1 INTRODUCTION Charteris and His Work Every Year the UK Crime
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1 INTRODUCTION Charteris and His Work Every year the UK Crime Writers' Association holds its prestigious “Diamond Dagger” ceremony. The Diamond Dagger is awarded annually to crime writers whose careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to crime fiction published in the English language. Winners have included Ian Rankin, Eric Ambler, John le Carré and Ruth Rendell. On 7 May 1992 the Chairman of the Association presented the Diamond Dagger to the 84-year old Leslie Charteris, whose fiction featuring the gentleman warrior, vigilante adventurer and modern knight-errant Simon Templar, known as the Saint, first appeared in 1928 and is still being published today. Outperforming both heroes and villains and a destroyer of society's enemies for decades, the central protagonist of Charteris’ twelve novels, thirty-four novellas and twelve volumes of short stories excelled in popularity. As Clive Bloom has warned, figures relating to book sales, at least in Britain, “must always be approached with considerable caution,”1 but based on known editions and reprints, publishers’ remarks and information from Charteris’ letters, it has been estimated that Charteris’ sales have topped forty million.2 While small in relation to the huge output and marketing of authors like the early twentieth-century thriller writer Edgar Wallace, or the famous Agatha Christie whose sales run into billions, Charteris’ sales record for his more modest output remains very substantial. Publication of his fiction tailed off in the 1980s, but from December 2012 Mulholland Books at Hodder and Stoughton commenced republication of thirty-five Saint titles. The Saint began as an early 1930s wealthy, upper class English gentleman exhibiting some dandy traits and enjoying a liberated, exciting lifestyle; an idealistic, modern buccaneer seeking excitement and spoils who obtains both by merrily and mockingly ridding society of evildoers. He subtly matures, showing more restraint by the end of the decade, later becoming an Americanised, worldly 1 Clive Bloom, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900 (Houndmills, Basingtoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 107-8. 2 Ian Dickerson, A Saint I Ain’t (unpublished draft biography of Charteris), 2. Dickerson is the Secretary of the UK Saint Club and was personally aquainted with Charteris. 2 and urbane counter-espionage agent for the US Government during and after the Second World War. In the 1950s he turns into a wealthy international celebrity traveller and playboy – older and less driven, though still adventuring and righting wrongs. In 1990, in a short article about Charteris and the Saint, Helena Blakemore suggested that it is worth examining “how one particular character can survive and maintain popularity for over half a century…retaining reader loyalty through succeeding generations and various media”.3 Blakemore’s suggestion is a good one. By 1963, when he ceased sole authorship of fiction featuring Simon Templar, Charteris had published 140 Saint narratives.4 Yet despite the volume and popularity of his work and its long period of publication, almost nothing of an academic nature has been written about his fiction. Why is this so? Firstly, as argued later in this Introduction, while Charteris drew on different forms of crime fiction in constructing his narratives, they are generally best described as thrillers. One reason for a lack of academic interest in his work is the relative dearth of academic focus, within the genre of crime fiction, on the thriller – compared with, in particular, detective fiction. While there have been some major studies and articles about thrillers, detective fiction in all its forms is much better served, both in broad historical consideration and in more specialized critical analysis. For the period from the 1920s to the early postwar years, when Charteris produced much of his Saint fiction, there is particular academic emphasis on the clue-puzzle novel of ratiocination – best represented by the work of Agatha Christie – and on American “hard-boiled” private eye fiction such as the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett. Hammett's famous 1930 private eye novel The Maltese Falcon is often viewed as an early example of crime fiction as serious literature. Today much detective fiction, unlike most thriller fiction, tends to be seen as serious and often complex literature, and studies of it form a specific area of literary criticism. The academic journal Clues: A Journal of Detection, published biannually by McFarland & Co of Jefferson, North Carolina, focuses on the analysis of detective fiction, and a number of scholars have noted the place of this literature in academic scholarship.5 3 Helena Blakemore, “The Novels of Leslie Charteris”, in Twentieth Century Suspense: the Thriller Comes of Age, ed. Clive Bloom (London: Macmillan, 1990), 70. The “various media” are radio, film, comic strips and television. 