Leslie Charteris (1907–1994)

This is one of the best Saint books that I have read. Overall, I am a fan of the Saint books, but rather a selective one. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed some of them (as I did when I first read some as a teenager in the 1960s), but I’ve been disappointed with others. There was definitely no disappointment with this one.

I usually like best those Saint books which contain short stories. But here we have a first class full length novel. To use the cliché, it is “unputdownable”. It is a show more fast-paced read which is genuinely exciting in places, and it has plenty of the usual Leslie Charteris brand of humour.

I’m also pleased to report that Patricia Holm, the Saint’s early girlfriend and partner in crime, features in the book, although this time she has a rival for his affections.

Another thing that amuses me is the way that Charteris occasionally throws in some really obscure word which in a lifetime of reading I’ve never come across before, and which I have to look up.

In some of the Saint books, I find that Charteris goes over the top in impressing upon us just what a dashing, tall, handsome, blue-eyed, debonair, witty, adventure-loving buccaneer the Saint is. But in this volume there isn’t too much of that – which is another plus.

Nor is there here any of the racial stereotyping which has spoiled a couple of the Saint stories that I have read. In general, there is much less racism in the Saint books than in most of the crime fiction of that period. (Charteris himself was of mixed Chinese-British parentage.)

There are only two minor negative points for me. Firstly there is the presence (though only briefly) of Hoppy Uniatz. I know that he is meant to add to the humour, but I personally find him irritating. I’ve never found it plausible that the Saint would have this brainless gunman in his entourage. Secondly, in some books, the Saint goes over the top in his baiting of Inspector Teal – and there is a bit of that here.

The thing that really makes this book stand out from the crowd, though, is that it has a serious edge to it because of its subject matter. The book was written in 1938, and its villains are fascists and arms manufacturers.

In the opening pages we have the chilling sounds of a fascist rally that the Saint and Patricia listen to on the radio. And we have the Saint pointing out that “...there’s something big blowing up; and you can bet that whatever it is the arms manufacturers are going to end up in the money, even if a few million suckers do get killed in the process.” (And the arms manufacturers support the fascists because the latter spend a lot on armaments.)

In reality it is actually not just through the arms manufacturers and their tame politicians and generals that capitalism gives rise to fascism and war. Economic competition and imperialist rivalries between capitalist states lead to military competition and war. (In the case of Stalinist Russia and the other so-called “communist” countries it is bureaucratic state capitalist regimes.) And capitalist economic crisis leads to the growth of fascist groups which falsely divert the blame for the economic problems onto scapegoated minority groups. Big business in Italy and Germany also gave support to Mussolini and Hitler at crucial moments because they wanted to use them to smash the Left and the trade unions.

As Paul Simpson says about this book in his introduction, “And with the growth of Neo-Nazi movements around Europe as the Great Twenty-First Century Recession bites, it’s as relevant today as it was then...” show less

Spoilers Ahead:

X Esquire by Leslie Charteris is the most ludicrous farrago of upper class twit derring do murder mystery adventure clichés. An industrialist with a foreign name and a "Semitic aspect" to his face is murdered (on page 6 before he even got to utter a line of dialogue) in a country house where one of the weekend guests is a Scotland Yard detective - about 10 pages later the mysterious sniper who has been attempting to assassinate another guest is given a drubbing, had his rifle show more taken off him and sent off (with a flea in his ear) back to London by the local train.
It's all jolly spiffing and exciting, don't you know? When I'd finished the book I was totally unable to fathom what half of the ripping Boys Own Paper japes had been about but our masked, opera hat wearing, multiple murderer was unmasked at the end and turns out to have been one of the gallant young officer chaps. As all his victims were all jolly suspicious foreigner types, or working class villains, he was heartily congratulated for his actions and a "high ranking minister", who just happened to be around when he committed his last murder, thought it best if the whole thing was just swept under the carpet. (Swept under the carpet too, presumably, was another off-page murder of a cove with a Germanic name who was casually tossed over the side of a ship mid Atlantic by a different one of the innumerable evening dress wearing 'heroes').
The "O'ar that be right that be," gardener's suspect testimony turned out to be suspect because he'd actually witnessed the first murder. He'd seen his employer's son shoot a house guest through the head and didn't think it was his place to get the young master into trouble.
Gods know why we didn't have a revolution in this country in the 30s. I suspect if the Second World War hadn't come along we would have. show less

Another reviewer has already perfectly summed up these Saint short stories as “lightweight but entertaining”. I know that most Saint fans seem to prefer the novella-length or full-length Saint stories, but for a bit of light entertainment that you can dip into I personally prefer the short stories which feature in this volume and in “The Brighter Buccaneer” and “The Happy Highwayman”.

