Boodle

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 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 show more 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

Solid collection of short stories starring Charteris' anti-hero battling assorted villains, who received something swift and terrible, even if it's not quite justice. Lively and entertaining.

Simon Templar first appeared in 1928 in 'Meet The Tiger' and Leslie Charteris continued producing novels and short stories featuring 'The Saint' until 1963; after which time he allowed other hands to write the books. The Saint Intervenes is a collection of twelve short stories; also published as 'Boodle', which has two additional tales - 'The Uncritical Publisher' & 'The Noble Sportsman'.
These are fast-moving yarns with Templar outwitting crooks and con-men at there own game. Natural justice prevails while Templar lines his own pocket and the police in the shape of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal scratch their heads.