The previous article about Leslie Charteris's Saint books goes into detail about what made these books so attractive to me when I first encountered them.
Such articles are often part of the Defence Against the Dark Arts series, but there are some aspects of the Saint books that disqualify them: there is more to them than just exciting adventures and harmless humour, and it isn't all good.
This article mentions a few more of the attractions and covers some of the negative elements.
Judging by the effect that they had on me, the Saint books probably educated many of their readers. Although I didn't appreciate this at the time, I now realise that the large amount of background information that I passively absorbed helped to expand my horizons and increase my geographical and general knowledge. I learned something about the luxury lifestyles of the very rich for example, including the names of some elite hotels and expensive cigars!
Although they didn't meant much to me when I first read the books, I particularly like the references to London streets, venues and other features that some of them contain. Leslie Charteris must have known the city well, and the details that he gives add interest and authenticity to his stories.
One London street reference comes literally very close to home. I was delighted to see the name of the rather obscure little side street where I now live mentioned in one story: the Saint walks down it to get something to eat, and meets his old adversary Chief Inspector Teal! I wonder whether Leslie Charteris actually visited my street in person.
There are many references to London taxi cabs in the Saint stories:
Some of the descriptive writing is really good. I love this evocative passage from The Saint in New York (1935):
“It was one of those spring mornings on which New York is the most brilliant city in the world, when the air comes off the Atlantic with a heady tang like frosted wine, and the white pinnacles of its towers stand up in a sky from which every particle of impurity seems to have been washed by magic; one of those mornings when all the vitality and impetuous aspiration that is New York insinuates itself as the only manner of life.”
A rare first edition of The Saint in New York:
While much of the humour seems just as funny now as it did when I first read the Saint books all those years ago, other aspects that didn't really register at the time such as the violence and sadism, not to mention the chain smoking of cigarettes and drinking of huge amounts of alcohol by many of the characters including the Saint himself, are now rather disturbing.
I used to like the Saint because he embodied many qualities that were lacking in the people around me at the time; I can now see a dark side to his personality.
The Saint may be witty, fun loving and charming, but he is also cynical, callous and hard-boiled. He is always binding and gagging people, and he seems to enjoy smashing his enemies in the face and knocking them out. He may be a white knight and Robin Hood figure, but he is also a vigilante and a thief: he executes villains from time to time and steals jewellery from the Ungodly.
He often scatters cigarette ash on the carpet too!
His constant fearlessness and ability to both inflict and tolerate great pain now make the Saint seem rather psychopathic, as do his restlessness, low boredom threshold and constant sensation seeking. He is always on the move and he frequently changes his residence:
“He became bored with looking out on to the same street scene from his windows every day, or he saw some other domicile on the market which appealed to his catholic taste in residences, or else he moved because he thought that too long an interval of stability would weaken his resistance to regular hours and Times-reading and other low forms of human activity. At these periods he would change his address with such frequency that his friends despaired of ever establishing contact with him again.”
From The Brighter Buccaneer (1933)
In addition to all that, much of the material in the Saint books is dated, and some of it is what is now thought of as politically incorrect: racial stereotypes and various '-isms' abound.
Some of the plots are not easy to follow; some are contrived and some are repetitive. The Saint's many escapes from hordes of enemies, impossible situations and certain death, often by bluffing his way out, now seem rather unconvincing.
I feel really fortunate to have read and enjoyed the best i.e. earliest Saint books long before I was old enough to be aware of their sinister, unsettling and detracting elements.
The books came from my well-stocked local public library. There was a whole shelf of them; they were hardback copies similar to these:
