Customer Reviews

The First Saint Omnibus: An Anthology of Saintly Adventures (The Saint series)

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It's always seemed to me that if you like the Saint stories enough to read more than a couple of them, it's worth starting at the beginning and reading them in the right order (as described in my So You'd Like To... Guide). Otherwise, you miss so much: to take just one example, the references in "The Simon Templar Foundation" to Rayt Marius (villain of The Last Hero and Knight Templar) will be meaningless to you.

However, if anthologies such as this are more to your taste, then this is where to start: all the stories are drawn from the pre-war books, which is to say the best ones.

Here's what you get:

From #02 Enter the Saint (1930)
• The Man Who Was Clever
From #05 Featuring the Saint (1931)
• The Wonderful War
From #06 Alias the Saint (1931)
• The Story of a Dead Man
From #08 The Holy Terror (aka The Saint vs. Scotland Yard 1932)
• The Million Pound Day
From #10 Once More the Saint (aka The Saint and Mr Teal 1933)
• The Death Penalty
From #11 The Brighter Buccaneer (1934)
• The Unblemished Bootlegger
• The Appalling Politician
From #12 The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal (aka The Saint in London 1934)
• The Simon Templar Foundation
From #13 Boodle (aka The Saint Intervenes 1934)
• The Unfortunate Financier
• The Sleepless Knight
From #14 The Saint Goes On (1934)
• The High Fence
From #17 The Ace of Knaves (1937)
• The Unlicensed Victuallers
From #20 Follow the Saint (1939)
• The Affair of Hogsbotham

There are also, especially for this volume, informative and amusing comments on each story by the author himself.

The variety and quality of the stories make this, I believe, the best single-volume Saint anthology -- better by a small margin than the The Best of the Saint, Vol. 1, with which it has a 3-story overlap.

i was hoping to get some complete stories, however this book just contains excerpts, which means i wont even bother reading it. The book seller was great, though. no complaints there!