Book Review: Featuring The Saint by Leslie Charteris

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I've been reading the adventures of Leslie Charteris' famous adventure character Simon Templar, aka “The Saint” in order of book publication. It's been a while since the last one, because I save money by buying books in job lots and sell the ones I have duplicates of. For a long time, the fifth book in the series was missing from my collection, but I recently bought a lot that included this volume - “Featuring The Saint.” This book is a collection of three short stories, which I think were originally printed in magazines before being collected together in 1931. The paperback edition I bought is from the 60s and starts with a short introduction by the author confirming that he hadn't done anything to try to update the stories, so they're still firmly set in the world of the 1930s. Reviewing each story in order: The Logical Adventure Since the events of the previous book, the Saint's identity is now public knowledge, but there are no outstanding arrest warrants for him. Simon Templar is back living in London with his girlfriend Patricia Holm. In some of the early stories he had a gang of helpers, but they no longer seem to be active and even his faithful servant Orace is absent from this story. He seems to be well on the way to transitioning into the lone wolf hero that he's usually portrayed as in film and TV. The story concerns an apparently respectable show business agent called Francis Lemuel. Templar's interested in him because he seems a bit too respectable to be true. Templar reads in the newspaper that Lemuel – who had been taking flying lessons – has had to give up the lessons on medical advice following a crash. Later on, Templar also learns that Lemuel is looking for a pilot to ferry him around Europe on business. But why would a showbiz agent, who is used to a comfortable life, want to fly around in a private aircraft instead of taking one of the much more comfortable established airline routes? One possible answer would be to avoid Customs – and when Templar learns that Lemuel is specifically looking for a disreputable pilot, he poses as a disgraced ex-RAF officer to get the job. Following a trip to Germany to meet one of Lemuel's business associates, by the name of Einsmann, Templar finds that he is indeed up to no good – buying cocaine from Einsmann and smuggling it back to Britain. The trade isn't one-way either – Lemuel is supplying unsuspecting British women to Einsman, in what was then known as the “white slave trade” - sex trafficking, in modern parlance. Barely saving a naïve but adventurous dancer called Stella Dornford from a fate worse than death, and inflicting his own brand of violent justice in the process, the Saint is left with the problem of how to deal with Lemuel. His solution involves a blackmail scheme, psychological pressure, sudden death and the unwitting help of his old nemesis Inspector Teal. The resolution does involve Templar having unexplained foreknowledge of a certain event, but that wasn't enough to spoil my enjoyment. Following on from the international politics and personal revenge that featured so heavily in the previous couple of books, I found this story to be a return to form. It seems to me that the Saint is at his best when he's tackling mid-level criminals – gangsters and corrupt businessmen. And Templar displays his full range of talents here, including deadly violence, blackmail, a quick wit, some talent for disguise and a certain level of skill with electronics. Patricia has a bit more involvement than in the previous book, but she does seem to be tiring of Templar's unstable life to a certain extent, vainly trying to get him to settle down to a less dangerous lifestyle. All the same, they're still definitely a couple, although it seems to be an open relationship as Templar also enjoys a slight fiery but flirtatious relationship with Stella. It's a fast-moving story, with enough going on to keep the reader interested, and in my opinion a definite improvement on the previous couple of stories. 8/10. The Wonderful War A lot of Saint stories were adapted into episodes of the 60s TV version of The Saint, staring Roger Moore – and it happens that I saw the TV version of this story recently on Talking Pictures TV's free streaming service “Encore” just recently. So I was interested to see how much they changed for the TV. Quite a bit, as it turns out. For a start, the original story takes place in Central America, whereas the TV episode is set in the Middle East. There's also an added subplot in the TV episode which I think improved the story a bit. The original's still good, though. The Saint has traveled to the fictional republic of Pasala to consult with his friend Archibald Sheridan, who he sent there a few months previously. Sheridan is a member of the Saint's gang, which is apparently still active, despite the impression given by the previous story. They're investigating the probable murder of a Scottish mining engineer called McAndrew by his business partner, a shady character by the name of Shannet. Following McAndrew's death, Shannet has produced a document supposedly signed by McAndrew, leaving the whole of his share of an oil field that they've discovered to Shannet. This is disputed by McAndrew's daughter Lilla, but Shannet won the dispute in the local courts – but the local courts, like the