The Adulterers

Collection of Classic Erotica, Volume 13

By: Lawrence Block

Narrated by: Theo Holland

Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

The Adulterers was my second effort for Bill Hamling's Nightstand Books. Like its predecessor, Campus Tramp, its cover was the work of Harold W. McCauley. I wrote the book in the fall of 1959, and it's not hard to find its beginning in my own life a little over a year earlier. In May of 1958 I left the employ of Scott Meredith and went home to Buffalo. Then, with my friend and Antioch roommate Steve Schwerner, I headed to Mexico to devote two months to rest and recreation before returning for another year at the college. We flew to Houston, hitchhiked to Laredo, and that last empty stretch of road from Freer to Laredo, where the book begins, has not faded from memory. We were a long time waiting for a ride, and learned later it was because nobody wanted to pick up a hitchhiker on that stretch of highway; if you did and he put you out of the car, you'd die out there. Well, the guys who picked us up weren't worried. They were Tex-Mex gangsters in a block-long Caddy, and the car's welcome A/C was cool, but they were way cooler.

The Adulterers features George and Mona Sutton, a sexually incompatible couple on their way to a Mexican divorce. But they meet a helpful guide named Ernesto, and that changes everything. Now Steve and I had met an Ernesto of our own, and he was helpful enough to steer us to some pot, but this Ernesto took George to a live sex show, and it made an impression on the fellow. And, not too long afterward, Mona drank enough rum and Coca-Cola to float a light cruiser, and wound up as the sex slave of El Tigre, who might have been a narco-trafficker if the career category had existed back then. So it's a story of evolving depravity, and I hope you enjoy it.

©1960 Lawrence Block (P)2016 Lawrence Block

The Adulters

This is a fun book to listen to. It holds your attention. It has a lot is sexual content so it's best to have a head set on if you don't want anyone over hearing. There marriage is over so they go on a trip to try and try to fix it. They find a whole new life. A wild life. Sex and drugs. A very exciting time. Theo Holland does a great job narraiting this book. If my review was any help will you please click on the helpful link below. Thank you

Great

Lawrence Block’s Collection of Classic Erotica has proven time and again to be a wonderful assortment of books. Some of the titles are solid crime fiction stories masquerading as erotica while others are predicated on sex, though neither become graphic and remain tightly written, well told stories. The Adulterers is both. To sum up the plot, a couple without a sex life travel to Mexico for one last try at finding a remedy to their lacking passion passion, knowing that if they can’t, the marriage is not one either need be a part of. From there, they run into a host of issues from illegal sex shows to drug traffickers to murder. Though it is not detrimentally graphic, it is not a book for those who avoid stories involving sexual assault commerce predicated on selling women.

Block’s gift for writing is obvious in even his earliest works, and this is no exception. That he was able to write erotica that not only succeeds as a narrative that never succumbs to pornography is astounding and, as he is accustomed to do, tells his story with a clear consumable prose that is beyond inviting. Over used are phrases like “page turner” and “hard to put down”, which are both apt, but Block has shown again and again that is work sticks with the reader, and when you are not turning pages and failing to put it down, you will be excited to get back to reading. The Adulterers, surely, is memorable and engrossing, easy digestible and wholly satisfying. It is not Block’s best, to be fair, but it does not need to in order to be well worth your time. It reads like classic pulp and, if you’re into that, The Adulterers will more than scratch the itch and stick with you after you’re finished.

I listened to The Adulterers as an audiobook and for those who enjoy listening,
Theo Holland is a solid narrator. From my experiences listening to several of his books, he reliably falls into a rhythm which is easy to get lost in, and the Adulterers is no exception.