Book Review: Meet the Tiger by Leslie Charteris – The first Saint novel

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First published in 1928, this is the first book in the long-running adventures of Simon Templar – known as “The Saint” from his initials. I remember watching the TV series with Roger Moore when I was a kid, and I picked up one of the books in a charity shop a few years ago. I enjoyed that enough that I decided to eventually read the whole series – in order. So here's my review of the first book, “Meet the Tiger”: This is one of Leslie Charteris' first books, and he doesn't seem to have thought much of it in later years, going so far as to promote the second book in the series, “Enter the Saint”, as the first, disregarding this one. I don't know what his specific concerns were, but I found it quite entertaining. Simon Templar is introduced here as a self-described “gentleman adventurer”, having apparently spent most of his adult life overseas getting involved in various fortune-hunting enterprises, ranging from smuggling to gold-mining, with a brief stint in the Spanish Foreign Legion. Not quite “the Robin Hood of modern crime” yet, his main motivations seem to be to make money and have fun. At age twenty-seven, he's apparently now on the trail of a million dollars in gold, stolen from an American bank – he's done a deal with said bank to keep 20% of the gold if he can return the rest to them safely, and he's counting on this to fund an early retirement. The author doesn't seem to have had the Saint in mind as a recurring character at this point, so this is implied to be his final adventure. The Saint knows that the gold was stolen by a master criminal known only as “the Tiger”, who leads a gang of crooks known as “the Tiger Cubs”. He's also knows that they've gone to ground in a quiet coastal village in northern Devon, in the south of England, preparatory to smuggling the gold out of the country and disposing of it abroad. What he doesn't know yet is the identity of the Tiger or his gang. So the Saint has bought an abandoned World War One pill box in the area, and settled into it with his manservant Orice while he investigates further. Apart from being cook and cleaner, Orace is also a big ex-Royal Marine, who carries a big revolver around with him, and seems to be used to playing the part of Templar's loyal sidekick. The story moves pretty quickly. In the first chapter, the Saint survives a sniper attack, then goes on to meet Patricia Holme, who would be his recurring love interest in the early books. By the end of the second chapter, he's met an undercover police detective who's also on the trail of the Tiger, along with a suspicious bunch of wealthy types who could have stepped right out of an Agatha Christie story. There some red herrings, one involving an escaped convict, a subplot involving one of the baddies trying to blackmail Patricia into marrying him, and the identity of the Tiger himself isn't revealed until the last chapter, which involves an armed confrontation on a ship. The character of the Saint isn't fully developed in this book, but most of the essentials are there. He's not quite as dapper and well turned out as he tends to be in later stories, and the famous stick figure isn't used. The main parts of his character are in place though – his open disregard for both the law and conventional morality, his ready wit and his habit of taunting his enemies even when they've got him at gunpoint. He's handy with the two concealed knives he carries, is superbly fit, and gets by on a combination of cunning, improvisation and luck. All in all, I found this a very entertaining story, and a good introduction to the Saint. As I said, I hope to read all the books eventually, but it would get boring to read them all one after the other, so I'll probably read the next one in the series in a few weeks. But this is a good start to the series, and well recommended to people who like period adventure/mystery stories.