Writer Sol Weinstein once wallowed in total obscurity. Then in the 1960's, that turbulent decade of sit-ins, sexuality and spies, he crashed into print via Playboy Magazine and Simon & Schuster editions of his four novels (Loxfinger, Matzohball, On the Secret Service of His Majesty the Queen, and You Only Live Until You Die) starring Hebrew Secret Agent Israel Bond (code name Oy-Oy-7) and now he occupies a giddy new status – semi-unknown.

Some thriller fans suspect Sol, a native of Trenton, New Jersey, may have been influenced a whit and a tad, a bushel and a peck, a smidgen and a widget by the literary output of a Pommy, but Sol swears by all that is ambiguous he has been living in an alternative reality in a galaxy far far away from Onan Lemming, Iam Hemming, or whatever the lady's name was.

Yes, Oy-Oy-7 was licensed to kill, but his organization also permitted him to maim and even to hurl really hurtful invectives at a foe. If the situation demanded it he could also perform a memorial service over the victim. On one occasion he learned he had just killed an individual who was a practicing Dryad, so he solemnly sang Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" to the corpse.

While filling pages with Lead, Bloodbath & Beyond (a retail chain he founded in the 1970's) Weinstein also pounded away at his still serviceable Remington portable supplying television waggery spoken by Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr., Danny Thomas, Bobby Darin, Orson Welles, Anthony Newley, George Burns, Alan King and the immortal ginmill tippler Joe E. Lewis whom he dubbed "The Staggering Socrates, The Pickled Plato, The Aristotle of the Bottle."

In 1961 he penned the music and lyrics to an end-of-the-night ballad "The Curtain Falls," which Bobby Darin used as his act closer. It's also been recorded by Bob Hope, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Danny Aiello and Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey, who, in his role as Bobby Darin, sang the song in the biographical film "Beyond the Sea".

Sol now resides in New Zealand but continues to fulminate hot concepts with huge marketability. He is currently offering a screenplay that would revive two iconic teen queens: "Gidget and Tammy Rock Out at a Berlusconi Bunga Bunga." He pronounces a favourite ethnic food as "kiegel", not "kugel." (That's Sol, not Berlusconi.)