Book Review: Daredevil by Leslie Charteris – Not a Saint novel (but related)

Tweet

I recently started a quest to read all of Leslie Charteris' series of books about Simon Templar (The Saint) in order. Having read and reviewed the first book (“Meet – The Tiger!”), this book, first published in 1929, was next on my list to read – even though it doesn't feature The Saint. My reason for tracking it down and reading it was that this story is the first appearance of Inspector Claude Eustace Teal, who would go on to be a recurring character in the Saint series. So I wanted to read it for the sake of completion. One of Charteris' very earliest books, it hasn't been reprinted very often. I've seen copies advertised for silly prices on eBay and other marketplaces. Fortunately, I was able to find a scruffy, but still readable copy at an acceptable price. London-based detective Teal is acting as the right hand man of Captain “Storm” Arden (the “Daredevil” of the title), who himself seems to be occupying a senior position at Scotland Yard, having been assigned to investigate the machinations of a mysterious gang known as the Alpha Triangle. Storm Arden is nominally the hero of the book, and he's a fairly odd character. With character traits and a background reminiscent of Simon Templar, he's a Great War army veteran, a former international adventurer, bootlegger and soldier of fortune. Despite having such a varied background, he's now somehow become a Scotland Yard detective. How that came to be is never explained. The Alpha Triangle is headed by a mysterious mad genius, whose initial goal is to inflict deadly revenge on everyone who has ever crossed him, before extorting fifteen million pounds out of the British government through a terrorist campaign. In aid of this, the Triangle is recruiting career criminals, both domestic criminals and foreign thugs. It's this influx of know criminals into London which seems to attract the attention of Scotland Yard. There's a large, quite varied cast of characters, including Susan Hawthorne (Arden's beautiful and feisty love interest), Lord Hannassay (the senior government official who Susan works for), a bank manager and would-be crime writer who likes to boast about the number of criminals he knows, and various colourful hoodlums and petty crooks. In fact there are so many diverse characters in the book that it's easy to lose track of who's who and how they relate to each other. By far the most interesting character is Inspector Teal, the overweight, gum-chewing, middle-aged detective who seems to be permanently half-asleep, but can still move fast in a fight, even when he's been shot. It's no wonder the character was re-used in the Saint series. There's a lot of action in this book, including sudden shootouts and grenade attacks, and even a mass casualty bombing, but unfortunately the plot is difficult to follow in places, and some things aren't adequately explained – for instance, there's a personal connection between Storm Arden and the leader of the Alpha Triangle (“The Apex”) - Arden finds out about this from Teal, but there's nothing to say how Teal found out. The story moves along fast enough that it never gets boring, but it just doesn't hang together as well as it could have. If you're a “Saint” fan, this is worth reading for being the first appearance of Teal, and an interesting example of the early work of a writer who was still learning his craft, and would become much better later on. But it's not “must” reading.