If you look closely at the cover above, you’ll notice this 1955 AVON Books paperback sold for 25 cents. AVON publishes a number of paperback collections of The Saint stories. From time to time, I dip into a stack of paperbacks featuring The Saint. The Saint, (aka, Simon Templar) is an adventurer and modern day Robin Hood. Many of these stories feature The Saint righting wrongs in clever ways.
My favorite story in The Saint Cleans Up is “The Charitable Countess” where an arrogant Countess challenges The Saint to steal her diamond neckless. You can guess how that turned out!
I also liked “The Arrow of God” where a rich man dies from being stabbed with a beach umbrella. All the suspects–including The Saint–found the rich man a boor and all had motives to kill him. But The Saint unravels the case with aplomb. If you’re in the mood for some entertaining, clever mystery stories, just read The Saint collections. Are you a fan of The Saint? GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
The green goods man — 7
The charitable countess — 26
The mugs game — 51
The unkind philanthropist — 75
The arrow of God — 102
Not really a fan of the books or the Roger Moore series. Short story length is about my limit for Saint reading.
Jeff, most of my books about The Saint are short story collections. Roger Moore was the iconic Saint although there have been other actors who played the role notably Val Kilmer.
O that awful Val Kilmer movie! On a wretched par with other execrable “remakes” in the ’90s and early ’00s like I SPY, THE AVENGERS, GET SMART, and DUKES OF HAZZARD. I never saw any of George Sanders’ Saint movies. but given it was Sanders, I expect they were pretty good.
Fred, you’re right about the George Sanders SAINT movies. I enjoyed them. And, I agree with you on the miserable “remakes” of the 90s! One debacle after another!
At least they tell you right on the cover that this book is reshuffled from earlier collections. Those were all longer than five stories, so I guess they were limiting themselves to 128 pages for the price.
Simon Templar has a narcissistic personality, which makes him less amusing when we’re dealing with a real life narcissist every day.
Jeff, I always considered The Saint a “smurky” fellow who could out-think his adversaries. The perfect length for an adventure about The Saint is a short story.
I was a great fan of The Saint when I was younger but stopped reading the books after VENDETTA FOR THE SAINT (1964), which was ghosted by SF writer Harry Harrison, who was also writing THE SAINT comic strip at the time. To my young mind The Saint was very cool and oh so sophisticated. I’m not sure what my opinion would be today.
As for as portrayals go, nobody could top George Sanders’ suave and urbane character. The character had previously been played by Louis Hayward in two movies, neither of which I saw. Not have I seen the two flicks from the early 1940s with Hugh Sinclair. Not meaning to knock Val Kilmer (okay, maybe a little), but his portrayal had stinkaroo written all over it. As far as television goes, I had outgrown the character by the time Roger Moore came around; I never did see Ian Ogilvy. I did see the execrable cobbled-together television movie with Adam Rayner, and have been lucky enough to have avoided the six television films starring Simon Dutton. On radio, my Saint will always be Vincent Price, although Tom Conway (George Sanders’ brother) was not bad in his brief stint as the character. I never heard any of the other radio Saints.
I think I’ll stick with my memories of my high school and post-high school years Simon Templar.
P.S. I thought then (and still think) Sebastian Tombs is a nifty name — much better than his other alias “Sugarman Treacle.”
Jerry, “Sebastian Tombs” is a deadly alias! You have far more exposure to The Saint than I have. I read about a dozen books about The Saint and watched some of the Roger Moore episodes in the 1960s when they were on TV. I liked Moore as a Maverick, too.
I think I liked the ITC television THE SAINT theme music more than I liked much else about that series, even though Moore was having fun. The Kilmer movie was rather a drag in several ways, though most of the cast was better than Kilmer or the half-assed espionage scenario.
Todd, THE SAINT movie with Kilmer had a good soundtrack…but the movie itself was a dud. Roger Moore looked like he was having fun in whatever series or movie he was starring in.