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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 "Saint" logo (when was that stick
figure introduced?) The second
knife is named
(3) Impression at the close is that he may be "Belle", I
marrying Patricia and settling down. believe...
I don't think
(4) His patter really isn't funny. it has a name
in this novel.
(5) His *two* knives are in evidence:
"Anna" and her "twin sister", He later loses his second
though he doesn't always carry it. knife in action, which
is plausible, and then
(6) Whatever happened to this Oracle then never replaces it,
"character"? Better than Hoppy which isn't.
Uniatz at least.
Sentiment?
What was the Saint before Some esthetic
this adventure? shift in Charteris'
thinking...
I think there were a monogamous
some retcons in his history... relationship
with Anna seemed
Skimming for them: more fitting?
"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
There's a minor difficulty about all this... maybe
he's just lying... on other occasions he makes up
a lot of nonsense as a 'joke'. You're given to
believe that this insanely over-the-top history is
Charteris's intention though... they're not
hitting you over the head with the idea that it's
supposed to be funny... unlike with the actual
'humor'.
Later, 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, and 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.
(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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