RARA-AVIS: The Saint: Lochte

From: Todd Mason ( Todd.Mason@tvguide.com)
Date: 21 Mar 2001


Ah. Thanks, Dick...I've only read, thus far, relatively trivial Saint stories, and have only a hazy memory of THE SAINT television series...hence his fame within the story seemed a bit ridiculous. TM

-----Original Message----- From: Dick Lochte [mailto: dlock@ix.netcom.com]

> From: Todd Mason < Todd.Mason@tvguide.com>
> And THE SAINT MYSTERY MAGAZINE for February 1960 leads off with "The Saint
and the Mug's
> Game," ...a clever-enough and slightly surprising middling-good
caper-story, one marred, in
> part, by an odd bit of business about Templar's reputation preceding him
to what seemed to me
> an unlikely extent...as if the author had long since begun taking his
series-stories for
> granted.

According to folks who have researched such stuff, "The Mug's Game" was written expressly for a collection of short stories about The Saint. Which may be why Leslie Charteris didn't feel it necessary to point out that Templar was an easily recognized celebrity in his world. The other reason, of course, is that he didn't want to draw attention to this celebrity because it had a payoff in the story. The fact is that by 1939, when "Mug's" appeared, the character was very well known, both in the real world and in his fictional world. A swashbuckling globe-hopping modern Robin Hood who settled revolutions, solved murders and committed them in the name of justice would not have gone unnoticed by the press. Nothing anonymous about The Saint.

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