The Avenging Saint

The Saint, Book 4

By: Leslie Charteris

Narrated by: Joihn Telfer

The Saint is back - 50 audiobooks are now available starring the debonair classic crime hero.

Simon Templar is the Saint - daring, dazzling, and just a little disreputable. On the side of the law, but standing outside it, he dispenses his own brand of justice one criminal at a time.

After a fruitless chase across Europe on the tail of his enemy Rayt Marius, the Saint returns to London with a price on his head. But adventure is never far from Simon Templar's door, and soon he finds himself rescuing Sonia Delmar, a munitions heiress, from Marius's clutches. Sonia allies with the Saint - in a bid to prevent Marius and his ally Prince Rudolf bringing war and destruction to Europe.

Leslie Charteris was born in Singapore and moved to England in 1919. He left Cambridge University early when his first novel was accepted for publication. He wrote novels about the Saint throughout his life, becoming one of the 20th century's most prolific and popular authors.

©1930 Leslie Charteris (P)2014 Audible Studios

Better than 007...!!!

Fabulous fun... impeccable wordsmanship and nothing less than Stellar narration. Eye-rolling Mayhem at every possible instance. Simon Templar can do it all. This is 1930 and the high-brow British wit and flourishes of language are absolutely enchanting. the plot narrative storyline and visuals are totally engaging. short and sweet here you will have a great time listening to this novel and I am so looking forward to all of the rest 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Love the story, miss previous narrator

This is my second favorite Saint story. It has everything you love about the Saint adventures: adventure, rescues, high stakes, and fantastic hyperbole descriptions. The narrator is okay but difficult to listen to if you first heard the Frederick Davison version, especially when "singing" <cringe>. That given this is one great story.

Flowery and dated.

The writing style is very much a thing of the past, with loads of hyperbole and gushing over how brave and wonderful the Saint is. If you can get past this,it's got some fun stuff.

Battle, Murder, Sudden Death and Good Beer

At the beginning of chapter 9, The Saint explains himself to the heroine he has just rescued.

‘…I was sick of this age. Tired of the miserable little mildewed things that people racked their brains about and wrote books about and called “life”. I’m not interested to read about maundering epileptics and silly nymphomaniacs and anemic artists with a message. And I’m not interested to meet them. If I notice them at all they make me want to vomit.’

He’s revolting against the zeitgeist of 1930, but it will be familiar to anyone who’s dipped their toe in today’s intellectual climate. Many are the post-modern, post-post grad students, “crawling about on a dunghill yapping about [their] putrid little repressions”. And when our hero turns to the literature of his time, it’s clear his creator felt the same imperious irritations:

‘The lowdown shocker is a decent and clean and honest-to-God form of literature because it does deal with things that have a right to occupy a man’s mind. A primitive chivalry and damsel-in-distress and virtue triumphant and a wholesale slaughter of villains at the end…It may not be true to life, but it ought to be true. And that’s why it’s the best stuff for people to read…’

There’s much refreshing stuff here. And yet. For one thing, the Saint will ramble—I’m editing his monologue drastically. His repartee, while funny, can get labored; by the time he's finished you forget the question or situation that inspired it.

Then again, the Saint is just too perfect. Sapper’s Hugh (“Bulldog”) Drummond has the same knack for jesting in the face of overwhelming odds, but he’s quicker off the mark. And, like Fleming’s Bond, he has self-doubts. Not so the Saint. He’s physically stunning, immaculately dressed, impeccably suave; his smile as devastating as his fists. One imagines a mannequin doing jujitsu.

John Telfer’s performance could hardly be improved upon. But while I’m all for ‘battle, murder, and sudden death, with plenty of good beer and a complete callousness about blipping the ungodly over the beezer’ I like my protagonists--even those who inhabit lowdown shockers--a shade more three-dimensional.