Simon Templar, a man who has been dubbed the saint on account of his initials (ST), arrived in the ocean-side city of Baycombe in England. He was on the trail of a mysterious bank robber known as the Tiger. The Saint was a gentleman adventurer, a man willing to skirt the law in order to bring the 'godless' to justice and perhaps get rich in the process. Though Baycombe was a sleepy town with only a couple of automobiles (the story takes place in the 1920s), the Tiger and his cohorts - playfully called 'tiger cubs' by the Saint - have laid up here until the time is right to split the spoils. The question becomes, who is in league with the Tiger and who is just an ordinary citizen.
Much of the tale involves the Saint having snarky conversations with the various suspects to see if something slips out. Surprisingly, a good chunk of this is outsourced to the lovely and gracious Patricia Holm. Patricia was orphaned and has lived either at schools or at her Aunt Agatha's house in Baycombe. Every description of her aunt paints her as a man in drag, which later proves to be the case. Yeah, that was a pretty weak part of the book. Back to Patricia, she has such a large part in the book that she is the co-main character with Simon.
The Saint doesn't care for guns. He is armed with a knife named Anna that is perfectly balanced for throwing. The Saint has buckets of confidence, an unshakeable certainty in his inevitable success, and a generous portion of charm. He also has a sidekick named Orace, a military man with a heavy accent, an imposing physique, and a limp.
Though it might have been unprecedented when published in the 1920s, the story feels very cliche. The mystery of who was the tiger proved less difficult than hoped. I had my suspect early and it proved to be the correct guess. When revealed by the Saint in the climax, the Tiger was a disappointment. What looked like it might have been clever maneuvering on his part was instead nothing but happenstance and, as it turned out, incompetence.
This Simon Templar is very different from the one played by Roger Moore on the long-running TV series. Here, the Saint is out for a reward - the finder's fee for recovering the gold that the Tiger stole - rather than random do-gooderism. Where Roger Moore disdained weapons in general and weekly resorted to fisticuffs, the literary Simon likes his knives. I have no idea how Val Kilmer's Saint became a master of disguise.
The Saint is dangerously reckless throughout the book and only survives because the villains don't shoot him when they have the chance. He pins his life on the timely arrival of allies or the intervention of fate on his behalf. Oh, so reckless. Sure, it dials the suspense and tension way up, but it also paints the Saint as foolhardy rather than courageous. Just okay. It has not aged as well as Ian Flemings Bond novels; read those instead.