government, are totally corrupt. Shannet is protected by the government, whose President is a weak-willed puppet of the money-hungry Minister of the Interior, de Villega. Shannet himself is in the employ of a crooked businessman in London called Campard, who makes his money by selling people shares in worthless companies. Campard is the Saint's primary target, and the oil company is the only genuine business that he owns, and is therefore his vulnerable point. The only way to restore the oil concession to Lilla's ownership is to replace the government, so the Saint decides to do exactly that – aided only by Sheridan and Kelly, a stereotypically hot-tempered Irishman who lives locally. His plan for achieving this involves creating the illusion of an imminent invasion by one of Pasala's neighbours, and the Saint himself disguising himself as a local subversive in order to deliberately get himself temporarily locked up. The plan is both clever and relatively simple. Another short and sweet story with enough going on to maintain the reader's interest. There is one apparent continuity mistake. In the previous story, the Saint shows himself to be a crack shot with an air pistol. But in this story he claims not to be very good with pistols. But then again, he's not the most honest character around. I give this story a solid 8/10. The Man Who Could Not Die The third and final story is a bit shorter than the other two, and maybe a bit smaller scale, but none the worse for it. At the start of this story, Simon Templar has become mildly interested in an independently wealthy amateur sportsman called Miles Hallin, who the newspapers call “The Man Who Cannot Die”, due to him having survived several potentially fatal accidents in high-risk sports such as flying and motor racing. The Saint has also recently made the acquaintance of Nigel Perry, who knows Hallin and who hero-worships him. Hallin had been partners in a gold mining venture in Australia with Perry's brother some years previously, but disaster had struck and Hallin had made it out of the desert alive through sheer luck (apparently) while Perry's brother survived. Hallin had made Perry a partner in the gold claim in place of his brother, although the mine itself had never come to much. Since then Hallin had advised Perry on how to invest his limited money, which Perry is grateful for. Hallin seems like a very good guy, with a spotless reputation – but the Saint seems to be automatically suspicious of people with spotless reputations. And then Templar runs into an old friend, mining engineer Teddy Everest, who's been doing some work for Hallin. Hallin had encouraged Perry to invest in a gold mine which subsequently became mined out sooner than people expected, but Everest has discovered a new gold seam which will cause the value of Perry's shares to increase. But a few days later, Everest is killed in a crash while accompanying Hallin in a car race. The Saint believes that Hallin deliberately killed Everest to prevent Perry from finding out that the value of his shares had gone up before Hallin could buy them back from him. Also involved is Perry's girlfriend Moyna. This story has a different sort of villain from the other two. Hallin motivation isn't money – it becomes clear during the course of the story that he's mentally ill and has not only an exaggerated fear of death, but also of being exposed as a coward. He's desperate for people to think well of him, especially Moyna. And he's so desperate to preserve his image that he's willing to kill. Once Hallin and Templar cross paths, a malicious prank by Templar leads to an attempt on Templar's life by Hallin. And this leads to Inspector Teal becoming interested – Teal, the slow-moving, apparently slow-witted detective who's actually a lot smarter than he appears, and can move fast when he needs to. He's my favourite supporting character from the early stories, so I always enjoy it when he makes an appearance. Although Hallin has a spotless reputation, Teal is also well-aware that Templar never goes after anyone without cause. And when a mistake by Templar puts two innocent lives in danger, Templar and the Saint team up to go after Hallin. The relationship between Templar and Teal is handled very well in this story – although they're on opposite sides of the law, there's a certain level of mutual respect. This is a good story, with a fairly simple narrative and a more interesting than usual villain, who even manages to be a bit sympathetic even when he's at his most menacing. Another 8/10. Altogether, this is a very good collection. All three stories are very good, with consistently decent writing quality. This may be the best Saint book that I've read since the very first one, and definitely refreshing after the heavy politics and revenge motivations of the previous couple of books. I suspect that the character tends to work best in short story format. They're not perfect stories – we're talking about early thirties pulp fiction, and there is some national stereotyping here and there, along with the occasional bits of dialogue that could be considered mildly racist – but its no worse in this respect than other mystery and adventure stories that I've read from that time, and I doubt that the author meant anything malicious – Leslie Charteris was himself of mixed race parentage, after all. So with the above minor criticism, I would give this book as a whole 8/10.