Prelude For War [Hardcover]

Leslie Charteris (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton 1938 (1939)
• ASIN: B000VMFXBI
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Saint Saga #19, October 16, 2008

By 

Paul Magnussen (Campbell, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Prelude for War (Hardcover)

Helping the victims of a devastating country house fire, Simon finds there is one he is unable to rescue. Soon he becomes convinced that the fire was not an accident, but murder. The mystery is: why?

"Prelude for War" (later plonkingly re-titled "The Saint Plays with Fire"), one of the best Saint novels, is very much of its time -- i.e. just before World war II -- and has echoes of The Last Hero and Knight Templar. It makes particularly clear the author's loathing of Fascism and everything associated with it.

The idea that wars are encouraged, or even engineered, by arms-manufacturers and others who stand to make a profit from them has gone in and out of fashion over the years. The Saint is a proponent of it, and even mentions (in a conversation with Patricia Holm) a book wherein this thesis is documented. I was interested to find that the book really exists, and finally ran it down*. It seems very well researched, and well-written, too: I wish there were an up-to-date version!

Anyway, I found this Saint episode unputdownable from start to finish. In addition to the usual friends like Orace, Peter and Hoppy, we have the pleasure of meeting what must surely be Charteris's loveliest non-recurring character: Lady Valerie Woodchester. To make her acquaintance would alone be enough reason to read the book!

*Merchants of Death by H.C. Engelbrecht & F.C. Hanighen, published in 1934 by Dodd, Mead & Co. (New York) and now rereleased.

P.S. For a list of -- and discussion of -- all Charteris's Saint books, see my So You'd Like To... Guide.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Super Reader, November 16, 2007

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prelude for War (The Saint) (Paperback)

The Saint does a sport of fireman work in this book as a leadup, and the novel is also known as The Saint Plays With Fire.

'"Oh," she said. "How silly of me! Of course I remember you now. You're the hero, aren't you?"
"Am I?"
She frowned a little.
"Not that I really hoot a lot about this hero business," she went on. "I daresay it's all very fine for great he-men to go rushing about dripping with sweat and doing noble things, but I think there ought to be special places set apart for them to perform in."
"You were rescued yourself the other night, weren't you?" said the Saint pleasantly.'

The main thrust of the story is involved with the Sons of France planning a fascist coup d'etat, and a woman mixed up in the middle of this, before the Saint inserts himself.

Interesting conversation they have when imprisoned :

'"Once upon a time," said the Saint, "there was a wall-eyed wombat named Wilhelmina, who lived in a burrow in Tasmania and grieved resentfully over the fact that Nature had endowed her, like all females of the marsupial family, with an abdominal pouch or sac intended for the reception and protection of newborn marsupials. Since," however, the strabismic asymmetry of Wilhelmina's features had always deterred discriminating males of her species from making such advances to her as might have resulted in the produc-tion of young wombats, she was easily persuaded to regard this useful and ingenious organ as an indecent excrescence invented by the Creator in a lewd and absent-minded mo-ment, and she soon became the leader of a strong movement among other unattractive wombats to suppress all references to it and to decry its use as sinful and reprehensible, and invariably wore a species of apron or sporran to conceal this obscene conformation of tissue from the world. Now it so happened that one night a purblind male wombat named Widgery, of dissolute habits . . ."
He was in the scullery of Bledford Manor with Lady Valerie Woodchester. They sat on the hard cold tile floor with their wrists and ankles bound with strong cord. A smear of blood had dried across Simon's face and in spite of his quiet satiric voice his head was aching savagely. Lady Val-erie's face was very dirty and her hair was in wild disarray; she also had a headache, and she was in a poisonous temper.
"Oh, stop it!" she burst out jitteringly. "You've got me into a hell of a nice mess, haven't you ? I suppose you enjoy this sort of thing, but I don't. Aren't you going to do something about it?"
"What would you like me to do?" he asked accommodatingly.'

But, of course, all good heroes have a little something left in the tank for dire situations:

'He had half turned to watch her; and as he stood still no one was paying much attention to him. But in that volcanic immobility his arms hardened like iron columns, strained across the fulcrum of his back like twisted bars of tempered steel. The muscles writhed and swelled over his back and shoulders, leapt up in knotted strands like leathery hawsers from his shoulders down to his raw and bleeding wrists; a convulsion of superhuman power swept over his torso like the shock of an earthquake. And the ropes that held his hands together, weakened by the loss of the strands that he had been able to rub away in the few minutes that had been given him, were not strong enough to stand against it. There was a faint snap as the fibres parted; and his arms sprang apart with the jerk of unleashed tension. He was free.'

A rather entertaining Saint adventure.

3.5 out of 5