The Murder Frame - Modesty Blaise

Yet another superb repent of the modisty Blaise comic strip. The stories are great as usual

When I was a little girl, my attention was caught by the cover of a book kicking around the house with a "bullet hole" design cut through the sleeve next to the 1/- 6d printed price. That was the start of my love-affair with Ian Fleming's wonderful writing and his all-action hero, James Bond. I have read and re-read all the James Bond novels, but of course you can't keep on (it's almost the same as re-watching your favourite films - all very well, but if it comes to the point when you are lip-synching the dialogue with the actors, it's time to move on).I suppose I was hoping for a kind of "female James Bond" in Modesty Blaise - and indeed, the character and the concept aren't far wrong. It's just Peter O'Donnell's WRITING! Let's put it this way ... he's no Fleming. He gets lost in the minutae of flabby descriptions. Things that don't add anything to the plot: for example how a gun is held on with a double-something'ed gusset, attached to a hook dangling from a knotted do-dah, held on by a spigot attached to a back-brace, concealed by a piece of tape, strapped to the inner thigh ... zzzzzzzzz (will to live lost). You get the picture. By the time you've waded through some of those passages, you've almost lost the thread of the action and he's almost lost your interest. I put the book down several times and had to force myself to pick it up. I also found the ersatz Cockney of Modesty's sidekick, Willie, who is so "Gor' blimey guvn'or" that he's frankly a caricature really annoying. He's a music hall act - and it renders him unbelievable. The sex scenes are also decidedly un-sexy, but I didn't buy the book for that. I had hoped for a great story with a compelling "drive" to it - an un-put-downable read - just like Fleming's. It wasn't all bad - the story itself was OK - but O'Donnell's editor could have done him a few favours by, well, editing it. For anyone who has never read Fleming, this might be an entertaining read. For those of you who have - well, you probably needn't bother. To misquote Groucho Marx "I've read a superb action-adventure thriller - but this wasn't it".

This is from 1965, and is the first of the Modesty Blaise text novels. We take for granted female action heroes these days. Kill Bill, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider etc , but Modesty was the first.We get hints of her origins here, from the ruins of World War Two, a ragged girl orphan, escaping from displaced person's camps in the middle east, becoming an animal hearder in the desert, getting an education from an elderly refugee savant, drifting into crime, excelling in crime and becoming a boss in her teens. After making her fortune, she moves to London with Willie Garvin, the Watson to her Holmes, and retires aged 26, beautiful young sophisticated and an expert in weapons and combat.After working for British intelligence, she and Willie become adventurers, spies, and thieves for another 12 novels and 38 years of newspaper strip cartoons. Glancing through some of these strips and lurid book covers, one would be forgiven for dismissing Modesty Blaise's adventures as archaic and sexist soft porn. Not so. What the reader will find is intelligently written, intricately plotted very stylish crime thrillers. They are very human at their core, humorous, touching and generally much better written than one would expect.This adventue, the first Modesty text story, introduces the characters and has Modesty and Willie attempting to foil a diamond robbery. We have memorable villains, sparkling and quotable dialogue, and very well done violence. Far from being some male writer's unrealistic fantasy woman, O'Donnell's Modesty is a thoughtful piece of work, complex, privately vulnerable, totally independant and very clever.He is a writer who simply does female characters and dialogue unquestionably well. Willie Garvin is a great creation too, his and Modesty's near psychic teamwork is one of this books main draws.Obviously Fleming's influence is there, the globetrotting, the affluence, the luxury product placement, the spy gadgets and hardware descriptions, the physical nuances of the villains and the sex. It is surprising that Modesty Blaise is not as well known as Bond perhaps because no decent movie has been made. The dialogue and violence do remind me of Tarrantino, and this book does feature in Pulp Fiction. Perhaps we may see some decent movie version at some point. But it wont be as good as these books.

yet another volume (no. 28 ) of this superb series. I've been collecting them for the past 7 years or so; so had to play catch-up obtaining the early issues. now, to my great delight and despite some odd pauses in the publishing schedule, it looks like the entire run will be completed in the final two volumes. Thank you titan publishing. all volumes contain solid well crafted and enjoyable stories. Of the four stories in this volume I particularily liked "tribute of pharaohs" Set in Egypt it gives us a couple of glimpses of both Modesty's and Willie's pasts which are skilfully woven into the main story.So nice when we see the gentler more vulnerable side of our two heroes.. Settings for the other three stories are Rural England, South America and Thailand; all cracking tales in their own rights. That O'Donnell was able to maintain such high standards on this strip over almost 40 years is remarkable. The art by Romero is up to his usual high standard fleshing out the plots with his superb anatomical design and range of facial expressions. my only criticism, (which another reviewer has also picked up on), is that the introductions to each story by a reviewer new to this series,( Rebecca Chance), give away rather too much of the plot. I advise you to read these after enjoying the story.