Mike McGrady, the former Newsday reporter who was an editor and instigator of the 1969 surprise bestseller Naked Came the Stranger, died on Sunday. He was 78.
Long before E.L. James, Naked Came the Stranger was "a no-holds barred chronicle of a suburban woman's sexual liaisons, with each chapter recounting a different escapade," the New York Times wrote. "She has sex with a mobster and sex with a rabbi. She has sex with a hippie and sex with at least one accountant. There is a scene involving a tollbooth, another involving ice cubes and still another featuring a Shetland pony."
McGrady came up with the idea of the erotic novel as "ironic commentary on the public's appetite for Jacqueline Susann and her ilk," the Times said. Two dozen of his Newsday colleagues contributed chapters, and the book was published by the late Lyle Stuart with authorship credited to Penelope Ashe, a "demure Long Island housewife."
Several months after Naked Came the Stranger was published--and had sold 20,000 copies--the truth about how it was written became public. Still, the book went on to sell about 400,000 copies and was re-released in 2004 by Barricade Books, founded by Stuart.
