Crime/Mystery Series: The Saint

I have never been able to see why a fictional character should not grow up, mature, and develop, the same as anyone else. The same, if you like, as his biographer.

Leslie Charteris

Leslie Charteris's Simon Templar, alias The Saint

About the Author

Leslie Charteris was a thoroughly interesting fellow who led quite an interesting life. Here are some data on him:

• Leslie Charteris
• Biography of Leslie Charteris (at Saint.org, listed farther below)
• Leslie Charteris (The Authors' Calendar)

About the Character

The Saint is a perpetually popular character, and so there is a good bit of information available, including these:

• Saint.org
• Simon Templar - The Saint (BBC - the page is a work in progress)
• The Saint (MysteryNet.com)
• The Stickman Gallery (amusing illustrated gallery of the mark of the Saint)

(In case you came to this page you are reading from a search engine instead of through its site, I will here repeat the brief remarks on the main mystery/crime page that points here.)

This one may seem out of keeping with the rest here, but truly it is not. Sure, The Saint is purest cartoon wish-fulfillment: super-handsome, super-suave, super-tough, and all the rest of the cartoon "supers" you could want. It is impossible to even begin to take him seriously. But that's the point: Charteris didn't take him seriously. The stories are much leavened with large doses of Charteris's delightfully comic descriptive passages, which apply almost Dante-esque exaggeration to everything from the mental processes of a policeman to the discomfiting of "the ungodly". Mind, the tales themselves are not tongue-in-cheek: it is just the language that smiles and chuckles along. The character is also interesting in that there was a clear and definite maturing process: the original version really was a boy's vision of the ultimate ripping-yarns hero, but that cartoon shed some of its excesses--and some satellite characters--as the years went on, and the later Simon Templar, while still a romantic device, has his sense and sensibilities in their right adult places. The whole Saint Saga is, as a friend of ours puts such things, "a good yuk."

The Books

Even during his lifetime, Leslie Charteris allowed others to write "Saint" tales--all supposedly vetted and, as needed, touched up by Charteris himself. Whether such tales make a legitimate part of "The Saint Saga" (as the series is commonly called) is a judgement each reader has to make individually. At any rate, I have segregated them off as "By Another Hand".

More so than with most mystery/crime series, the Saint appears in short-story form rather than novel form. Of books wholly by Charteris, there are twice as many books of story collections as of novels (two dozen versus one dozen).

Even more than most, many Saint books--especially the earlier ones--have each been published under a great variety of titles, in many editions. Also, many began life in newspapers or magazines, sometimes with titles not found in any book edition. In the lists below, I have used the year of first publication in any form, but only titles used for books; in each case, the first title shown is the first used in book form. Also, I have omitted, even from the "By Other Hands" section, the novelization of the utterly dreadful movie.

Finally, I have, for brevity, omitted variant titles that are compounds of other variants (such as Angels of Doom: The Saint Meets His Match when the lists already include Angels of Doom and The Saint Meets His Match).

In these lists, the links are all to used-book searches for the title (via Abebooks). Some few can still be found in print new, but not many. As usual, the search results are sorted from lowest price up (note that, as always in used-book searches from this site, the price sort is by actual book price, not total shipped price, though each listing also always shows the true total shipped cost; occasionally, a slightly more expensive title will be slightly cheaper shipped--but the differences are never much and you can easily eyeball those cases.) Most titles represent a number of varying editions, from original hardcovers to late paperback reprints.

Saint Books wholly by Leslie Charteris

The Individual Novels

• Meet--The Tiger! (1928) aka Crooked Gold aka The Saint in Danger aka The Saint Meets The Tiger
  
  
• The Last Hero (1929) aka The Saint Closes the Case aka The Saint and the Last Hero
  
  
• Knight Templar (1930) aka The Avenging Saint
  
  
• She Was a Lady (1930) aka Angels of Doom aka The Saint Meets His Match
  
  
• Getaway (1932) aka The Saint's Getaway
  
  
• The Saint in New York (1934)
  
