So you’d like to…

read Leslie Charteris’s Saint books. And so you should. Besides being one the longest-running, the Saint is one of the best-developed and most entertaining of 20th Century fiction heroes.

The definitive source of information is Burl Barer’s The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television of Leslie Charteris’ Robin Hood of Modern Crime, Simon Templar, 1928–1992; but for those without access to it (or those in a hurry), here is a shorter guide.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a film is based on a book, however good the former may be, the book is nearly always better; and the same applies to television. The reasons for this could form a study in themselves; but particularly relevant to the present case are the desire to “update” the context to a modern one; and the removal of anything that could conceivably offend anybody at all. Add to this the usual megalomaniac desire of producers to “improve”, or even completely rewrite the original material…

As Charteris himself once remarked, the Saint books are in the process of passing from contemporary novels to period pieces. Given the opportunity of updating them, he decided not to do it; and in my view he was absolutely correct. Whether for good or ill, they are firmly rooted — the early ones anyway — in their time and place, which is prewar England, especially London; and anyone expecting mere recaps of the TV episodes will be surprised indeed.

Entertaining though the TV series obviously is to many people, it’s pallid fare compared with the books. Roger Moore’s Saint is indistinguishable from his James Bond, or from his Lord Brett Sinclair, for that matter — not because of any deficiency of Sir Roger’s, but because all three characters are cardboard. They have no characteristics: no preferences, no opinions, no close friends, no lives outside the current plot, and no talents beyond martial arts and snappy repartee.

Charteris’s Saint has all of these (although, like Bond, no discernible relatives); and in particular, he has strong opinions, frequently and forcefully expressed and usually hilarious, on every subject from Art to the Defence of the Realm Act.

Another refreshing quality of the books (especially compared with contemporary material, for instance Bulldog Drummond) is the comparative absence of chauvinism — surely due to Charteris’s cosmopolitan background (by his own account, his parents had dragged him three times around the world by the time he was twelve) and Chinese ancestry.

In Drummond, except for Americans (who might be almost as fine fellows as ourselves if only they could grasp the intricacies of cricket), almost all foreigners are either villainous or comical.

By contrast, although the Saint meets villainous Frenchmen (e.g. Georges Olivant), obnoxious Germans (Jacob Einsmann) and bestial blacks (Ngano), there are also brave Frenchmen (Antoine Louvois), kindly Germans (Greta’s father from “The Rhine Maiden”), admirable blacks (the Saint’s Maroon blood-brother, Johnny) and bestial Englishmen (Basher Tope).

It’s true that in some books (“Thieves’ Picnic” is a good example) Charteris makes comments that would cause hysteria were anyone to repeat them before the Commission for Racial Equality: but they were usually the results of his own observations, rather than the mere repetition of stereotypes. And in fact he is just as rude, and far more frequently, about England — particularly its licensing laws!

It helps with a few stories to bear contemporary events in mind: for instance, “The Unblemished Bootlegger” was written when Prohibition was still in force in the USA, and “The Spanish War” is the Civil War.

Another problem is that the sums of money mentioned seem derisory to the modern reader. You have to multiply them by about 100 to make them meaningful now — and if the price of a pint of beer is to be the criterion, by 200. This would mean that the Saint blackmails the war profiteer Leo Farwill for the equivalent of forty million pounds: quite a respectable sum even by today’s standards, when you need a fistful of fivers just to go to the fish & chip shop.

Likewise, when you read of the Saint driving at 100 mph, you have to remember that there were no motorways, and the general speed limit in England was 20 mph!

And finally, there is one problem there’s no away around: few today will believe that Simon could be in tip-top physical shape, and could easily have been middleweight champion of the world, when he smokes four cigarettes every half hour. You just have to take this with a pinch of salt.

