Overview

Simon Templar wages war on an international arms dealer in this early Saint adventure of danger, revenge, and outlaw justice. Leslie Charteris's debonair rogue returns in a story that continues the conflict with Rayt Marius, a brilliant and ruthless enemy whose traffic in weapons has already left death behind him. For the Saint, the law is often too slow, too cautious, or too compromised to deal with men who profit from bloodshed, and Knight Templar puts that belief into action with speed, wit, violence, and style. Also published under the title The Avenging Saint, this 1930 novel stands near the beginning of the long-running Simon Templar series, when Charteris's hero was still at his most dangerous: part gentleman adventurer, part criminal hunter, part romantic outlaw. The result is classic British crime-adventure with a hard pulp edge-fast-moving, glamorous, morally aggressive, and driven by a hero who robs, tricks, and destroys worse men than himself. For readers of vintage thrillers, classic crime fiction, gentleman-thief stories, vigilante adventure, and early twentieth-century pulp fiction, Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint is an essential Saint novel from the formative years of Leslie Charteris's career.

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9781515470311

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Leslie Charteris (1907-1993), born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin in Singapore, was a British-Chinese author best known as the creator of Simon Templar, the Saint. Charteris introduced the character in the late 1920s and developed him across novels, novellas, and story collections that blended crime, adventure, wit, romance, violence, and moral outlawry. The Saint became one of the durable figures of twentieth-century popular fiction, later moving into film, radio, television, comics, and continued reprint editions.Charteris's great invention was a hero who belonged neither to ordinary detective fiction nor ordinary criminal fiction. Simon Templar is elegant, dangerous, theatrical, and self-directed: a man who understands the underworld from the inside, yet turns his talents against criminals whose greed and cruelty make them more contemptible than the laws they violate. Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint shows the early Saint in one of his most aggressive forms, confronting organised crime and international corruption with charm, nerve, and private vengeance. For readers of classic thrillers, vintage crime adventure, gentleman-rogue fiction, and early twentieth-century popular series fiction, Charteris remains a major and highly discoverable author.

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