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smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in June 2000.
The fourteenth Saint book once more contains three novellas. The High Fence is one of the most entertaining stories Charteris ever wrote, with Simon Templar and Chief Inspector Teal (hampered by a colleague thrust upon him by his superiors) racing each other to unmask the man who has taken control of a large part of London's market for stolen goods.
The other two stories, about murderous attacks on a tycoon and an attempted prison escape, are standard Saint fare, neither among the best nor the worst. The latter story is somewhat marred by rather ponderous humour based on the ide of dim-witted sidekick Hoppy Uniatz in love.
The fourteenth Saint book once more contains three novellas. The High Fence is one of the most entertaining stories Charteris ever wrote, with Simon Templar and Chief Inspector Teal (hampered by a colleague thrust upon him by his superiors) racing each other to unmask the man who has taken control of a large part of London's market for stolen goods.
The other two stories, about murderous attacks on a tycoon and an attempted prison escape, are standard Saint fare, neither among the best nor the worst. The latter story is somewhat marred by rather ponderous humour based on the ide of dim-witted sidekick Hoppy Uniatz in love.
tony's review
3.0
Again we get three shorts. The first, “The High Fence” (aka “The Man Who Knew”), is by far the best of the three, seeing Templar and Teal each searching for London's newest, most elusive fence, albeit for somewhat different reasons — including a wonderful scene where a corpse goes missing. The second “The Ellusive Ellshaw” (aka “The Race Train Crime”) again sees them on the same side of an investigation, when someone tries to separately blow up both Templar and Lord Ripwell with identical suitcase bombs. This one is a little over-plotted, but not nearly so much as the final episode “The Case of the Frightened Innkeeper”, which sees Templar (with an extended rôle for Hoppy) called to Penzance to investigate some strange night-time noises under a 16th Century inn, and getting caught up in a rather elaborate jailbreak scheme. Bonus marks for dropping in “zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl”, but not quite enough to rescue it.
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