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From: ecl@ahuta.UUCP (ecl)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: MODESTY BLAISE
Message-ID: <205@ahuta.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Dec-84 11:53:53 EST
Article-I.D.: ahuta.205
Posted: Wed Dec 12 11:53:53 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Dec-84 02:32:18 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 55


                               MODESTY BLAISE
                      A book review by Mark R. Leeper

     A few weeks back I reviewed a film called AMERICAN DREAMER.  In it I
said that the fictional character that JoBeth Williams imagines herself to
be is based on Modesty Blaise.  At the time my only knowledge of Modesty
Blaise was derived from conversations with a friend who was fond of the
"Modesty Blaise" books by Peter O'Donnell.  In order to get some better
knowledge of the character and the books, I read the first book in the
series, titled, logically enough, MODESTY BLAISE.

     The series involves the adventures of a most remarkable woman.  Her
earliest memories were from a DP camp in the Middle East.  By age 26 she has
been married and divorced, has set up a criminal syndicate called The
Network, made herself independently wealthy, and retired.  Yet she remains a
well-oiled fighting machine, master of many martial arts.  Her best friend,
and through the series of books her sidekick, is Willie Garvin, a hood with
a cockney accent.  It is the relationship between Modesty and Willie that
creates the greatest curiosity of the series.  It seems that it is one of
mutual admiration and some sexual attraction, but in actions, anyway, it is
totally platonic and professional.  It is extremely rare in popular fiction
to have close relationships between men and women that are not romantic.  It
is this subtly frustrated sexual tension between the Willie and Modesty that
makes the relationship live for the reader.  There is no doubt for the
reader that Willie means much more to Modesty than any of her casual
paramours.

     The "Modesty Blaise" novels, in fact, are an adaptation from another
medium and the writing style reflects it.  The stories started as a comic
strip and in 1965, at the height of the James Bond craze, the cartoonist
started writing the stories as novels.  There are vestiges of the comic
strip origins in O'Donnell's writing.  Part of the comic strip's attraction
was in the the title character's sexual attraction.  O'Donnell always takes
pains to describe what Modesty's clothing which is often just enough to
cover the subject.  While the real plot of MODESTY BLAISE does not start
until the second half of the book, there is action throughout so that the
reader is never bored.  O'Donnell has a straightforward, clean writing style
that makes his prose very easy to read.

     In the first novel the British government calls Modesty out of
retirement asking a favor and paying her by giving her information that her
old friend Willie is in danger and how she can save him.  In return for the
information, they would like Modesty use her connections in the underground
to guarantee that a certain shipment of diamonds to an Arab sheik gets to
its destination.  The story makes for a crisp thriller with comic strip
style villains, but not more exaggerated than Ian Fleming would have
created, and certainly more believable than most that one would find in a
James Bond film.  The book makes for fun light reading and is  enjoyable
enough that I would want to read more in the series.  Rate it a +1 on the -4
to +4 scale.

					(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
					Mark R. Leeper
					...ihnp4!lznv!mrl