“The Lust Sleepers”

“The Lust Sleep­ers” (1964) by J X Williams

A clas­sic exam­ple of the 1960’s hyp­no-porn. John Thurs­day, the pro­tag­o­nist, makes a liv­ing pro­vid­ing hyp­not­ic ser­vices for voy­ers and sub­jects. When one of his sub­jects com­mits sui­cide, he flees to New York where he gets black­mailed to assist Reich, who runs BDSM par­ties at his remote manor with a heavy empha­sis on B and S.

The inside cov­er text reads:

CONDITIONED FOR LOVE?

John Thurs­day has a spe­cial trick. His sin­cere looks mask the abil­i­ty to hyp­no­tize any unwill­ing wan­ton until she casts aside all her inhi­bi­tions to per­form any shame­ful set Thurs­day can think to com­mand. Like Gre­ta, on the office couch, who goes through such throes of ecsta­sy there is noth­ing left for her … but the long fall out­side the office win­dow. Like Rita, the red­head on the plane, who shows Thurs­day what love / hate real­ly means. Like Mae, whose trance revealed a degra­da­tion that was alarm­ing in its inten­si­ty. Or like Reich, the twist­ed degen­er­ate who used extor­tion to per­suade Thurs­day to do his evil bidding.

The back text reads:

TORTURE CELLAR… That’s where the sadis­tic Reich kept all his lit­tle impli­ments [sic] of plea­sure. The shack­les, the cells, the whips. Right there beneath his pala­tial coun­try estate. And it is so easy for him to find guests to peo­ple his week­end orgies. Each of them going through their shame­less paces at Reich’s bid­ding, nev­er know­ing what exquis­ite plea­sures wait­ed below… plea­sures for Reich, that is… as the whip tens­es in his hand. Into this hell-hole he black­mails John Thurs­day… to per­form Thurs­day’s spe­cial degrad­ing trick on Mae Davis… while all the oth­er chang­ing part­ners watched in delight…

GoodReads has a very good descrip­tion of it here.

I believe J X Williams is a house name, because there are far too many books with that name list­ed from this and allied publishers.

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