I recently reviewed The Saint on the Spanish Main, and found Leslie Charteris’ famous hero, Simon Templar, a little different, and more intriguing, than I had guessed based on the TV shows.

The Saint to the Rescue is an earlier series of stories, first published in 1959. In these six neatly constructed little tales, set either in California or the American South, I learned yet more about Simon Templar, and I was a little shocked. In a fun way (in real life it might be different).

Several of the stories involve people being blackmailed. The Saint considers blackmailers lower than murderers, and has no objection to a private death penalty for them. That’s not something I’m accustomed to in fiction, but it provided this reader a genuine frisson of guilty pleasure.

Modern readers, if they are liberal, will appreciate the Saint’s contempt for Florida land developers who ravage the environment. Conservative readers will appreciate his condemnation of foreign aid and his spirited defense of the British Empire (remember that author Charteris himself was a non-white child of the Empire, son of a Chinese father and an English mother).

And those of us, young or old, who are weary of Gender Feminism will appreciate the complete absence of Evolved “masculinity.”

Shocking. Fun. Easy to read. I recommend The Saint to the Rescue, unless you’re Woke.