The Saint and the Fiction Makers Read online

  THE ADVENTURES OF THE SAINT

  Enter the Saint (1930), The Saint Closes the Case (1930), The Avenging Saint (1930), Featuring the Saint (1931), Alias the Saint (1931), The Saint Meets His Match (1931), The Saint Versus Scotland Yard (1932), The Saint’s Getaway (1932), The Saint and Mr Teal (1933), The Brighter Buccaneer (1933), The Saint in London (1934), The Saint Intervenes (1934), The Saint Goes On (1934), The Saint in New York (1935), Saint Overboard (1936), The Saint in Action (1937), The Saint Bids Diamonds (1937), The Saint Plays with Fire (1938), Follow the Saint (1938), The Happy Highwayman (1939), The Saint in Miami (1940), The Saint Goes West (1942), The Saint Steps In (1943), The Saint on Guard (1944), The Saint Sees It Through (1946), Call for the Saint (1948), Saint Errant (1948), The Saint in Europe (1953), The Saint on the Spanish Main (1955), The Saint Around the World (1956), Thanks to the Saint (1957), Señor Saint (1958), Saint to the Rescue (1959), Trust the Saint (1962), The Saint in the Sun (1963), Vendetta for the Saint (1964), The Saint on TV (1968), The Saint Returns (1968), The Saint and the Fiction Makers (1968), The Saint Abroad (1969), The Saint in Pursuit (1970), The Saint and the People Importers (1971), Catch the Saint (1975), The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (1976), Send for the Saint (1977), The Saint in Trouble (1978), The Saint and the Templar Treasure (1978), Count On the Saint (1980), Salvage for the Saint (1983)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2014 Interfund (London) Ltd.

  Foreword © 2014 Andrew Lane

  Preface © 1968 Leslie Charteris

  Publication History and Author Biography © 2014 Ian Dickerson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781477842997

  ISBN-10: 1477842993

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER ONE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR DODGED A PARTY AND LEARNED NEW FACTS ABOUT LITERATURE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER TWO: HOW AMOS KLEIN WAS PROPOSITIONED AND GALAXY ROSE WAS BRUSHED OFF

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER THREE: HOW WARLOCK MADE HIS PITCH AND SIMON TEMPLAR TOOK A WALK

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER FOUR: HOW AMITY CAME TO BED AND NERO JONES LOST A SHOE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER FIVE: HOW WARLOCK CONTRIBUTED SOME SCIENCE AND ALLOWED OTHERS TO BECOME PHYSICAL

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER SIX: HOW HERMETICO WAS BREACHED AND SIMON TEMPLAR DID NOT HAVE THE LAST WORD

  1

  2

  3

  4

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  WATCH FOR THE SIGN OF THE SAINT!

  THE SAINT CLUB

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The text of this book has been preserved from the original edition and includes vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation that might differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, allowing only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  The Saint and the Fiction Makers by Leslie Charteris is a work of post-modern fiction. There, I’ve said it. I think I may be the first person ever to have used the words “Leslie Charteris” and “post-modern fiction” in the same sentence (except for people writing sentences along the lines “Leslie Charteris did not, by any definition, write post-modern fiction”). This is a bold claim, I know, but I can back it up with evidence. Well, at least with an entertaining argument anyway.

  I first read the book when I was in my teens. I found it as a paperback copy in my local library—I was working my way through all of Charteris’s Saint books, in no particular chronological order, skipping from the 1930s to the 1960s and then back to the 1940s quite happily, and this happened to be the next one that I picked up. The title intrigued me, but not very much more than, say The Saint and the People Importers. But when I started to read it…ah, then something happened. I realised that I had never read anything quite like it before. It was a work of fiction that was about the process of writing fiction. It was a real book in which the first few pages were actually meant to be a few pages from a fictional book (or at least the description of scenes from a fictional film adaptation of a fictional book). That’s enough to make a young wannabee writer think seriously about what fiction really is, about how it mirrors and influences reality, and about the actual process of writing.

  I’ll come on to the contents of the book itself in a minute, but I want to talk for a while about the author, who isn’t Leslie Charteris at all despite the protestations on the front cover of all the various editions. The book is actually a novelisation of a two-part episode of The Saint (the TV series starring Roger Moore as Simon Templar) which was first broadcast in 1968. The script for the episode was written by John Kruse, although one might suspect that there were some additions and amendments by the series script editor, Harry W. Junkin. The two-part story was later re-edited into a single movie for broadcast in cinemas. The actual book was then written based on the scripts by another writer named Fleming Lee. There is no subterfuge in any of this—Leslie Charteris wrote a short preface to the book explaining its genesis and also explaining that he was given the manuscript by the publishers, and he spent some time going over it, changing and adding things as he saw fit, to ensure that it had an authentic “Saint” feel to it. So, the book was essentially written by three people—John Kruse, Fleming Lee, and Leslie Charteris, in that order, with possible early inclusions from Harry W. Junkin.