4 In a BBC interview with broadcaster Nan Winton on 5th June 1965, Charteris claimed that he had written 143 Saint stories. It is unclear how he reached this figure, though he probably included Vendetta for the Saint, written collaboratively with Harry Harrison and first published in book form in 1964. 5 For example Heta Pyrhonen, “Criticism and Theory”, in A Companion to Crime Fiction, ed. Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 43; 45; Carl D. Malmgren, Anatomy of Murder 3 The major reason Charteris’ work has not been seen as worthy of serious study is that it has often been included among those crime fiction narratives perceived as mass-produced, consumer literature of little or no value. Such literature has traditionally been seen as “pulp fiction”, read for escapist diversion and then discarded. Julian Symons, one of the most respected of the twentieth century historians and analysts of crime fiction, describes Charteris as one of the “big producer and big seller” crime and thriller writers, “few of [whose] books are of individual interest”, whose “work has a machine-like nature”, and is “a ready-made product like cornflakes or puffed wheat”. Others allocated to this category by Symons are early prolific writers such as John Creasey, Edgar Wallace, the mid-century Mickey Spillane, and more recently Fredrick Forsyth and Robert Ludlum.6 Symons is probably referring to what he sees as excessive similarity of theme and plot in such fiction. Dismissal of Charteris’ work, however, is unjustified. Certainly, like most thrillers of the period his fiction is not complicated, following a narrative pattern and concentrating its action through the Saint hero whose characterization is wedded to the action. The Saint’s world is sharp and clear-cut, like its dashing main character, with little ambiguity and few dilemmas of motivation, psychological tension or personal morality. While he is no cardboard stereotype like the protagonists of many early thrillers, Templar can sometimes, especially in the very early years, be too close to perfection and his opponents too monstrous. But he is a hero; all societies in all ages have had heroes, and needed heroes. Such figures, whether fictional or real, are meaningful in many ways, not least because they fulfil a vital role in demonstrating to ordinary people how qualities such as bravery, goodness and fairness are worthwhile virtues that help navigate problems in an uncertain world full of villains. This alone suggests Charteris’ hero and his narratives have relevance not only for his time but for all time, and are thus worthy of study. Beyond this, however, the very fact of the Saint’s prominence in twentieth century crime fiction and Charteris’ success in creating such a popular hero suggests Simon Templar should not be ignored. While the Saint shares important origins with many other heroes in the Western canon of literature, he has a distinctive appeal; there are no other crime fiction heroes in the period under discussion that (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2001), 3; or Joel Black, "Crime Fiction and the Literary Canon", in Rzepka and Horsley, Companion, 76-89. 6 Julian Symons, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel (London and Basingstoke: Pan Books Ltd, 4th ed., 1994), 247; 248-252. 4 come anywhere near his combination of prodigious power, protective benevolence, physical attractiveness and devil-may-care merriment. He is probably the best known and most celebrated of the gentleman crime fiction heroes who, as discussed primarily in Chapter III, evolved in the early decades of the twentieth century. The character’s portrayal is a major contribution to this concept of heroism and was a crucial factor in extending its life beyond the immediate post-Great War years. A further reason for study of the Saint is the unusual circumstance whereby, as noted above and discussed in depth in Chapter IV, major changes in the presentation of the character occur over the various periods of Charteris’ writing. While some other crime fiction characters roughly contemporaneous with the Saint evolve and change in consecutive novels, no figure undergoes the metamorphoses seen in Simon Templar. While the basic attributes of the character endure, his outward nature and manner are substantially altered in his different manifestations. Analysis of this phenomenon provides insights into the range of factors that shaped the Saint as a very special type of crime fiction hero not found elsewhere. And finally, it should not be forgotten that Charteris’ work is memorable and emotionally persuasive. His narratives weave major, sophisticated variations within the pattern; the exciting, glamorous Saint, imaginative, colourful description, varied and interesting detail and, in particular, clever and comical language entrance the reader. His prewar writing has a sparkle, liveliness and intensity of emotion rarely found in crime fiction, and his later novels and novellas are mature and refined, with plausible villains, believable threats and realistic excitement. His short stories are skilfully constructed and entertaining.