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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sheer entertainment, 13 May 2004
In 1974, on a family holiday to Robin Hood's Bay, I started reading "The Saint Goes West". Returning to the resort earlier this year, I visited a second-hand bookshop where they were clearing the contents of a holiday cottage. With astonished recognition I fell on "The Saint Goes West".I don't know if this is some sort of record, but I'm happy to say that in the intervening 30 years, this book has, if anything, improved. It's a classic. Frankly, "The Saint Goes West" is so consistently enjoyable that I don't want to spoil it by giving anything away, but essentially, if your idea of the perfect escapist thriller is something that lies on the exact continuum between Raymond Chandler and "Goldfinger", then this is the book for you. It's one of life's great mysteries that Leslie Charteris is now in eclipse, while Hollywood lavishes millions on clunky, linear plots-by-numbers like the most recent Bond. If you feel short-changed by the way Ian Fleming's hero has gradually been stripped by screenwriters of glamour, intelligence and erotic wit then all I can say is: read this book.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Saint Saga Nș 23, 15 July 2007
Published in 1942, this is the first of the wartime Saint books, and (to judge by a couple of tongue-in-check references) the first one on which American censorship clamped its clammy fingers, eliminating all the immoral activities that made the previous Saint books such fun.
There are three novellas:
In ARIZONA, the Saint foils an attempt by the Nazi-American Bund to take over a mineral-rich ranch. There are intriguing hints that Charteris knew of the Manhattan project, since the Saint says:
"[O]ne day thousands of men will be killed will be killed and cities will be blasted with what there is on this ranch."
The mineral concerned is later (sensibly) stated to be cinnabar; but cinnabar is not found in quantity in Arizona, and pitchblende is.
In PALM SPRINGS, the Saint bodyguards a spoiled playboy who has received a threat on his life.
In HOLLYWOOD the Saint solves the murder of an obnoxious film producer, commenting:
"I feel rather satisfied about Ufferlitz getting killed... Once upon a time, before the Hays Office got hold of me, I might easily have killed him myself."
These last two stories do not sit well in wartime scenario, and, after the first one, lead one to wonder what on Earth the Saint can have been thinking of. It wouldn't surprise to learn that they were actually written in peacetime, and used here as filler.
However that may be, all three stories are rather formulaic.
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