Of the fourteen stories in this book, there are only four that I would class as rather weak and show more therefore not worth reading again. Another four were pretty good, and six were excellent.

But there is something that I noticed about this book that I would like to go into in more detail. This is the fact that in several places Leslie Charteris expresses, through words that he puts into the mouths of his characters, some pretty radical views.

The Saint usually targets crooks and dodgy rich businessmen in order to enrich himself. But he does occasionally act as a Robin Hood figure, robbing the rich to help the poor. For example, in one story in this book he takes very tough action against a ruthless businessman who super-exploits his workforce, and in another he even helps out from his own pocket an ordinary person who has been under pressure from big business.

But the radical side of Charteris and the Saint comes through most strongly in the story in this volume entitled “The Noble Sportsman”. At a dinner party one sympathetic character is accused of being a Communist for expressing some leftish opinions. He replies: “I admit that I believe in the divine right of mankind to earn a decent wage, to have enough food to eat and a decent house to live in...If that is Communism, I suppose I’m a Communist.”

The same character goes on to say that people get dragged into fighting modern wars “to save the faces of their politicians and the bank balances of their businessmen.” His opponents assume that he was a conscientious objector in the First World War, but he points out that he was actually “enjoying the experience of inhaling poison gas when I was sixteen years old. While you, Ormer, were making patriotic speeches, and you, Walmar, were making money.”

The Saint is then asked if he doesn’t agree that the character “is talking like one of these damned street-corner Reds?” The Saint responds: “I rather like these street-corner Reds – one or two of them are really sincere.”

The Saint also launches a sarcastic verbal attack on upper class “sportsmen”, questioning the courage required “to watch a pack of hounds pull down a savage fox, or to loose off a shot-gun at a ferocious grouse, or to catch a great man-eating trout with a rod and line.”

Of course by the 1930s, when these stories were written, the words “Red” and “Communist” were tainted by Stalinism. The original aim of Marxists, and indeed of the 1917 Russian Revolution, had been for working people to take democratic control of the economy and society. But Stalinist Russia had become a tyrannical and bureaucratic state capitalist system, like all the other, later, so-called “communist” regimes of China, Eastern Europe etc.

Nevertheless, it was quite radical for Charteris to express such “Red” opinions through his characters.

It should also be mentioned that, although racial stereotyping is not totally absent from the Saint stories, there is much less of it than was the norm in the crime fiction of that period. (Charteris himself was of mixed Chinese-British parentage.)

Of course, the Saint is not a “Red” in the sense of fighting for what Marx called “the self-emancipation of the working class”. When he challenges ruthless rich capitalists he is more of an avenging angel figure who does things on behalf of ordinary people, rather than encouraging them to fight back collectively themselves. In that sense the Saint is very much like Robin Hood. show less

Togliamoci dai piedi gli equivoci: qui non parliamo di un giallo classico né di un noir, tanto meno di un hard-boiled. Abbiamo tra le mani qualcosa di raro, in grado di miscelare trame da thriller con elementi intrisi di humor, personaggi tanto svitati quanto onesti e leali, e una buona dose di inventiva.

Entra il Santo è il secondo libro della serie dedicata a Simon Templar, personaggio che nell'immaginario comune ha l'eleganza di Lupin e l'etica di Robin Hood, e dosi d'ingegno e show more destrezza fisica che a volte verrebbe quasi da accostarlo a Sherlock Holmes. Brillante e irriverente nei modi di fare, lo ritroviamo in tre deliziose avventure, racconti che, nelle edizioni italiane, introducono al personaggio forse più celebre del genio di Leslie Charteris.
In questo libro c'è un po' di tutto: trame e intrighi tipiche dei gialli - ma di quelli briosi che non sconfinino nei rompicapi deduttivi o si sdilinquiscano nelle vertigini della psiche - e l'azione tipica dei polizieschi, perché sempre di giustizia sociale si tratta, quando il Santo entra in azione, anche se le forze dell'ordine non sempre sono dello stesso avviso.

Il racconto è perfettamente godibile. Lo stile rievoca i ritmi dei polizieschi, innestandoci però personaggi non privi di umorismo. In una parola: divertente. show less