The most famous brand in romance novels, “Harlequin Romance,” is apparently to be retired next year. The company’s still churnin’ out the paperbacks; but the firm’s specialty lines have taken the sales, and the shelf space, away from what had been its flagship series.

Masculine-oriented readers might scoff at ’em, but romances are the last commercially successful branch of old-fashioned pulp fiction. They’re “adventure” stories written to precise pubilsher-decreed formulae–just as the Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, the Shadow, Tarzan, and Doc Savage had been.

Horror, sci-fi, mystery, and action novels are still being published in paperback, of course; but those industry segments are, for the most part, not as centrally editorially-controlled as they used to be (with some exceptions, such as Star Trek novels).

No, it’s the romances that are still this heavily pre-planned by the home office. Each “series” brand has its own characteristics–length, setting, characters, explicitness level (some of the racier romance lines are now the only sexual material allowed for sale at Wal-Mart).

This obsession with order and contrivance can be seen in some of the “chick lit” novels marketed to women who consider themselves too hip to read romances. “Chick lit” stories might not always have happy endings, but they seem to all have perky young heroines who all live in glamorous cities and all have glamorous AND high-paying careers, just like the heroines in certain romance series. (Trust me on this: In the real world, nobody who writes for an alternative weekly newspaper can afford Sarah Jessica Parker’s wardrobe.)

We’ll leave this item with a totally unrelated aphorism from the source of this news flash, “Superromance” novelist Susan Gable: “Beware of men with expensive, flashy cars and expensive, flashy teeth.”