"The Woman Aroused" was Ed Lacy's first published novel. Many of his early novels revolved around post-World War II life, including soldiers returning from war, soldiers with loot pilfered from Europe, continental attitudes toward American GIs. This book is no exception and is firmly rooted in post WWII life. The title and the cover are lewd and lascivious. The story is a unique one, particularly for a first novel. It is not quite a crime novel.

George has a couple of hobbies, including ballroom dancing, playing the ponies, and an on-again, off-again relationship with his ex-wife Flo, who he had divorced six years earlier, but they still carried on and then broke up, over and over again. A friend, returning from the war in Europe, leaves $7,000 with George, obstensibly to hide it from his wife, Lee. The friend dies suddenly, falling off a ladder at home. George, who isn't necessarily a great guy, plots to keep the money since no one knows about it, but decides to visit Lee to see who she was and whether she had any inkling. If you stop to think about what George does in this book, you realize he is a heel, but Lacy's writing allows the reader to see the world through George's point-of-view and to think of him as not quite the heel that he is.

George, in his wildest dreams, couldn't have imagined Lee, a six-foot tall blonde Amazon sex machine, who drops her clothes at the drop of a hat and, pretty soon, George has his friend's money and his friend's widow and, while feeling slightly guilty, can't let go of anything. But, Lee is a most unusual person, though filled with sex appeal like a giant Wonder Woman type of creature, who lives in a filthy, roach-infested apartment, she is nothing like Lee could have imagined and she turns his life upside down in the strangest ways.

This is a unique story that is hard to categorize and hard to describe without giving it away. Lacy really took a chance with publishing this as his first novel. Don't read this with any pre-conceived notions about what it is about or how it will end. ( )