My Weekly Book

2008 reading challenge: book one.

A great way to start 2008: having this short story collection read out loud in front of the fire. We’re busy reading our way through the entire Modesty Blaise pantheon (OK, the novels plus those strips that are more accessibly reprinted) and Pieces of Modesty is a first.

It’s a collection technically bridging the period between the major adventures of The Impossible Virgin and The Silver Mistress but the stories were, in many cases, written earlier and then not published. Many of them were, apparently, even illustrated. And, as the Wikipedia article on this collection points out, some elements are re-used in the newspaper strips.

The longer books, and some of the strip runs, are dependent on convoluted and highly-intricate plotting, often with some time taken at the beginning to establish the possession of some unlikely new skill like hang-gliding, quarterstaff-fighting or fencing. Therefore it’s interesting to see what can be done when the wherewithal for setting up these intricate stories is stripped away. Our heroes are reduced to single engagements, or dastardly deeds that don’t require them to leave the country, in order to compensate.

Certainly I think the characters and storylines do adapt well to this format, which is the very least you would expect from one of the earliest multimedia creations. It’s good to see variety at the expense of detail, actually, and this is a possible starting point for newcomers to the series - although I’m not sure whether insufficient character background would hamper enjoyment or ruin the stories’ credibility.

Here’s what you get:

• A Better Day to Die - this opening tale in the anthology is the most intense and disturbing of the collection, with more than one echo of Sabre Tooth. Modesty and Willie dash to South America to pay their last respects to a dying colleague from the Network days. but, thanks to an inept mechanic and a militantly pacifist missionary, they get separated and must individually work out how to deal with the ambush by mercenaries that besets them.
• The Giggle-Wrecker explains how our heroes have patiently constructed an identity for themselves behind the Iron Curtain, in times when travel to much of eastern Europe was utterly out of the question. And we find the use they find for that identity to when Sir Gerald Tarrant calls on them to help with a particularly tricky extraction operation on which his own reputation depends.
• I Had a Date with Lady Janet introduces a semi-regular character of whom we see quite a bit more. Despite having plenty enough problems in her own life, this otherwise remarkably sensible and level-headed daughter of a belted earl embarks on a kind-of stable relationship with Willie Garvin, and brings herself no end of trouble as a result. Of which the events in this story are merely the start. Notable for being narrated first-hand by Willie, which means those apostrophes representing glottal stops get a tremendous workout. Also fascinating for what he says - and what he doesn’t say - about the caper in hand.
• A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck re-introduces Modesty and Willie to Stephen Collier and his new wife Dinah (neé Pilgrim). Ostensibly the four of them are enjoying the high life at Cap d’Antibes. But, below the surface, things are not as happy as they look. This story narrates Modesty’s ingenious solution to the Colliers’ problems - and her way of persuading them to accept her help without seeming to offer it.
• Salamander Four - Modesty’s got a thing for artistic gentlemen lovers, with at least three cropping up at different points in the series. Here she’s trying to undo a creative block in a sculptor when some ghosts from her past come to call. And surely it cannot be accidental that, when help arrives to clear up the resulting mess, it introduces itself with the phrase: “Garvin. Willie Garvin.” Can it?
• The Soo Girl Charity is a classically-structured sting-in-the-tale short story and shows as well as anything in the sum or the parts of this anthology how at home O’Donnell is with the genre. A businessman who antagonises Modesty after she’s been persuaded to take on a charity flag-selling assignment turns out to have a dark secret. Or perhaps more than one? A great conclusion to the volume.