Leslie Charteris in California.

The Desert Sun newspaper looks at the role of Palm Springs in the life and work of Saint creator Leslie Charteris, including the difficulties he experienced because of the Chinese Exclusion Act (Charteris had Chinese and British heritage).

The Saint's Girl Friday (1953).

In The Saint's Girl Friday, Louis Hayward steps into the shoes of Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar (aka The Saint) as he takes on a gambling ring that caused the death of a socialite who had requested his help. Diana Dors costars.

Clues 35.2 published: Bentley, Charteris, Christie, Hammett, Melville, et al.

Clues 35.2 (2017) has been published; abstracts follow below. In addition to the print version (which can be ordered from McFarland), the issue is available on Kindle,  Google Play, and Nook.

Introduction: In Conversation
Janice M. Allan (University of Salford)
The executive editor of Clues discusses the contents of the issue, including analyses of works by E. C. Bentley, Benjamin Black, Andrea Camilleri, Leslie Charteris, Agatha Christie, Tana French, Dashiell Hammett, and Herman Melville, and the TV series True Detective.

“The Impotence of Human Reason”:
E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case and the Antidetective Text 
Nathan Ashman (University of Surrey)
This article considers the subversion of the analytical detective format in E. C. Bentley’s Trent's Last Case (1913). Exploring the text’s problematization of concepts such as logic and reason as well as its disruption of the detective’s ocularcentric interpretative framework, the author highlights the ways in which Trent’s Last Case unsettles delineations between the classic analytic detective story and the metaphysical or antidetective text.

Watchful Eyes and Smiling Masks in The Maltese Falcon 
Nils Clausson
This article calls attention to the more than 250 references to eyes and their pervasive role in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, arguing that the novel portrays a world in which trying to see past duplicity, dissimulation, and role playing of others, while seeking to hide one’s own, is pervasive.

Labyrinths of Uncertainty:
True Detective and the Metaphysics of Investigation
Paul Sheehan and Lauren Alice (Macquarie University)
This article outlines some of the salient features and ad hoc history of metaphysical detective fiction (MPDF). Using True Detective season 1 as a case study, it explores how the series takes advantage of new programming freedoms to dramatize MPDF for a “broadcast literature” audience.

“A wholly other world of things, hidden”:
Benjamin Black’s and Tana French’s Criminal Worlds 
Kersti Tarien Powell (Saint Joseph's University)
This essay examines the recent success of Irish crime fiction through the works of Tana French and John Banville/Benjamin Black. Whereas the classic detective novel seeks to narrow multiple possibilities down to one determinate solution, French and Black resist this narrative pattern. In so doing, their novels both reclaim and reinvent the Irish literary tradition.

Crime Stories and Urban Fantasy
Stefan Ekman (University of Gothenburg)
Among the many unexplored areas of urban fantasy is its relation to crime fiction. This article explores how features of the crime story are used to emphasize, reinforce, or introduce urban fantasy’s social commentary. It looks at the genres’ relationship, analyzing three urban fantasies and their respective crime fiction elements.

Camilleri’s Montalbano: Aging, Nostalgia, and the Midlife Crisis
Stephen Derek Kolsky (University of Melbourne)
Salvo Montalbano, the protagonist of Andrea Camilleri’s detective series, goes through a midlife crisis that creates a biographical and ideological line of separation between the earlier and later novels, resulting in a new emphasis on the personal in the form of fleeting passionate engagements and less on social commitment.

Leslie Charteris, Hindenburg passenger.

Mystery authors can show up in remarkable places, and Saint creator Leslie Charteris is no exception. He was a passenger on the Hindenburg for its maiden voyage in 1936. He talks about the trip in this brief clip (and yes, he did wear a monocle in his youth).

Pulp magazines in "Thrill Seekers" exhibition.

Online items from the exhibition "Thrill Seekers: The Rise of Men's Magazines" (on view until January 4 at the Modern Graphic History Library, Washington University in St. Louis) include some pulp magazines such as The Saint from 1949.

Mystery goodies on EUscreen.

EUscreen offers free online access to thousands of videos, stills, and other materials from European broadcasters. A quick tiptoe through the archives yielded the following:

• An August 1962 interview with Alfred Hitchcock regarding The Birds (in French and English) in which he refutes the idea of working with Grace Kelly again ("Ce n'est pas possible")

• On location in Ireland in 1966 for the film Casino Royale with John Huston and Deborah Kerr

• Two interviews (in French) with Georges Simenon (1959, 1967)

• A July 1958 interview (in French) with Leslie Charteris, creator of the Saint

• Still from a 1955 Dutch TV production of Gaslight

(Thanks to Critical Studies in Television)

Happy birthday, Leslie Charteris.

Leslie Charteris, the creator of "The Saint," aka the "Robin Hood of modern crime," was born today in Singapore in 1907. He became an American citizen in 1946 and died in 1993.

The Saint, aka Simon Templar, debuted in Meet the Tiger (1928). He was played on film by Louis Hayward, George Sanders, and Val Kilmer, among others; on radio by Brian Aherne, Vincent Price, and Sanders's brother Tom Conway; and on TV by a pre-James Bond Roger Moore.

About the image: George Sanders in The Saint's Double Trouble (dir. Jack Hively, 1940).

No gamble for Ian Fleming in Bloomsbury auction.

There were a few items of mystery-related interest from Bloomsbury's September 3rd and September 10th auctions:

• Leslie Charteris, The Saint and Mr. Teal, 1st US ed., 1933; The Saint vs. Scotland Yard, first US ed., 1932; unspecified Saint novel, £40 (approx. US$65)
  

• Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile, 1st ed., 1937, plus two unspecified Christie novels, £180 (approx. US$293)
  

• Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, 3rd English ed., illust. James Grieg, 1895, £400 (approx. US$651)
  

• Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, 1st ed., 1953, £1700 (approx. US$2767)
  

And just because I'm a major fan of the illustrations of N. C. Wyeth:

• N. C. Wyeth, In the Manner of "Ship Ahoy," n.d., oil on canvas, £80 (approx US$130)
  

007 beats The Saint at auction.

There's not much mystery related to report from Bloomsbury's April 2nd bibliophile auction. The Leslie Charteris books featuring Simon Templar, aka The Saint—Trust the Saint, Saint Overboard, and The Saint on the Spanish Main—went unsold. There were a few Ian Fleming titles that did respectably: A first edition of From Russia, with Love, £320 (approximately $470); a first edition of Goldfinger, £300 (approximately $440); copies of Octopussy and The Living Daylights, signed (respectively) by Maud Adams and Maryam D'Abo (who appeared in the respective films), £280 (approximately $411).

Perhaps the copies of The Saint vs. Scotland Yard and The Saint and Mr. Teal, which will be offered for sale on April 23rd, will do better. They are each estimated at a minimum of £200.

Simon Templar: Saint or Soldier?

Over on the Great War Fiction blog, George Simmers speculates about the possible wartime service of Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar (aka The Saint) and compares him to Sapper's ex-captain Bulldog Drummond.

About the photo: A Christmas card from The Saint Club.

Happy belated birthday, Leslie Charteris.

Leslie Charteris, the creator of "The Saint," that "Robin Hood of modern crime," was born on May 12, 1907, making this year his 100th birthday. He died in 1993.

The Saint, aka Simon Templar, was played on radio by Brian Aherne, Vincent Price, and George Sanders's brother Tom Conway but probably most memorably by a pre-James Bond Roger Moore on television in the 1960s.

For a fun retrospective of the Saint logo, go here.