MODESTY BLAISE

Written by Peter O’Donnell & Reviewed by The Green Vegetable

Suuuch an antiquated opening. Fraser and Tarrant are two Brit intelligence types. They debate how to recruit the retired Modesty Blaise. (Why are agents always retired? It’s book one!!) They go to her place at night, she plays with jewels as a hobby. They mention Willie Garvin and she goes from indifferent to engaged. The whole chapter was basically them just reading her dossier to her, as if she wouldn’t be aware. Zero show, all tell. The character Modesty may be iconic but the story and writing is already of concern.

Chapter two is supposed to be in Modesty’s POV, but somehow she sneaks up on a sentry and makes her timely move because she knew that he was thinking about a girl from a village they’d taken a week ago?!?! And then yuck the bad writing morphs into something worse. Modesty is at Willie’s prison. There’s a standoff with guards, so she took out her big old honkers to distract them. Really?? Then the description of the action is just so step by step and compositional. Zero tension, like reading the story distilled into an instruction manual. And how could the guards be so slow to react? Modesty and Willie escape and she says they must do a job for Tarrant as payback for him being freed.

Chapter three to its credit is a marginally better chapter. Modesty is at some fancy dinner. Tarrant is there, he tells her about some Sheik from between Syria & Iraq that UK is trying to keep happy for oil reasons. He’s having a crate of diamonds shipped via sea and Tarrant wants Modesty to go along to make sure nothing happens. Some guy named Ivor Grant is currently on the case, but he’s been MIA for four days.

Chapter four promptly reverts to more lame. This Ivor Grant is supervised by some Scot named McWhirter. While this debriefing comes from American Intelligence, it sure feels like the author goes overboard with the Scottish syntax here. Apparently the boss is Gabriel and sounds like he’s going over the numbers for the diamond smuggling. Ivor is escorted to some terrace aka rancor pit and some lady kills him. The lady is big and strong so the author notes she must be a hermaphrodite. If this book wasn’t so short, I would’ve abandoned it already.  Tarrant and Modesty argue about Willie and holy cringe. Tarrant sure sounds like he thinks Willie is no use to this Gabriel hunt because he’s black and dumb but she keeps making it seem like we’d all be surprised at how Willie can not only take instructions well, but believe it or not he’s able to think all by himself too. Truly insulting writing and testament to the clown college of bigots entrusted with creating this story.

Chapter six is at least a digestible chapter.  Finally. Modesty and Tarrant visit the Sheikh to try to hammer out this diamond smuggling scheme. Turns out her and Shiekh are old friends. Plus, he insists on Willie Garvin’s involvement. Then Modesty and Tarrant visit Willie to recruit him, except now Willie is like Q and just gives them all kinds of gadgets in lieu of coming along. Then they are to meet Paul Hagen, a friendly contact in Tarrant’s network in order to begin their diamond thing for Gabriel.

Chapter seven aka more straight up dog shit. Modesty sneaks into Paul Hagan’s place before they begin because wait for it…she already knows him! Get it? Just like a few pages ago with the other guy! How original and engaging! They flirt nostalgically and then a bad guy named Didi rings the buzzer and subdues Paul. Then he tells Modesty to tie herself up or Paul gets it. Modesty debates FAINTING as a distraction. Apparently this is something she taught herself to do. Holy hell what a hatable book. Meanwhile, Willie is with Nicole, some old girlfriend that would know where Pacco is who works for Gabriel. Don’t care.  Modesty tips Willie that something is up over the phone so he picks up Tarrant and they take down Didi with a knife. They want a different safe house.

Pacco figured out Nicole was planning to double cross him because she asked a question?, so Gabriel orders her killed. Somehow Modesty and Willy know exactly where to wait in the darkness where they could witness Nicole running for her life. But they’re too late, she dies in Modesty’s arms. But also, the killer was attacked, but stayed alive long enough to mention Pacco before Willie killed her.  What on earth does Tarantino like about these books? It should be noted that POV is an utter mess in this book. The number of times a character’s inner monologue somehow reveals what another character is thinking or feeling in that moment would be embarrassing for a college freshman’s term paper.

Willie and Paul Hagan (Hagen? guess we’ll never know unless you read it yourself) kill Pacco using the exploding tie introduced earlier.  The gang hangs out at the new villa and they debate the best weapons for the job or whatever. Page after page of cliches, though one could argue this story was the basis for many of the cliches found in espionage today.  That argument will not be made here.

Ok Chapter twelve is where any 21st century self-respecting reader should legitimately quit. But this is so outrageous, the obligation is to forge ahead for more insanity. So, Hagan walks in on Modesty doing yoga and he thinks she’s dead. He has a total melt down. Willie says don’t worry, she’s just doing chick shit. Brace yourself…then he says, ‘did you know she’s been raped twice?’ Then Willy says, oh don’t worry it didn’t affect her. Because of yoga she knows how to faint on command. So, she knocked herself out midrape, and now she has no memory of either one. This is flat earth, babies come from belly buttons, cauliflower pizza crust tastes just as good levels of ignorance.  But wait, there’s more! Modesty can sense that Hagan is getting cold feet about the gig because he can’t handle a woman being in charge. So she bangs him and rufies him (in that order, which I found ironically amusing) so that she and Willie can leave to do the job themselves because Paul and Tarrant and Shiekh would just hold them back. They plan to meet Gabriel at Suez Canal though unsure where they got that intel. This book should come with rufies so readers can decide which fate they’d prefer.

Chapter thirteen is months later, there’s a stakeout in Cairo. Modesty has pretended to flip so Gabriel will voluntarily invite her on his diamond smuggling boat. Then Hagan shows. And Modesty, despite tricking him into sleeping with her and drugging him so that she could abandon him in a foreign country while she pursues untraceable diamonds, tells him she owes him nothing - not even an apology, because “I gave you all I gave to give.” Welp at least it’s not just the men that are written poorly. In chapter 14, some greenhorn broke his leg on Gabriel’s ship so now they need a last second replacement. Gabriel wants Willie? Like what in the holy plot armor is going on. Fairy tales make smaller jumps in logic.

Two chapters of boring ship talk. There’s multiple ships and they’re broadcasting all kinds of conflicting info. Also, Willie is now in handcuffs and “told himself to sleep for six hours” so when he wakes up after doing some welding he knows it’s been exactly six hours. There is literally a Seinfeld episode about the absurdity of this premise, and yet here we are.

Willie and Modesty escape by Modesty taking her shirt off in chapter seventeen.  Again. Seriously.  Then there’s fighting or whatever in eighteen.   Then more shooting and silliness in nineteen. They’re hiding in a monastery now?  And they shoved two boxes of diamonds overboard at some point. Willie got shot in the leg despite moving like the Flash for most of the book.

Chapter twenty triumphantly arrives and holy Hugh Hefner thank god it’s over. There’s a bit more shooting, but don’t worry because everyone important lives and all the henchmen die. Apparently, Modesty has a ritual to cry after every mission. Profound introspective writing there.  And then she rekindles with Hagan and they make plans for Cairo. And then the last sentence is about him grabbing her breast.

This book was despicable. The frattiest of frat brothers could write better women after nine boilermakers.  If you asked a roomful of horny illiterate men to give their fifteen best traits for what a female spy would be like and then just repeated the worst three or four answers over and over again in story form for around 200 pages, the result would be Modesty Blaise.

Never again Modesty. Never again.