Sainted

In 2008, I had the enormous but somewhat guilty pleasure of buying a big chrome-yellow book. People who know me, of course, will not find this unusual: "...enormous but guilty pleasure? big book? bah, that's normal!"

But what book was this, that it deserves a special place in this blog (and not the other)?

Well, it's the first installment of a reprinting of works starring the Saint. Over the last few years, heroes of yesteryear have been coming out of the woodwork: the Shadow, Bulldog Drummond, Flash Gordon, Modesty Blaise, the Spider, Doc Savage, even Tarzan. But the Saint was one from the lineage of Richard Hannay and his ilk: a gentleman amateur with brains and a good punch.

The steely-eyed Saint, once acted by Roger Moore, liked fast cars, vigilante justice, beautiful women and unusual wines. He was a hero far ahead of his time, and he was the brainchild of Singapore's greatest literary phenomenon. Sadly, thrillers and mad adventure novels don't make it to the holy canon of literary orthodoxy, so unless you do a bit of digging, it's hard to know who this was.

And so, 16 years after his death, I present to you Leslie Charteris!