The Happy Highwayman: Some Further Adventures of the Saint

The Saint #21

by Leslie Charteris

Extortion, larceny and unscrupulous heirs keep The Saint busy from Broadway to Hollywood - with ingenues and starlets for every occasion.

A collection of short stories featuring the Robin Hood of modern crime, Simon Templar a.k.a. The Saint.

Thus The Saint once again charms his way through these exciting adventures:
Stories in this collection:

The man who was lucky
The smart detective
The well-meaning mayor
The wicked cousin
The benevolent burglary
The star producers
The charitable countess
The mugs' game
The man who liked ants

The stories are set in America, and The Saint's police foil is Inspector Fernack. The stories were re-written for the Hodder and Stoughton 1939 UK edition to set them in England with Chief Inspector Teal.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Adventure, Ebooks, Crime, Detective

273 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, Leslie Charteris was a half-Chinese, half English author of primarily mystery fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint."

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

These nine stories featuring Simon Templar (The Saint) show a wonderful lightness of touch that Leslie Charteris does so well.
There are plenty of twists & turns as well as good dialogue & humour throughout. The Saint stories have kept me smiling for over 40 years & it's always a joy to reread them.

[Andrew Caldwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book!

Completely sublime! Nine (some slightly linked) short stories in which the Saint grafts the grafters, tricks the tricksters and rights some extremely serious wrongs. Done with beauty and style he completely evades poor Claude Eustace Teal and always gets the girl!

I was reading a very early edition and all the stories were set in a charming Great Britain. This is Leslie Charteris' final Saint book to be set completely in the UK for many years. Like his creator The Saint is about to make his life in the States - like his creator he will return home but not for a very long time. Some laters editions have been Americanised in some or most of the stories.

Each of the stories is about righting a wrong that the Saint stumbles on. The Saint's knack of finding trouble is nearly always based on some astonishingly improbable coincidence or random meeting of someone has been wronged, cheated swindled or abused. Then this tall, tanned devil may care young man swings into action. The final story breaks the rhythm of the previous stories somewhat and is a horror/sci-fi. All I need say is if you're fan of Fallout 3 the 'The Man Who Liked Ants' may surprise you.

I think this is one of the finest collections of short stories of all time and a great place to start in reading the Saint.

[Federico Kereki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories -- and, in my opinion, the best way to enjoy The Saint.

[Christopher M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last Saint book before he moves to America and ditches nemesis cum sidekick Mr Teal is a reminder of everything that made the series great. In a collection of short stories Simon uses forgery, disguises, marked cards and newspaper announcements to outwit and outfox various wrongdoers, always keeping back a final twist of the knife in case you think you're a step ahead of him. The final story in which a mad scientist breeds giant killer ants is a bit rum, but this is otherwise an easy, breezy and thoroughly entertaining read.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although listed as twenty-first in the series, the stories in this collection date from significantly earlier, and were a perfect reminder of why I much prefer the Saint of that era. Here we have Templar at his best — pre-Hoppy, and even sans-Patricia — when the artistry of the adventure was much more pronounced, but still fell mostly on the correct side of the outlandish / preposterous divide.

The final story, “The Man Who Liked Ants” can safely be skipped (it's so out of character that it's often thought to have been ghost-written; either way it has all the characteristics of having been written as a non-Saint story with Templar grafted on later, similar to those in Alias the Saint), and “The Mug's Game” rather oddly gets the winning order of poker hands wrong (four aces should not beat a straight flush). But even with these flaws this is definitely my favourite so far.

[Bear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent story: Charteris used the word "Parvenus" in one of the stories in this book. I recognized the word, but couldn't recall the meaning looked it up in my dictionary and *dun dun * lo and behold the very sentence containing the word "parvenus" was the word used in the dictionary as an example of the use of the word in a sentence!! It was SUPER cool!

[John Peel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Saint stories are always fun, and these are no exception. Leslie Charteris had a delightful, irreverent style and a fertile imagination for larceny. Combine the two for an enjoyable read. The final story ("The Man Who Liked Ants") is quite chilling.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1933, 'The Happy Highwayman' is a collection of 9 linked very short stories featuring the Saint. The stories are well written in a light-hearted style, even though there is sometimes a cruel edge. Enjoyable.

