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SMELL_THE_TIGER_BURN

                            April 9, 2000


Re-read "the Saint Meets the Tiger", for
the first time since starting off on this      Originally,
Saint collecting craze of mine.                "Meet the Tiger"
                                               (1928)
(1)  My impression that they got a lot better
     as Charteris went on is mistaken.  They
     only got slightly better.  I just got
     used to the badness.

(2)  No stick-figure logo (when was
     that introduced?)

(3)  At the close it seems that he may be
     marrying Patricia and settling down.

(4)  His patter really isn't funny.

(5)  His *two* knives are
     in evidence: "Anna"          The second knife is called
     and her "twin sister",       "Belle" in some later story, I
     though he doesn't            believe, though I don't think
     always carry it.             it has a name in this book.

(6)  Whatever happened to                        He later loses his second
     his servant, Oracle?                        knife in action, which
     He's better than                            is plausible, and then
     "Hoppy Uniatz" at       (A drunken          never replaces it, which
     least.                  American            isn't.
                             gangster
                             Charteris              Sentiment?
                             wrote-in
                             later as a                 Some esthetic
                             comic-relief               shift in Charteris'
                             side-kick.)                thinking...
                                                        a monogamous
                           ALCOHOL_COMEDY               relationship
                                                        with a single
                                                        blade seemed more
                                                        fitting?
What was the Saint
before this adventure?        (I think there were
                               some retcons in his
                               history.)

                                    RETCON

At one point, he and Carn talk as though
he's a thief preying on thieves, trying
to cut the law out of it.

There's a suggestion that he might switch
to a legal means of attack, but later he
talks as though he's just out for reward
money.

    To my eye, this is the author
    in a hurry, having trouble
    making up his mind.


The Saint's background:

   "The Saint has travelled.  He talked interestingly --
   if with a strong egotistical bias -- about places as
   far removed from civilization and from each other as
   Vladivostok, Armenia, Moscow, Lapland, Chungking,
   Pernambuco, and Sierra Leone.  [...] He had won a gold
   rush in South Africa and lost his holding in a poker
   game twety-four hours later.  He had run guns into
   China, whisky into the United States, and perfume into
   England.  He had deserted after a year in the Spanish
   Foreign Legion.  He had worked his passage across the
   Atlantic as a steward, tramped across America, fought
   his way across Mexico during a free-for-all revolution,
   picked up a couple of thousand pounds in the Argentine,
   and sailed home from Buenos Aires in a millionaire's
   suite -- to lose nearly all the fruit of his wanderings
   on Epson Downs."  -- page 18

      As far as I know, this is the only story
      in which this elaborate history is ever
      mentioned.

      There's a minor difficulty about this,
      though: maybe he's just lying. On other
      occasions he makes up a lot of nonsense
      as a 'joke'.

      But this passage doesn't really resemble
      any of those.  Usually Charteris hits you
      over the head with the humor, here it
      appears to just be the voice of the
      narrator playing it straight.

      So I think you're given to believe that
      this insanely over-the-top history is
      for real.


                                              (One of the things I think
On attitudes toward authority                 is interesting about the
(both from Patricia...):                      early Saint is that it's
                                              very explicit that he's
                                              an anarchist of sorts.)

       "If so, she was too late, and the
       law would have to deal with the
       Tiger after its own protracted and
       quibbling fashion..." -- page 160


       "[...] you will never be safe as long
        as there is a law, and decent people
        to fight for it.  For a little while,
        you're winning, but in the end you
        can't win.  Mr. Templar, after all,
        was only a pawn, and I'm no more than
        that myself.  But even though you kill
        both of us, there are plenty of others
        to take our places -- men who will
        never rest until they have led you to
        the gallows."  -- page 198


(By the way: this was originally
published in England, September, 1928.
Some time before Cassablanca.)


              In this story he meets Patricia Holmes,
              who later becomes his "companion",            (He has a
              essentially a member of his small             Holmes, not
              circle of cohorts (which he insists           a Watson.
              isn't a "gang").                              Witty, eh?)

              When fashions changed,
              Patricia abruptly faded
              into the background...

              Fans asked what had
              happened to her and so
              on, but Charteris was
              evasive.

                        I've heard it suggested that
                        there's an unused story outline
                        by Charteris that has Patricia
                        suddenly reappear with the
                        Saint's son.

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