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| Illustration of 1st edn. (not for sale) |
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Meet
the Tiger aka The Saint Meets the Tiger aka Crooked Gold!
The world
met the Tiger in June 1928, in the third novel by Leslie
Charteris. The story introduced an athletic 27-year old,
Simon Templar, who lived in a converted Devon pill-box
with his manservant Orace.
Partly because of his initials, he had acquired the
nickname Saint some eight years earlier, although we have
never known how.
Simon meets a local Ward of Court, Patricia Holm, and
falls in love.
He later meets the eponymous Tiger and also Detective
Inspector Carn, who is on the trail of a missing million
dollars. Needless to say, the Saint beards the Tiger in
his den and appropriates the loot.
Published by Ward, Lock, in green cloth (1st edn lists
previous books as X Esquire & White Rider), a
condensed version appeared in The Sunday Dispatch (London)
titled Scoundrels Ltd. The first US publication was by
The Crime Club (who were to become the first US
publishers for most of his work) in 1929. The Sun Dial
Press changed the title to Meet - The Tiger! The Saint is
in Danger in 1940 but Bond-Charteris Enterprises gave it
the final retitling in 1945 as The Saint Meets the Tiger.
In July 1962 Digit Paperbacks in the UK kept to this. The
Saint had become so well-known that most of the original
books were later retitled to include his sobriquet. In
1929 the Amalgamated Press printed an anonymous story
titled Crooked Gold as a fourpenny Boys Friend
Library. It was actually an abridged rip-off of Meet the
Tiger, but Leslie didnt find out about it until
many years later. This comic is now very sought-after (Ive
seen it advertised at £300), as indeed is Meet the Tiger
generally. Its not the scarcest book, but probably
the most expensive.
After 1980 Leslie didnt allow more reprints as he
thought it was a poor story.
This book introduces an invention of his: the saying
as the actress said to the bishop.... Another
invention of his, however, surprisingly does not figure
in this book.
When the story was written, Leslie had no idea of the
institution that The Saint was to become. There is an
anomaly here inasmuch as Detective Inspector Carn knows
who he is, but in later books he was a mysterious unknown
identity who left a calling card drawing of a stick- man
- his invention which does not make an appearance here.
The
above information was taken from my CDROM 'A
History of the Saint books'
It is an ebook in pdf format and has over 130
pages full of information and over 400 pictures
of my favourite cover art.
It costs £4.99 to download from the web, but
because it is so large it could take a long time
to download on a slow link.
It costs £5.99 on cdrom to anywhere in the World.
Buy it here now
Please
select download or cdrom delivery as required
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