I had what may now seem a mad desire to spread the belief that there were worse, and wickeder, nut cases than Don Quixote.Įven now, half a century later, when I should be old enough to know better, I still cling to that belief. A joyous exuberance that could not find its fulfilment in pinball machines and pot. I was always sure that there was a solid place in escape literature for a rambunctious adventurer such as I dreamed up in my own youth, who really believed in the oldfashioned romantic ideals and was prepared to lay everything on the line to bring them to life. It made morbidly fascinating narrative, but it never gave anyone a lift until it climaxed in the hypergadgeted parodies of 007 extravaganzas. And that the fiction world today needs a Saint more than it ever did.įor too many years now that scene has been dominated by the "anti-heroes" - those grim gray operators in a sunless sub-culture where global issues are worked out with totally unemotional pragmatism, those hapless uninspired puppets manipulated and expended by ruthlessly dedicated little brothers of Big Brother. And I still think it was a good thing to have started. If there were to be any Saint books at all, obviously there had to be a first, and this is it. Well, to clutch at a cliche, that is all water under the bridge.
For it would be even harder today to put over in a contemporary setting a Simon Templar four years more ancient even than I. Cleverly judging that no adult reader would accept a swashbuckling hero of my own age, I started the Saint out at 25, giving him a head start on myself which would forever haunt me. "Adolescent", of course, is not literally accurate in Simon's case. However, I can't deny writing it, its existence is a historical fact, and I suppose that anyone who is interested enough in backtracking into Simon Templar's and my own adolescent beginnings has a right to access to the awful truths. In extenuation, it was only the third book I'd written, and the best I would say for it is that the first two were even worse. Looking at it now, with absolute objectivity, I can see so much wrong with it that I am humbly astonished that it got published at all. Personally I would have been very happy to leave it quietly in limbo: I was still under 21 when I wrote it, more than fifty years ago, and I am no more anxious to parade it than any other youthful indiscretion. It has been out of print for more years than I can guess at, and with no complaints from me. Therefore there is a finite number of copies of this scarce book.This reprint will probably bring great joy to a number of Saint fans who have been trying for some decades to get a glimpse of the very first volume of the Saga, a book which was never expected at the time to launch a series.
He never allowed it to be republished after this. In it, he wrote I can see so much wrong with it that I am humbly astonished that it got published at all". In 1980 Leslie wrote a new introduction for the Charter edition. Needless to say, the Saint beards the Tiger in his den and appropriates the loot for a 20% reward. He later meets the eponymous Tiger and also Detective Inspector Carn, who is on the trail of a missing million dollars. Simon meets a local Ward of Court, Patricia Holm, and falls in love. Partly because of his initials, he had acquired the nickname Saint some eight years earlier, although we have never known how. The story introduced an athletic 27-year old, Simon Templar, who lived in a converted Devon pill-box with his manservant Orace. The world met the Tiger in June 1928, in the third novel by Leslie Charteris. Leslie Charteris' third book, and the first to star the Saint.