  
• Saint Overboard (1935) aka The Pirate Saint
  
  
• Thieves' Picnic (1937) aka The Saint Bids Diamonds
  
  
• Prelude for War (1938) aka The Saint Plays With Fire
  
  
• The Saint in Miami (1940)
  
  
• The Saint Steps In (1942)
  
  
• The Saint Sees It Through (1946)
  
  

The Story Collections

Original-Content Collections

• Enter The Saint (1930)
  
  
• Featuring The Saint (1931)
  
  
• Alias The Saint (1931)
  
  
• The Holy Terror (1932) aka The Saint versus Scotland Yard aka The Saint vs. Scotland Yard
  
  
• Once More the Saint (1933) aka The Saint and Mr. Teal
  
  
• The Brighter Buccaneer (1933)
  
  
• The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal (1934) aka The Saint In London aka The Saint In England
  
  
• Boodle (1934) aka The Saint Intervenes
  
  
• The Saint Goes on (1934)
  
  
• The Ace of Knaves (1937) aka The Saint in Action
  
  
• Follow The Saint (1938)
  
  
• The Happy Highwayman (1939)
  
  
• The Saint Goes West (1942)
  
  
• The Saint on Guard (1944)
  
  
• 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)
  
  
• The Saint to the Rescue (1959)
  
  
• Trust The Saint (1962)
  
  
• The Saint in the Sun (1963)
  
  

Story Omnibus Collections

These have no stories not in the original collections listed above. I haven't checked, but would wager that there is also overlap between at least some of these.

• Wanted for Murder
  
  
• The First Saint Omnibus aka Arrest The Saint)
  
  
• The Saint Two in One
  
  
• The Saint at Large
  
  
• Paging The Saint
  
  
• The Second Saint Omnibus
  
  
• Concerning The Saint
  
  
• The Saint Cleans Up
  
  
• The Saint's Choice aka The Saint Magazine Reader
  
  
• Saints Alive
  
  
• The Saint: Good as Gold
  
  
• The Fantastic Saint
  
  

Saint Omnibus Editions

While there are numerous story omnibus volumes, so far as I know there was only one omnibus of novels. That omnibus is quite misleadingly titled, as it contain not "five novels" as styled, but 3½, the half being Enter the Saint, from which one of the three stories has been omitted; the publisher chose to consider the two remaining stories each as a "novel". Also, one of the "novels" is a story collection. No wonder Archie Goodwin was impressed by the publishing business as "a way to corral jack".

• The Saint: Five Complete Novels (a misnomer - there are three novels and two stories)
  
  • The Man Who Was Clever [story]
  • The Lawless Lady [story]
  • The Saint Closes the Case
  • The Avenging Saint
  • The Saint vs. Scotland Yard [story collection]
  
  

Saint Books "By Another Hand"

(This includes a few books nominally co-authored by Charteris.)

The Individual Novels

• Vendetta For The Saint (1964) [co-authored by Harry Harrison]
  
  
• The Saint and the Fiction-Makers (1968) [by Fleming Lee and John Kruse]
  
  
• The Saint in Pursuit (1970) [co-authored by Fleming Lee]
  
  
• The Saint and the People Importers (1971) [co-authored by Fleming Lee]
  
  
• The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (1976) [by Christopher Short]
  
  
• The Saint and the Templar Treasure (1979) [by Graham Weaver and Donne Avenell]
  
  
• Salvage for The Saint (1983) [by Peter Bloxsom and John Kruse]
  
  
• Capture The Saint (1997) [by Burl Barer]
  
  

The Story Collections

• The Saint on TV (1968) [by Fleming Lee and John Kruse]
  
  
• The Saint Returns (1968) [by Fleming Lee, D.R. Motton, Leigh Vance, and John Kruse]
  
  
• The Saint Abroad (1970) [by Fleming Lee and Michael Pertwee]
  
  
• Catch The Saint (1975) [by Fleming Lee and Norman Worker]
  
  
• Send for the Saint (1977) [by Peter Bloxsom, John Kruse, and Donald James]
  
  
• The Saint in Trouble (1978) [by Graham Weaver, John Kruse, and Terence Feely]
  
  
• Count on The Saint (1980) [by Graham Weaver and Donne Avenell]
  
  

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