Black cloth binding with red title plate on the spine and front board.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available

• Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list 

(Had this copy still retained its dust jacket a price exceeding £400 could be expected)

For conditions, please view our photographs. A very rare FIRST EDITION published by The Crime Club Inc. Garden City, New York

The first book featuring the Saint, Meet the Tiger! by Leslie Charteris, was published in 1928. The Saint vs. Scotland Yard, published in 1932, is the eighth book published in the series. The Saint, aka Simon Templar, is well known. This book consists of three novellas, is a perfect re-introduction to The Saint. The book was originally titled The Holy Terror, and that is exactly what the Saint is. The stories are lighthearted, sprinkled with songs written by the Saint. He has a female side-kick and lover in this book, Patricia Hall, who fully participates in the shenanigans. And that is how one would describe the Saint’s adventures in this book. He doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously. Throughout the novellas in this book, the Saint is feuding with Claude Augustus Teal, Chief Inspector of the C.I.D. In these three stories, the Saint finds himself embroiled in further plots and facing new enemies. The Inland Revenue sees him up against the most unyielding opponent ever – the taxman. In The Million Pound Scandal, a good deed leads Simon to uncover a plot to undermine the Italian economy, and in The Melancholy Journey of Mr Teal the Saint’s retirement plans are scuppered when a couple of murderous diamond smugglers object to his scheme of taking their loot for his pension.

Leslie CharterisL (born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin; 12 May 1907 – 15 April 1993), was a British-Chinese author of adventure fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of his hero Simon Templar, alias “The Saint”. Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, in Singapore. His mother, Lydia Florence Bowyer, was English. His father, Dr S. C. Yin (Yin Suat Chuan, 1877–1958), was a Chinese physician who claimed to be able to trace his lineage back to the emperors of the Shang dynasty. He is the elder brother of the Anglican clergyman Roy Henry Bowyer-Yin. Leslie became interested in writing at an early age. At one point, he created his own magazine with articles, short stories, poems, editorials, serials, and even a comic strip. He attended Saint Andrew’s School, Singapore, and after moving to England, Rossall School in Fleetwood, Lancashire. His formal education continued at King’s College, Cambridge, where he read law. However, he dropped out in his first year to focus on developing his burgeoning literary career.

In 1926, Leslie legally changed his surname to “Charteris”. In the BBC Radio 4 documentary Leslie Charteris – A Saintly Centennial, his daughter stated that he had selected the name from a telephone directory. This information is contradicted by other sources, however. William Ruehlmann (author of Saint with a Gun: The Unlawful American Private Eye, in an introduction to the 1988 edition of The Saint in New York, “He acquired…, in 1928, the legal name of Charteris, after the roguish Col. Francis, gambler, duellist and founder of the Hellfire Club – however this confuses the rake Col. Francis Charteris with Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer, also a rake and founder of the Hellfire Club.

Charteris wrote his first book during his first year at King’s College, Cambridge. Once it was accepted, he left the university and embarked on a new career, motivated by a desire to be unconventional and to become financially well off by doing what he liked to do. He continued to write British thriller stories while working at various jobs, from shipping out on a freighter to working as a barman in a country inn. He prospected for gold, dived for pearls, worked in a tin mine and on a rubber plantation, toured Britain with a carnival, and drove a bus.