In 1981 an editor at Berkley Books was inspired by the concept of generic no-brand supermarket goods to issue a series of generic--and genre--paperback novels. The titles in the No-Frills novels were only genre names (Romance, Mystery, and so on), the' authors were perhaps at their insistence not credited, and the cover graphics were like those on packages of generic peas and toilet paper. This book is prefaced with a brief history of the series, contains the text of all four of the books in it, ends with a contemporary review, and is dotted with some vaugely relevant stock illustrations.I gleefully recommend it .

The books were pastiches written to the brief specs shown on their covers and all have the form-fitting characters and situations of the genres being satirised. (The satire is subdued in Mystery; its author admitted to admiring books in the genre and seems not to have been so deeply imbued with cynicism as the others.) That they are taking the mickey, though, mightn't be immediately apparent, least of all I deeply fear to habitual readers of genre ficttion despite the publsiher's blurb on each being 'NO-FRILLS BOOKS . . . After you've read one, you won't mind the others'.

In the spirit of things I've tossed more details from the books into Common Knowledge, and you can see the original covers and read plot outlines @ http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/no_frills_books. I will just mention that Romance has the most astonishingly preposterous plot I've ever come across and Science Fiction the most lamentable simile that I have: 'All around, night clung like roofing tar to jutting rocks.' ( )