The Saint on the Spanish Main

The Saint #30

by Leslie Charteris

Contains the short stories:
The Effete Angler
The Old Treasure Story
The Black Commissar
The Questing Tycoon

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Detective

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, Leslie Charteris was a half-Chinese, half English author of primarily mystery fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint."

Reviews

[Paul Magnussen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seven stories from 1955, set in Bimini, Nassau, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands and Haiti. The Jamaican story is the most interesting, containing as it does a sizeable chunk of the history of the Maroons; as to its political correctness, you’ll have to judge for yourself. Johnny’s initial meeting with the Saint, referred to in the conversation on the plane, was in Call for the Saint.

(The cover artist for the 1960 Hodder edition, apparently under the impression that the Spanish Main is somewhere in Spain, has adorned the cover with a picture of the Saint stick-figure accompanying a flamenco dancer on a guitar.)

[Melissa S · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book consists of five short stories of our hero Simon Templar, a.k.a. The Saint, finding himself in a series of adventures in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Virgin Islands and Bimini... and it bugs me that none of these are technically part of the "Spanish Main." Sigh. Written in the 40s and 50s, they are also very much of their time, although you can tell Charteris is trying very hard to be open-minded. But I did enjoy how he includes some of the history and politics of the Caribbean islands he features, especially the Maroons of Jamaica. A bit of a mixed bag.

[F.R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

What – without ever having previously read a Saint book – could I have said about Simon Templar? Well, he is some sort of an adventurer, a modern day Robin Hood, a proto-James Bond with all the glamorous locations and women. I know that he appeared in films in the forties and in the Roger Moore TV series of the 60s (and I’ve occasionally caught a – mostly quite dull – episode of that on ITV4). Beyond that it’s difficult for me to say much about the character (and even some of the above might be wrong), as this once popular figure has slipped into the background of our cultural memory.

Reading this collection of Caribbean set tales, his current semi-obscurity does seem somewhat unfair. My feeling that he was a precursor of James Bond seems accurate (even if that impression might have been based on Roger Moore portraying both), as this is the kind of book I imagine Ian Fleming just lapping up. There’s the adventure, the sexism, the casual racism of an old fashioned gent who is watching the Empire disappear, and at the centre of it all is a brutal, yet charming hero. (And on top of that, I even had the sense that Charteris might be the better writer of the two.) So, why has one character survived so grandly, while the other has all but disappeared? Well, if we’re honest, the global prominence of Bond does owe more to Connery than Fleming, and so having only a forty-five year old TV show to fall back on means that the Saint is not best placed to survive.

There’s a great sense of self-awareness in this volume. For example, in ‘The Unkind Philanthropist’, when discussing male/female names, the Saint remarks: “Like that guy who keeps on writing about me. He’s always getting circulars from mail-order lingerie merchants addressed to Miss Leslie Charteris.” It’s hardly self-effacing on behalf of the author, but it is an easy joke and a good way for the myth to be pushed forward that the Saint is real and these are faithfully recorded adventures. Elsewhere there are criticisms of the seduction style of Mike Hammer and detective fiction plots, and this knowing humour means that it avoids the pomposity which sometimes affects the Bond books.

When I picked up this battered volume in a second hand store, I was hoping it was a novel rather than a collection of short stories – so I’d like to sink my teeth into something longer, just to see how Charteris handles a full length plot. But the tales here are an entertaining batch of old-school English thrillers, and would definitely be recommended to any fans of 007.

[Martin Castle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second Saint book I have read recently and thoroughly enjoyed it again. There are six short stories all set around his travels across the islands of the Caribbean. All could be set as TV episodes as they are short and well paced. It’s interesting that this copy I read was published in 1962 and the stories first published in 1955 and how the writing and the character of Simon Templar has changed since the late 1930’s when he first appeared. A great read.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in August 2001.

This collection, like The Saint In Europe before it and The Saint Around the World after it, has a theme of travel, with each of its five stories set in different locations. They are all, in this case, in the Caribbean, which with their fifties date makes them feel more like Ian Fleming's James Bond stories than any others in the Saint series.

All five stories are nondescript and easily forgettable as thrillers, but two of them stand out because of the interest of their settings. One is Haiti, where Simon Templar becomes involved with an American businessman who is studying voodoo with the aim of cost cutting in his factories by employing zombies; it has a supernatural element unusual in Charteris' writing, but is inferior to, say, the film of Live and Let Die in its atmosphere.

The setting of the Jamaica story involves a less well known aspect of Caribbean culture. In the mountains of the island lies the territory of the Maroons, which was an effectively autonomous little state founded by runaway slaves in the eighteenth century. This is a similar story to the creation of the state of Haiti. The story itself doesn't live up to what is a fascinating and romantic background, and throughout the collection Charteris is not really at home with the Caribbean as he seems to be when writing about Europe and the United States.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Saint on the Spanish Main, oddly, doesn't contain a single story that takes place on the Spanish Main. It's all set in the Caribbean--or what was the Spanish West Indies. It also begins disappointingly with two inferior stories, "Bimini: The Effete Angler" and "Nassau: The Arrow of God." I don't think it's a coincidence that these two tales also stick out in my memory as rather dull episodes in the Roger Moore television series. "Effete Angler," for example, spends an awful lot of time describing the Saint gone fishing and trying to haul in a marlin. Sort of boring--and the smuggling case that results from it is pretty tepid stuff, too. "Arrow," meanwhile, is just a run-of-the-mill whodunit whose exotic locale can't save it from seeing Simon Templar tediously work out the identity of the villain.

Afterwards, things pick up. "The Black Commissar," set in Jamaica makes for a good action/adventure story, while "The Unkind Philanthropist," a Puerto Rican story of corrupt capitalist exploitation, is a solid improvement over the television version of the same. Things really pick up when Charteris employs some novel twists on the iconography of the South Seas and pirate treasure hunt in "The Old Treasure Story" and then strikes gold with a tale of mystery and horror with a Haitian voodoo tale, "The Questing Tycoon." The latter is the best story in the collection. It's also one of the better television episodes.

So, a mixed bag. Why? Maybe because something is off with the writing. The old Charteris style of florid adventure doesn't exist in this work. Instead, the prose tends to be sluggish, without energy. It's not the same old Simon. The slower style of expression even makes Simon seem older, maybe more than middle-aged. It's a big change from the previous collection of short stories. Those, in The Saint in Europe, were pitch perfect. Maybe the best of all his work. And perhaps that makes Spanish Main suffer in comparison.

[Michael Rumney · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories all featuring the Saint, Simon Templer spending some time in the Caribbean. It is a bit dated with some of the language used but it is still an entertaining read. Charteris has some fun and takes the Mickey through Templer's opinions on locked room murder mysteries and males having female sounding names.
I couldn't get Roger Moore out of my mind reading this and as I remember watching the TV series in the sixties it wasn't clear how the Saint financed his jet setting lifestyle.
This book didn't answer that question for me either.

[Bert van der Vaart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really surprised at how good this collection of short stories with the Saint's adventures in the Caribbean. Not only do you get the normal witty conversation and twisty plot turns, but Charteris in these stories actually even provides some useful information about each of the islands he sets his adventures on: esp the Virgin Islands, Haiti, Jamaica and Puerto Rico--even relevant today. Great airplane fare!

[Federico Kereki · Rating 3 out of 5]

More stories, including one with zombies (?!)

[Krishna Dabi · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very confusing and boring .

[Frances]

six short stories, enjoyable.