Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my great heroes in his first story, 18 Aug 2008
spoilers......
I became a Saint fan in my teens and collected all the books eventually up to about 1980 but this one was one of the hardest to get - no internet then. Still, I traced it eventually. As I was already entranced by Simon Templar (so long as he was faithful to his lady Patricia and not mooning over heaven knows who else as he did in the later books!) I was delighted at long last to read the first story in which he meets Patricia Holm.
This book is like the earlier non-Saint stories Charteris wrote, dramatic adventures in a popular style of the time aka John Buchan, all of which I was able to buy before this one. Another review gives the story so I'll concentrate on other aspects.
It was surprising I thought how easily Charteris developed this great character even in just the first book, along with his faithful manservant Orace, even though in this you have no real hint of the amazingly popular long series to come. In what must be the second book, Enter the Saint stories, he becomes rather more like many other heroes with his "gang". You can see in this early gang a 20's style group of friends although the humour isn't thankfully much of the don't-you-know, but Charteris soon disposes of all of these mates and the Saint's later long-time associate, the pretty thick Hoppy, is very disappointing in comparison and I could never really see why the Saint had him along or why Charteris liked him in the stories as he did nothing for them. On the other hand, you could say the Saint had changed - Hoppy was now the type of person he liked to have along rather than friends who were more like equals or a manservant who might be too polite? This Saint began just a little to become disappointing and rarely recovered his early charm for me except in notably in the excellent Vendetta for the Saint which was a rare long novel lateish in the series and an immense relief after years of blase, itinerant rather tired Saint-around-the-World stuff.
But in this first story, there's just Orace and a young, vibrant hero. The Saint appears to be a loner. It's entirely a stand-alone story too with a typical adventure and a typical light romance but such attractive protagonists that you can't help enjoying every minute even though the book is a little dated compared with the best full-length novels that followed - notably The Last Hero and Getaway which are my favourites of all the series, stories which have hardly dated at all.
If you don't already know the Saint well and particularly via the earlier full-length books, you might well not find this anything exceptional - except for a certain "something" that might get you intrigued to find out if Charteris ever wrote any more stories about The Saint!
Patricia is an equally well-drawn character and clearly this romance was very popular with readers even though Charteris tired of her eventually -from quite early on finding other romances, at first platonic but later not, for his hero, and eventually dropped her completely and refused to bring her back. There's a famous moment in one of the wartime books when the Saint treats his always-intrepid clever lady like his old granny and you wonder why she didn't belt him one for the insult and then walk out for good. Well, it seems she did walk out for good, either then or later as that's the last you hear of her except for a mention in a late ghosted story that she did eventually leave him!
The Saint always remains dynamic and unfailingly witty when Charteris himself is writing the stories, but tends to fade a little when others are ghosting.
I read one of the French series, lost it unfortunately, and would certainly like to read some more seeing there were never enough Saint stories for me! So far as I know, the "original" ones were never translated into English, which surprises me given the popularity of the Saint.
I think there might be two types of Saint fan. Those like me who prefer the earlier thrilling adventures of the young Charteris, stories with Patricia, based in England or from England, and those who prefer the later rather more prosaic stories from WW2 set in America when Simon is a kind of spy (though amazingly not spying in Europe where you'd think he'd be most use especially if he is English - but perhaps he was meant to be American, we don't know) or after WW2 around the world. Well, heroes always grow older because the writers do!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Saint Saga Nş 01, 30 May 2008
"Meet The Tiger" (later retitled "The Saint meets the Tiger") published in 1928, was Leslie Charteris's first book in the Saint Saga (even though Hodder & Stoughton later pretended that Enter the Saint was, presumably because they weren't the publishers of the former).
It's a useful (though not infallible) rule of thumb that if a book doesn't hook you by the end of the first page, it's not going to. Here are the first two paragraphs of "Meet the Tiger":
'Baycombe is a village on the North of Devon coast that is so isolated from civilisation that even at the height of the summer holiday season it is neglected by the rush of lean and plump, tall and short, papas, mammas, and infants. Consequently, there was some sort of excuse for a man who had taken up his dwelling there falling into the monotony of regular habits -- even for a man who had only lived there for three days -- even (let the worst be known) for a man so unconventional as Simon Templar.
It was not so very long after Simon Templar had settled down in Baycombe that the peacefully sedate village became most unsettled, and things began to happen there that shocked and flabbergasted its peacefully sedate inhabitants, as will be related; but at first Simon Templar found Baycombe as dull as it had been for the last six hundred years.'
Not the greatest opening Leslie Charteris ever wrote -- he was to become pretty skillful later -- but quite respectable for a young man of 21 in only his third book. The character so introduced, of course, was to become the longest-running fictional hero of the 20th century.
Even at this early stage, the Saint (plausibly from his initials -- but you knew that) is a more well-developed, more travelled and certainly more eccentric character than his near-contemporary, Bulldog Drummond. There are few of the wilder parts of the world which he has not visited, and few of those in which he has not had adventures. He has won a gold rush in South Africa, and lost his holding in a poker game twenty-four hours later. He has run guns into China, whisky into the United States and perfume into England. He deserted after a year in the Spanish Foreign Legion (Drummond would have been horrified at the idea of joining, let alone deserting).
Likewise Patricia Holm, the Saint's companion in so many later adventures, is a much more interesting heroine than boring little Phyllis Drummond, who exists only to be kidnapped and rescued -- someone whom the swine have got, or might get, and nothing more.
The elements of the plot are pretty much the standard stuff of the day: a debonair hero for the reader to identify with; a million dollars in gold stolen from a Chicago bank by a mysterious mastermind known as The Tiger; a gang of ruthless criminals; and of course a damsel in distress. What separates this from the majority of such efforts is the way Charteris plays with these elements -- tongue clearly in cheek, in places -- and weaves a story that carries you along from first to last. Some of the characters (Algy, for instance, or Aunt Agatha) are so skillfully drawn that you feel you'd recognise them if they walked into your local pub.
Other characters that recur later include Simon's faithful manservant Orace, and -- briefly, in Knight Templar -- Detective Inspector Carn.
From what I can make out, "Meet The Tiger" is very difficult to get hold of; but if you want to read the Saint books it's worth making the effort. They're definitely best if read in the right order.
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