Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Thrilling Adventures of the Young Saint, 29 Jul 2002
By A Customer
This is the first round of the Saint vs his arch-enemies Rayt Marius & Prince Rudolf, continued on "Knight Templar" (a.k.a. "The Avenging Saint").Although this "The Last Hero" still has the shortcoming that the style is rather long-winded, I bet it is the best of the Saint stories. I really enjoyed adventure after adventure of young Simon Templar and his jolly friends. Anyway it is much better than its continuation. In "Knight Templar", the enemy's plan was rather vague that made the whole story less thrilling. But in "The Last Hero", the subject is plain and simple; a fight for a devilish invention of a mad scientist. The story is much more thrilling and full of actions and wits. And the characters are much more vivid; Simon is so youthful and dynamic, his friends are so amiable, Marius is so ferocious and formidable, and Prince Rudolf's inhuman calmness heightened the tension of the climax.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Saint Saga Nº 03, 5 Feb 2006
For my money, "The Last Hero" (aka "The Saint Closes the Case") is the best of all the Saint books. On one level merely a good thriller, on another level it's a very serious book indeed, because it deals with the horrors of war and what it's worth sacrificing to avoid them; and its great merit is that it makes its points without ever become preachy or leaden.
Kingsley Amis, in his insightful and entertaining opus The James Bond Dossier, expends considerable space on considering what goes into the making of a good villain. Charteris's best villains are easily the equal of Fleming's, and "The Last Hero" (aka "The Saint Closes the Case") has two them!
One may safely invent a sinister arms merchant from any country (although Rayt Marius is much more sinister than most). To present a sinister head of state, however, presents a problem: obviously one can't use a real head of state, for reasons of both plausibility and libel. There are two traditional solutions, both moderately unsatisfactory: to invent a fictional country, which will irritate any reader with the basics of geography; or to be mysterious about which state it actually is. Charteris here opts for the second alternative, and great villain though Marius undoubtedly is, for me Crown Prince Rudolf of ---------- is the best in the whole Saint Saga.
(It is of course logically pointless to try and work out what the country really is, but it's quite fun trying anyway, as Charteris obviously realises as he plants clues in various places. It's somewhere around the Balkans. The Saint doesn't yet speak the language, which therefore can't be French, German or Spanish. The Prince is Marius's own prince, and Marius was once a guttersnipe in the slums of Prague; on the other hand, we later learn that the Prince's appendix is in Budapest. The most telling clue [not divulged 'til Getaway] is that the Prince's family owned the Montenegrin crown jewels. [King Nikola of Montenegro might in fact be the prototype of Rudolf's father, were not the time-frame all wrong. This is cool juggling. How many readers are familiar enough with Montenegrin history to know that he didn't in fact have son called Rudolf?] )
Professor K.B. Vargan has invented a weapon called the Electron Cloud, able to incinerate large numbers of people in minimum time. The British Government wants it, and so does Prince Rudolf, who has military ambitions. The story revolves around the efforts of the Saint and his friends to keep the weapon from ever being used at all, for the sake of the men and boys "who'd just be herded into it like dumb cattle to the slaughter, drunk with a miserable and futile heroism, to struggle blindly through a few days of squalid agony and die in the dirt".
The familiar friends -- Orace, Pat, Roger, Norman -- are all here. Charteris was later dismissive of his early work, as older authors often are. But whatever its deficiencies, this book and its sequel Knight Templar have a drive and fire, and an idealism (eccentric though it be), that lifts them above the mundane.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Saint Saga Nº 03, 26 Sep 2008
For my money, "The Last Hero" (aka "The Saint Closes the Case") is the best of all the Saint books. On one level merely a good thriller, on another level it's a very serious book indeed, because it deals with the horrors of war and what it's worth sacrificing to avoid them; and its great merit is that it makes its points without ever become preachy or leaden.
Kingsley Amis, in his insightful and entertaining opus The James Bond Dossier, expends considerable space on considering what goes into the making of a good villain. Charteris's best villains are easily the equal of Fleming's, and "The Last Hero" has two them!
One may safely invent a sinister arms merchant from any country (although Rayt Marius is much more sinister than most). To present a sinister head of state, however, presents a problem: obviously one can't use a real head of state, for reasons of both plausibility and libel. There are two traditional solutions, both moderately unsatisfactory: to invent a fictional country, which will irritate any reader with the basics of geography; or to be mysterious about which state it actually is. Charteris here opts for the second alternative, and great villain though Marius undoubtedly is, for me Crown Prince Rudolf of ---------- is the best in the whole Saint Saga.
(It is of course logically pointless to try and work out what the country really is, but it's quite fun trying anyway, as Charteris obviously realises as he plants clues in various places. It's somewhere around the Balkans. The Saint doesn't yet speak the language, which therefore can't be French, German or Spanish. The Prince is Marius's own prince, and Marius was once a guttersnipe in the slums of Prague; on the other hand, we later learn that the Prince's appendix is in Budapest. The most telling clue [not divulged 'til Getaway] is that the Prince's family owned the Montenegrin crown jewels. [King Nikola of Montenegro might in fact be the prototype of Rudolf's father, were not the time-frame all wrong. This is cool juggling. How many readers are familiar enough with Montenegrin history to know that he didn't in fact have son called Rudolf?] )
Professor K.B. Vargan has invented a weapon called the Electron Cloud, able to incinerate large numbers of people in minimum time. The British Government wants it, and so does Prince Rudolf, who has military ambitions. The story revolves around the efforts of the Saint and his friends to keep the weapon from ever being used at all, for the sake of the men and boys "who'd just be herded into it like dumb cattle to the slaughter, drunk with a miserable and futile heroism, to struggle blindly through a few days of squalid agony and die in the dirt".
The familiar friends -- Orace, Pat, Roger, Norman -- are all here. Charteris was later dismissive of his early work, as older authors often are. But whatever its deficiencies, this book and its sequel Knight Templar have a drive and fire, and an idealism (eccentric though it be), that lifts them above the mundane.
The cover of this particular (International Polygonics) edition has no relation to the content, but that is a minor quibble.
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