The canonical Saint books

Here then, without further ado, are the Saint books which most fans (or I, at least) consider canonical, in the right order:

01 Meet the Tiger aka The Saint Meets the Tiger (1928)
02 Enter the Saint (1930)
03 The Last Hero aka The Saint Closes the Case (1930)
04 Knight Templar aka The Avenging Saint (1930)
05 Featuring the Saint (1931)
06 Alias the Saint (1931)
07 She Was a Lady aka The Saint Meets His Match (1931)
08 The Holy Terror aka The Saint vs Scotland Yard (1932)
09 Getaway aka The Saint's Getaway (1932)
10 Once More the Saint aka The Saint and Mr. Teal (1933)
11 The Brighter Buccaneer (1933)
12 The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal aka The Saint in London (1934)
13 Boodle aka The Saint Intervenes (1934)
14 The Saint Goes on (1934)
15 Saint in New York (1935)
16 Saint Overboard (1936)
17 The Ace of Knaves aka The Saint in Action (1937)
18 Thieves’ Picnic aka The Saint Bids Diamonds (1937)
19 Prelude for War aka The Saint Plays with Fire (1938)
20 Follow the Saint (1939)
21 The Happy Highwayman (1939)
22 The Saint in Miami (1941)
23 The Saint Goes West (1942)
24 The Saint Steps In (1944)
25 Saint on Guard (1945)
26 The Saint Sees It Through (1947)
27 Call for the Saint (1948)
28 Saint Errant (1949)
29 The Saint in Europe (1954)
30 The Saint on the Spanish Main (1955)
31 The Saint Around the World (1957)
32 Thanks to the Saint (1958)
33 Señor Saint (1959)
34 The Saint to the Rescue (1961)
35 Trust the Saint (1962)
36 The Saint in the Sun (1964)
37 Vendetta for the Saint (1965)

By 1940 Charteris, and apparently the Saint with him, had moved permanently to the USA, and there is a definite falling off of quality in the Saint stories from that point — specifically, after “The Happy Highwayman”. The trouble appears to be that many stories were adaptations of screenplays or radio scripts, and American censors simply would not accept the activities that had made the books so popular in Britain. It’s not the change of locale, for “The Saint in New York”, a previous novel, is one of the best; but as Barer says, “The Hays Office deemed this dark tale of metropolitan crime and gunfire too violent for America’s sensitive audiences. They may have lived through World war I, but movies could be dangerous.” The story-telling flare is still there, but the energy-level drops, and so does the variety.

When War broke out the Saint, like many other fictional heroes, was co-opted into fighting the Axis powers; and he joins an organisation which is never named, but which from various clues seems to have been the O.S.S.

In the ’50s the standard picks up a bit; in particular, “The Saint in Europe” contains some of the best short stories of all. And in “The Saint Around the World”, Simon comes back to England for dear old Claude Eustace’s last case before he retires.

But by this point the Saint has become like his own TV caricature: a sort of hybrid of Sherlock Holmes, the Lone Ranger and the Wandering Jew, without family or close friends, rootlessly roaming the World solving mysteries and other people’s problems; all without visible means of support (although if Simon had invested his earlier ill-gotten gains wisely, this would in fact be perfectly plausible). So I prefer the earlier books.

Individual reviews

I’m intending to review all the canonical Saint books individually, since I notice that some have no Amazon reviews at all*; but in the meantime, I hope that this list has been useful, and that the Saint books will give you as much pleasure as they’ve given me. Happy hunting!

*Update 2013: all done, see the links above.

Ghost-written Potboilers

Charteris eventually got tired of writing Saint stories, but (unsurprisingly) not tired of the income. He therefore gave express permission for several ghost-written stories (some adapted from TV scripts) to be published under his name and supervision, while he was still alive. I have included the best of these (Vendetta for the Saint, by Harry Harrison) above, because it's so good I didn't realise it wasn't by Charteris until I read otherwise.

The remainder are a different matter, ranging from merely bad to pitiful; for the masochistically inclined, there's a list on Wikipedia.