[Paul Magnussen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nine short stories, the final collection in which the Saint is still clearly based in London*.

Unlike some readers, I've always preferred the full-length Saint adventures and the “novellas”. This set is up to the standard of previous pre-war short stories, though, my favourite being The Wicked Cousin.

And in the creepy final tale, we meet again Ivor Nordsten, who figured so prominently in The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal.

*When I wrote this, I didn’t realise that some US editions at least have been americanised, with Inspector Fernack replacing Claud Eustace Teal, the £800 lost by Rosalind Hale becoming $4,000, and so forth.

Thanks to Pat Cahan for pointing this out.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is a cut above the usual Saint fare. In fact, it frequently seems that Charteris' Simon Templar short stories excel above the quality of the usual novellas or even the novels. The novellas are the most guilty of reaching for filler material. That's something the sleaked down short stories avoid, as these tales trim the motivations, numbers of characters, and even The Saint's sidekicks down to the bare minimum. Neither Hoppy or Patricia Holm appears in this collection. At any rate it makes for quality light entertainment reading. Too, several, maybe as many as half a dozen of these stories made it into the TV series with Roger Moore. And they are among that series' best works. Without researching it, I'd say that most are in the second series/season, except for "The Man Who Liked Ants." I remember that one as being one of the later color seasons.

[Richard Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably one of the weaker anthologies but a cracking read nonetheless.

[Roderick Ellem · Rating 5 out of 5]

9 separate stories. Like Conan Doyle, Charteris is a master of the compact micro story. Well written and enjoyable.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in February 2001.

In the yellow jacketed editions of the Saint stories, the full series to date of publication is listed, in what seems to be chronological order. However, The Happy Highwayman is not in its correct place. Instead of following the early Second World War stories, it is in fact from six years earlier and is one of the first collections of short stories.

The nine tales in The Happy Highwayman are typical of Charteris' writing in the mid thirties, a time when he was immensely prolific. Most of them are not especially memorable, and could stand as templates for Saint stories - in particular The Mug's Game, about card playing swindles. Two of the stories are more unusual, and have been anthologised in omnibuses of Saint stories so must have been considered among the best. The Star Producers is an amusing story of a swindle involving acting lessons which are used to persuade the mark to help finance a non-existent stage production, along similar lines to the film The Producers. The other story, The Wicked Cousin, has a politically incorrect depiction of a disabled man (to make an anachronistic judgement), but his inability to speak intelligibly is important in the plot.

[Kevinjwoods · Rating 4 out of 5]

From that period when Simon Templat travelled around as a world famous adventurer and crimefighter, most of these tales start with a beautiful woman bumping into him, recognising his name and asking him for help, in a few stories his exploits make the newspapers and are highly publicised as part of the plot, acting as a smiling debonair judge jury, and sometimes executioner, he has fun spending his days collecting boodle from those who never deserved it and teasing Chief Inspector Teal with his crimes, the sort of book perfect for lazy summer afternoons with iced tea and sunglasses, watching the people go by, and pretending tat every woman is a damsel in distress waiting for a hero to defend them, and every criminal is just hoping never to catch the attention of this most elegant of anti-heroes.

[Chriss · Rating 4 out of 5]

These short stories are exciting and witty; the Saint at his most dry and charming.

The only slight distraction is The Man Who Liked Ants which is in a sci-fi/horror vein and not like any of the other Saint stories at all. It's almost as if Charteris wrote a horror story but had to toss Simon Templar in in order to get it published.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

certainly this is amongst the better saint anthologies I have read as the tales themselves though short have a decent amount of substance to them and mainly have an interesting twist to them making them not overtly predictable...given the amount of stories the saint tales can be hit and miss these however are in the hit camp..

[Steven Heywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very readable collection of short stories. The plots are very thin in a few cases but the writing always takes you to the end.

[Steven Heywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag of early "respectable" Saint stories, a good rainy day read.