Peter O’Donnell
Modesty Blaise
1965 (1984 reprint, Mysterious Press)
In the 80s, there had to be newcomers to the long-running Modesty Blaise series who picked up the Mysterious Press reprints and were disappointed that the books were not the pornography promised by the outrageous new covers. I don’t think a publisher could put out cover art like this today, which is why I collect them. They’re true relics. I guess the editor just hired a model to stand in a black leather bikini (with holster) while the photographer shot detail images of every hill and valley on her body and then spread out the results over several volumes. Man, from the looks of it, these books must be just full of flesh and fluids, right?
Nope, they’re just regular old spy novels full of gunplay and globetrotting. There’s exactly one sex scene here and it’s short and “she used her splendid body to give joyously and without restraint, ranging from glad submission to urgent demand” is as steamy as the prose gets.
I’m not into spy novels. The “perfect” heroes in them tend to bore me. They all speak fifty-two languages and are proficient in every weapon known to man and always have an explosive device hidden in the heel of their shoe that gets them out of tight spots.
I like my heroes more flawed. As I get older, the whole power fantasy thing no longer works for me. I just don’t care.
But this is still fun summer junk reading.
What separates Modesty Blaise from the pack is simply that she’s a fiercely independent woman. Writer Peter O’Donnell saw a niche and he filled it. Modesty is a lady James Bond, but more edgy and dangerous. She’s perfectly unattainable to everyone and everything.
Her closest confidant is Willie Garvin, a Cockney-accented knife expert and inventor of clever little lethal weapons concealed in lipstick vials and neckties. He has lots of history with Modesty and he understands her. There’s no sexual tension between them, just lots of trust, love and professional respect. He has plenty of sexcapades, just not with Modesty. Their relationship confuses everybody, but the two of them get it.
The other agent she works with is Paul Hagen and this guy is much more of a sad sack. He’s in love with Modesty. She loves him, too. At least when they’re sleeping together. Once the bed springs stop squeaking and they’re agents on a mission again, she’s the boss and while he never acts out over that, he’s never comfortable with it.
Oh, and also Hagen is an artist. When he’s not shooting bad guys, he’s painting and in his studio sits an unfinished nude portrait of Modesty, drawn from personal knowledge and so detailed that when Willie Garvin sees it he recognizes the scar under her right butt cheek where he once had to dig out a bullet. We get the sense that Hagen will never finish that painting. There are lines on Modesty’s figure that he struggles to render with his brush, we’re told.
And, folks, that’s called symbolism.
(Meanwhile, by contrast, Willie Garvin has his own studio, where he makes useful weapons for Modesty.)
Not even the British government owns her. As a secret agent, she’s strictly freelance. Modesty is a former outlaw who lead a prosperous international crime syndicate when she was in her teens, but now she’s in her twenties and much wiser. She’s settled down on the right side of the law and on a pile of money earned in her wilder days. She never has to work again, but sometimes she can’t resist. Because she loves danger. She also seems to have a license to kill that shouldn’t go to waste.
The British government decides that she’s the only person in the country who can stop a gang of murderous diamond thieves lead by a fancy pants crime lord called Gabriel. And after a whole lot of shootings, stabbings, neck-snappings, grenade-throwings and groin-kicking, they turn out to be right.
A lot of old pulp novels, even very popular ones in their time, have gone out of print, but the Modesty Blaise books are frequently revived and, from this first one, at least, you can see why. It’s a book that, however trashy it is, holds up to modern readings. Readers today who might not care for the old boy’s club, cigar lounge, pat-your-cocktail-waitress-on-the-ass style of, say, a Richard S. Prather novel could enjoy this one.
Is this a feminist book? I don’t think so.
However, I also don’t care if it is or isn’t. I’m just here for the thrills and spills.
I haven’t delved deep into Peter O’Donnell’s life history, but if you ask me I think he just wanted to write about what was exciting to him. And it happened to be a beautiful woman kicking everybody’s ass.
Call it “the male gaze” or call it a depiction of a woman who takes charge of her sexual power, wields it like a martial arts move, and uses it to bring down the bad guys. She uses “the male gaze” (is there a band called The Male Gays? There should be) to her advantage.
Either way works for me as long as I’m having a good time. And I had a good time.