  John Kruse, the original creator of the plot, the characters, and the dialogue, was an experienced writer of TV drama whose career lasted for some twenty-five years, between 1955 and 1980. Birth year uncertain (well, not to him, but you know what I mean), he got into TV through working on film sets (he was a cameraman on the 1956 movie Moby Dick). During his writing career Kruse wrote for now classic series such as The Avengers, The Persuaders, The Professionals, Colditz, and Shoestring. He died in 2004, and is probably best remembered now, however, for the large amount of work he did on the Roger Moore series The Saint (twelve scripts and one storyline) and the Ian Ogilvy series Return of the Saint (nine scripts and two storylines). Before his death in 2004, Kruse also wrote several novels, including the thriller Red Omega (1981) which is now available as a Kindle eBook, making it slightly odd, perhaps, that he did not novelise his own scripts for The Saint. That job went instead to a writer named Fleming Lee.

  Lee was a complete contrast to Kruse. He was born in America (as Fleming Lee Blitch) in 1933. Writing wasn’t his main career—he taught English at Washington State University, Miami University of Ohio, Western College for Women, and Florida Atlantic University, and practiced law in Washington, DC (1978–1986) and Florida (1987–2003). As well a
s seven or so of the later “Saint” novels, he also wrote other books, including the children’s books The Amazing Adventures of Peter Grunt (1963) and The Last Dragon (1964). Lee and Leslie Charteris obviously had a relationship outside Lee’s work on the Saint, as Charteris helped Lee with the manuscript of a book he was writing at around about the same time as Lee was working on The Saint and the Fiction Makers (The House on Felicity Street, 1973). Lee died at the age of seventy-nine in 2012, a committed blogger right to the end.

  This complicated authorship for The Saint and the Fiction Makers is one of the reasons I would describe it as “post-modern” (the phrase being notoriously difficult to define—apart from the obvious fact that it’s “the thing that came after modernism”—but could be summarised as meaning “a creative act that makes a point of acknowledging that it is a creative act”). The Saint novels, probably more than any other series of books, are so closely identified with a particularly individual style of writing that it is strange to think of any of them being joint efforts, or (to put it more boldly) pastiches, even (or especially) if the individual whose particular style of writing is being pastiched has not only approved the process but actually taken part in it. It makes the process look like a production line, but one that is, strangely, turning out individual and hand-crafted items. The other reason, however, is the fact that the book is fiction about the process of fiction. Without giving away too many details, in the plot Simon Templar discovers that an entire criminal gang named SWORD has been set up to duplicate in exact detail a criminal gang in a series of books by writer Amos Klein. The gang leader—an obsessive fan—then kidnaps Templar, thinking that he is Klein, in order that the writer can then create the ultimate heist for him. Amos Klein, however, doesn’t exist—it’s a pseudonym used by the real writer. So, the Saint (who is really Simon Templar) is mistaken for Amos Klein (who is really the female Amity Little) and forced to write a book that will be turned into reality (thus subverting the usual process where elements of reality are turned into books). And all that from a TV script that was in turn transformed into a book by a small team of writers all adhering to a common style. But let’s remember that the Saint series itself made knowing nods to the fact that it was a TV series by having its hero—Simon Templar—turn to the camera and lift a knowing eyebrow at the audience just before the main title sequence. “Breaking the fourth wall,” it’s called.

  It’s only on rereading the book that I have come to realise the effect that it had on me as a young reader and nascent writer. I distinctly remember duplicating the opening few pages, which themselves were a pastiche of the James Bond films of the time, and then continuing the “fictional” Amos Klein story onwards as a short story for my English class at school. That led to the best piece of writing advice I have ever been given, from a despairing English teacher: “Andrew, why are the characters doing these things?” As a result of that single question, I started thinking about characterisation and motivation, and I haven’t really stopped.

  Of course, motivation in The Saint and the Fiction Makers is relatively simple. Actress Carol Henley is a fame-obsessed bimbo, producer Paul Starnmeck is in it for the money, Amity Little writes because that’s what she does best, while the members of SWORD do what they do purely because they are criminals.

  And Simon Templar does what he does because he’s the Saint. Of course.

  —Andrew Lane (2014)

  PREFACE

  The history of this book repeats that of The Saint on TV and The Saint Returns. That is, it started life as a television scenario, not written by me, and not based on anything that I created except the character of Simon Templar. After its second draft, I was allowed to make some suggestions, not all of which were adopted. However, in this readable adaptation by Fleming Lee (who also worked on those other two) I have availed myself of the producer’s privilege in reverse: just as movie producers always take unto themselves the right to change any story they have bought in adapting it to the screen, so I, with the collaboration of Fleming Lee, did not hesitate to make what improvements I thought I could see in translating the screen play to the printed page.

  The only difference between this and our previous experiments is that The Fiction Makers in its original form seemed much too good and spacious an idea to throw away on just one TV show, and was therefore expanded first into a two-parter, and then abducted bodily out of the television series to be presented as a full-length feature film. In conformity with that aggrandizement, this adaptation has become a full-length novel.

