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smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in May 2000.
This collection of short stories is not among the best of the Saint books. None of the thirteen stories have anything particularly unexpected or interesting about them, though as a whole they have rather less action than usual, with Simon Templar more an investigator.
The best of this rather forgettable collection is probably The Man Who Liked Toys, in which Templar and Chief Inspector Teal team up to investigate the death of a financier. Two of the stories, as a minor point of interest, involve that now obscure part of aviation history, the then fashionable autogiro.
This collection of short stories is not among the best of the Saint books. None of the thirteen stories have anything particularly unexpected or interesting about them, though as a whole they have rather less action than usual, with Simon Templar more an investigator.
The best of this rather forgettable collection is probably The Man Who Liked Toys, in which Templar and Chief Inspector Teal team up to investigate the death of a financier. Two of the stories, as a minor point of interest, involve that now obscure part of aviation history, the then fashionable autogiro.
tony's review
3.0
A companion piece to [b:The Brighter Buccaneer|1988634|The Brighter Buccaneer|Leslie Charteris|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1329037995s/1988634.jpg|1992227], containing the remainder of the twenty-five short stories Charteris wrote for Empire News in the early 1930s, plus a few extras.
Unfortunately Buccaneer seems to have gotten the best of that bunch, with this collection being more on the 'miss' side. The stories here aren't particularly bad: they're just neither as well plotted, nor as well written as normal. Presumably this was simply a result of him having to churn out so many stories in so short a time period, as by far the best stories here are two standalone shorts that were written specially for the book version (“The Mixture as Before”, and “The Art Photographer”) and a pre-Saint story rewritten to replace the original characters with Templar and Teal (“The Man Who Liked Toys”).
Unfortunately Buccaneer seems to have gotten the best of that bunch, with this collection being more on the 'miss' side. The stories here aren't particularly bad: they're just neither as well plotted, nor as well written as normal. Presumably this was simply a result of him having to churn out so many stories in so short a time period, as by far the best stories here are two standalone shorts that were written specially for the book version (“The Mixture as Before”, and “The Art Photographer”) and a pre-Saint story rewritten to replace the original characters with Templar and Teal (“The Man Who Liked Toys”).
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