Customer Reviews

Thanks to the Saint

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Six more stories in which Simon solves mysteries, swindles swindlers, and (in the final tale) hoists an Engineer with his own petard.

But the plots have become repetitive and formulaic, and the writing -- especially relative to the author's earlier works -- rather tired.

This is possibly the dullest of all the post-war Saint books. Roger, Dickie, Archie, Monty, Peter, Claud Eustace and even Patricia have all disappeared, leaving the Saint rootlessly wandering the globe solving other people's problems like some cross between the Wandering Jew and the the Lone Ranger; but never truly at home anywhere as he was in pre-war England (despite his expostulations about its licensing laws). Leaving him, in fact, pretty much as he's portrayed in the TV series.

Fernack, so admirable in his debut (The Saint in New York), has been deformed into a futile Teal-substitute.

Charteris seldom wrote a bad story -- in fact his worst is better than many authors' best -- and those coming to this book without having read the previous ones may wonder what I'm talking about.

But if I give the pre-war stories four or five stars (as I have), then this book has to be a three.

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