella.
Fortunately there is plenty of material in The
Italian Connection that a red blooded audience would be interested in, it's a
remarkably horny read, and Cherry Delight proves to be an even more
hyper-sexual creation than Eve Drum. Such is Cherry's dedication to turning on
the readership that during a life or death rooftop escape from a villa, Cherry
takes time out from dodging the bullets to ogle the woman she is escaping with.
"For a second Donna poised with her legs apart, I could see right up
between them. She wore no panties just a garter belt, and her hairy nooky nest
was something to make a guy or gal drool". Cherry Delight books aren't
afraid to play rough either; gang rape and being placed in bondage devices are
the frequent downsides to Cherry's line of work. While The Italian Connection favors
sex over violence, the sequel novels show Fox wasn't adverse to gore. In the
next book 'Tong in Cheek', Cherry gets to blow the top of a man's head off,
while another mafioso is agonizingly cut into little pieces by oriental heavies.
I'm in little doubt that this book would have
wound up the wrong way readers thinking they were signing up to a crime
thriller along the lines of The French Connection, and weren't expecting a
sleaze overload. A recent Amazon review of the book dismisses it as 'Trash
poorly written for the perverted mind'. There can be little doubt though that
Fox was a dedicated, hard worker when it came to satisfying perverted minds,
knocking out numerous Cherry Delight novels in a short amount of time and
pouring his own obsessions into them. The quick, sometimes careless nature of
the work, being evidenced by the fact that in The Italian Connection the agency
Cherry works for undergoes a name change from N.Y.M.P.H.O to S.P.E.R.M midway
through the book without explanation. My guess is that Fox was originally going
to call it S.P.E.R.M, before thinking that N.Y.M.P.H.O was funnier, either that
or he couldn't come up with an appropriate acronym for S.P.E.R.M in time, and a
proof reader forgot to correct it. In fairness, coming up with a story specific
acronym for S.P.E.R.M sure isn't easy...the best I can come up with myself is
Spies Protecting Everyone from Randy Mafiosi.
The
Italian Connection and the entire Cherry Delight series is available to read at
the Gardner F Fox website.
https://www.gardnerfrancisfoxlibrary.com/cherry-delight-novels-read-entire-stories-library
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