  As with the preceding composites, I worked closely with Fleming Lee on this adaptation, and personally revised the final manuscript to satisfy myself that it was as close to an authentic Saint book as anything could be of which I had not written every line myself. But the only honest way to present a work like this, to which three other writers have contributed their imagination and their talents in such measure, seems to me to be to give them full credit as co-authors—unprecedented perhaps in the middle world where ghosts walk.

  —Leslie Charteris (1968)

  CHAPTER ONE:

  HOW SIMON TEMPLAR DODGED A PARTY AND LEARNED NEW FACTS ABOUT LITERATURE

  1

  Like a monstrous silver manta ray, the giant hovercraft moved over the marshy plain. Fleeing ahead of it across the treeless flat-land, Charles Lake’s jeep seemed in comparison no larger than a darting minnow.

  The chase was as unequal in other factors as in size. Lake had no true road to follow, only a pair of pitted ruts which at intervals almost disappeared entirely or were submerged in mud and water. His only real chance of escape had been to drive out of sight of the hovercraft before its crew had noticed he was gone. Now that they were in pursuit, he could see no hope of outdistancing or evading them. His jeep’s speed was reduced by holes and bogs, while the hovercraft roared effortlessly along on its cushion of air two feet above the ground. Propelled at an unvarying seventy miles an hour, it would overtake Lake within a minute.

  His jaw set, he glanced anxiously over his shoulder at the huge shape bearing down on him. If he could not escape the machine, he would have to fight it. He slowed a little, allowing the hovercraft to come within fifty yards. Having no braking mechanism, the craft began to slow cautiously by reducing power. It was then that Charles Lake stamped his jeep’s accelerator to the floor and shot ahead in a fresh burst of speed.

  Behind him he could hear the sudden change in tone of the hovercraft’s propellers as it once more put on full speed. It was almost on him, only sixty or seventy feet behind. At that moment Lake brought his foot down on his brake pedal in a move that brought the jeep to a sudden halt and took the pilot of the hovercraft completely by surprise. With no way of stopping quickly and no way of making a sharp turn at such speed, the machine hurtled helplessly towards the jeep like a flat stone on ice.

  Lake, the instant his vehicle had stopped, had rolled from the driver’s seat and scrambled for safety. He heard the hovercraft’s metal front crash into the jeep, and looked in time to see the pursuing monster swing to one side, its rear jarred high into the air as its front came to an abrupt halt. The fans which held it off the ground, set out of sight within the base of the body, were not designed to make it fly, so the rear, which had been thrown into the air, came down with all the force of its tons of dead weight, overriding the cushioning fans and smashing into the ground. It bounced up again, helped by the still operating fans, while the pilot cut off the upper propellers.

  Charles Lake dashed forward at the machine, tearing one of the metal buttons from his jacket. It was much heavier than an ordinary button, and as it was torn from the threads which had held it a pin was released which activated the fuse inside. Lake tossed the button with perfect aim under the hovercraft and himself to the ground with his hands over his head.

  The fantastically powerful explosion which followed disabled at least two of the four supporting fans. The hovercraft crunched to the ground, helpless. Even before the shower
of mud and stones thrown from beneath the machine had come to earth, Lake ran to the hovercraft and leaped up its sloping side. The thing was as large as an ordinary house. The pilot’s cabin was a plastic dome set among the propeller columns on top, and inside that transparent cover Lake could see one man collapsed forward on the control and another on his feet with pistol in hand.

  Seeing Lake, who was carrying no weapon, the man threw open the sliding hatch of the plastic dome and fired wildly. Lake dodged, tore another button from his jacket, and sprawled flat on the metal skin of the machine as he threw the miniature bomb past the man with the pistol into the cabin. An instant later the cabin and its former occupants were an unrecognizable smoking wreckage.

  Lake leaped inside, kicked open the door which led down into the main deck of the craft, and felled a startled crewman with a karate chop to the throat. Taking the man’s pistol, he ran on, sure of his way since he had been in the craft only minutes before, until he came to a door at the end of the deck. It was unlocked, and he flung it open, ready to fire.

  “Welcome, Mr Lake. Drop your gun or the girl dies.”

  The man who spoke, the leader who called himself Warlock, stood with his hand on an electronic control panel. On a steel table, her wrists and ankles clamped firmly to the metal slab, lay Warlock’s hostage, beautiful, blonde, almost nude. She could only writhe futilely as a blinding ray of light from the ceiling moved along the slab towards her, melting the steel in a bubbling channel as it came.

  Simon Templar’s profile was illuminated by the flickering Technicolor glare as he inclined his head to speak to the girl sitting beside him.

  “Ten to one that gorgeous form of yours comes through unbarbecued,” he whispered.

  She was the same girl who was clamped to the steel slab on the screen, and so she seemed eminently well-qualified to appreciate his comment.