Showing posts with label the Saint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Saint. Show all posts

Friday, May 11, 2018

The Saint and Scotland Yard by Leslie Charteris (Pan, 1951)


THE SAINT VERSUS SCOTLAND YARD (originally entitled The Holy Terror), tells how Simon Templar relieves crooks of their ill-gotten gains and, while thus helping Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland Yard, at the same time receives a fair proportion for himself and his girl assistant Patricia Holm.  Part I tells how he settles accounts with a professional blackmailer and murderer called the Scorpion and is thereby enabled to pay his income-tax.  In Part II he foils a giant currency swindle, but incidentally leaves a dead man and other casualties to be explained by the exasperated Teal.  In Part III he confronts two diamond-smuggling gangsters after a murder in a train ; Inspector Teal butts in and is fooled, while the Saint takes one of the gangsters on a wild car-ride ; Teal is finally checkmated on the great liner Berengaria and is left to open a strangely filled trunk labelled with his name.
The copy on the back cover of this book is so exhaustive it reads more like a synopsis than a blurb!  The Saint vs Scotland Yard is comprised of three loosely-connected novellas, in which Simon Templar foils the villains and the law, and escapes with the loot.  And his "girl assistant"?  Actually it's made clear that she is his live-in lover, an arrangement that is common today, but must have raised a few eyebrows back when this was written.

No wonder "The Saint" series became so popular.  The character must have been so much fun for respectable and law-abiding citizens to identify with!

Friday, June 2, 2017

Alias the Saint by Leslie Charteris (Pan, 1953)


ALIAS THE SAINT tells of three adventures of Simon Templar.  In "The Story of a Dead Man' we find the Saint supervising an office in which many irregular things take place; there is a network of mystery about the firm of Vanney's Ltd. and Pamela Marlowe, who is employed there as a secretary, is very puzzled--as indeed she has a good reason to be, for she and the Saint are soon in a very dangerous situation, shared (curiously enough) by Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard.  "The Impossible Crime" displays the Saint pitting his wits against a gang of smuggling crooks; there is an amazing battle in a London square, where a night porter is shot dead.  "The National Debt" opens with the Saint making a trip to a quiet seaside village, hot on the track of three men who have kidnapped a girl analytical chemist whom they hope to compel to carry out a nefarious scheme.
Oh look!  It's The Saint.  Younger readers might not have heard of him, but older readers over a certain age will probably remember him well.  They might even have watched a young Roger Moore playing The Saint (aka Simon Templar) in the TV series of the same name.

The three novellas in this collection come from fairly early on in The Saint's career.  They were first published in the early 1930s, and people who recall Templar's smoother, newer, incarnations might be surprised at how much of a roughneck he is in this book.  He is not adverse to working on the wrong side of the law, and is quite prepared to use lethal violence if he feels it is necessary.  It is quite clear that it is only his own cunning that keeps him safe from the law--as well as the villains he tackles.  Because, criminal though he is, Templar is also one of the Good Guys, and someone you'd want on your side when the going gets tough.

(This is a fairly early Pan paperback.  I only have one older in my collection!)