The Saint: A Complete History in Print, Radio, Film and Television of Leslie Charteris' Robin Hood of Modern Crime, Simon Templar, 1928-1992

Leslie Charteris, the creaator of the Saint, was a genius, and this book does well by him by describint Simon Templar in aevery media including comic books with every actor including Roger Moore. The book is arranged chronologicvaly and is the definitive book about the saint for all his lucky fans. I can not praise this book too highly, and now that it's been published, I don't see any need for more books about the saint unless they start wrigingbooks about "The Son of the Saint," but I doubt if any living writer today can pull that off for the same period of time that Charteris did.

The Saint was a ts and novel caracter from england. this covered all the tv and film versions

Thorough and clearly written...

I was assuming that there would be some actual stories included. Perhaps I should have read the description better?

As other reviewers have said, this is a remarkable work. Burl Barer has covered a tremendous amount of ground organizing and sifting all the various appearances of the Robin Hood of Modern Crime "in print, radio, film, and television" between the publication of  The Saint Meets the Tiger  in 1928 and this book's own publication in 1993. Merely sorting out all the different titles under which creator Leslie Charteris' Saint novels were published would be achievement enough, but Barer also gives us a chronology of all printed Saint stories, cast and story synopses of Saintly radio and television dramas, and even -- thorough to the point of ridiculousness -- verbatim production company press releases for six made-for-TV Saint movies in the late 1980s.But this book is far more than bibliography, impressive thought the bibliography is. What I found far more interesting was Barer's portrait of Charteris himself, and what struck me as his somewhat ambiguous relationship with his creation Simon Templar. On the one hand, he was a spirited defender of Templar's biography, personality, and distinguishing characteristics, keeping a close eye on the way the Saint was portrayed in all his various media incarnations over many decades. As a writer myself, I particularly enjoyed reading his comments to various scriptwriters about the poor job they were doing on plot or characterization.At the same time, however, Charteris was more than willing to let those other writers do the heavy-lifting of producing new Saint stories for his approval and to be published under his name. If a story, movie, or radio drama ended up being, frankly, not very good then, as Charteris said in reference to those 1989 TV movies, "The old joke about crying all the way to the bank is my only consolation" (p. 230).There are some things this book is not, and one of them is a character study of the Saint. Although Templar's biography comes through in these pages, Barer does not devote to the novels the same attention he does to the radio plays or movies, which I regret. But that may be a reflection of my own tendency to think of the Saint primarily as a literary character who was then translated, often not very well, to other media. Barer takes a more holistic view, I think, in which the Saint as portrayed by Roger Moore, the extravagantly betrousered Ian Ogilvy, or the "Thomas Magnum by way of Matt Houston" Andrew Clarke (p. 222) is as definitive a part of the Saintly canon as are the novels.I don't know if I would call this book "essential reading for the Saint fan," simply because it is possible to enjoy the stories without needing to know the information contained here. But for readers interested not only in the stories but in all the Saint's many manifestations and interpretations -- and most valuable, I would think -- a fascinating look at the author behind it all, then Burl Barer's book has stood the test of 15 years and is worth keeping handy today.

This book is indeed a good buy if you want to learn more about the character of The Saint and his creator Leslie Charteris. Most of the other reviewers already touched on the positive aspects of the book, but beware: It is not perfect!The author had extensive access to Charteris' archives and at times comes across too much like the voice of The Saint's creator and takes his side too much. On the one hand, the Roger Moore TV series e.g. is not that bad; on the other hand - and quite frankly - the original Saint novels aren't always that good! A little bit of critical distance would have served the author much better.Also, the book has an amazing 419 pages, though only 243 are proper text about the character in all its incarnations. The remaining 176 are appendices that primarily deal with extensive plot summaries of TV and radio shows. I am not a great fan of books that rely too heavily on synopsis to fill their pages.Mind you, overall this *is* a book that can be recommended to anyone interested in this pulp hero, but please beware of the caveats.

The book is a thorough review of Simon Templar's complicated history on film and television. I do wish more attention had been paid to his origins and development in print, though. He is, and always will be, Leslie Charteris' idealized alter ego.

Burl Barer really captures everything about the Saint in this book. It is a huge source of information, and everytime I read it I find out something new!

I had to buy this book and it lived up to all expectations. I'm sure there's more that could have been written - but of course any devoted fan will say that because we fans can always think of more that could be said or want to write extra stuff ourselves to add in! There are some heroes you can write about indefinitely and this is one.It's not just articles about the Saint, there is the catalogue of the media too. Unputdownable.

When writing about a phenomenon like the Saint saga, which shows every sign of continuing indefinitely, it must be difficult to know when to stop. This book mentions "the forthcoming film" frequently, but was published before it was made; frustrating, because I would have loved to have read the author's reaction to this thing which failed to grasp any aspect of the Saint's personality or motivation whatsoever. You do learn from the book that the Saint has been adapted contrary to his creator's intentions many times before.It's not all bad, though, and this book will be indispensible to any Saint fan, as it seems to cover just about everything (either I'm not a big enough fan to have spotted any omissions, or there were none). It's just a pity the 1997 film didn't make it - it's also a pity that it didn't live up to the high expectations expressed in this book. Personally, I would have preferred the film not to be mentioned at all.All right, I promise to stop going on about the darn film. I'll just finish by mentioning that the episode synopses at the back of the book (almost half of it, in fact) took up too much space for someone like me who doesn't have the complete collection and doesn't need an index; paradoxically, they were also too short to make entertaining reading in the absence of such a collection.But I still enjoyed the book, honest. :)

Ein sehr gelungener Einblick in die TV Serie THE SAINT, mit Making of... aus den Jahren 1962-1969.Gelungen geschrieben und doch sehr nah an der Produktion - für jemanden den diese oder britische TV-Unterhaltung im Allgemeinen interessieren ein muss!