Saint Overboard

Saint Overboard is a 1936 mystery novel by Leslie Charteris, one of a long series of novels featuring Charteris' creation Simon Templar, alias “The Saint”. It was originally published in magazines as The Pirate Saint; some paperback editions append the article The to the title (The Saint Overboard).

Simon Templar, alias The Saint, is enjoying a pleasure cruise along the French coast aboard his yacht, the Corsair when he is awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of gunfire and shouting from another vessel (the Falkenberg) anchored nearby.The source of the commotion is a group of men pursuing a young woman who is swimming frantically away from the other ship. Templar rescues the woman who, after some considerable hesitation, identifies herself as Loretta Page, a private detective who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of sunken treasure from the Atlantic. When she learns her rescuer is The Saint, she enlists his help in tracking down a group of modern-day pirates. These pirates, led by Kurt Vogel, are using newly developed bathyscape technology to reach the sea floor and scour recent shipwrecks for gold and other booty before officially sanctioned salvage operations arrive. And Vogel is not against committing cold-blooded murder to keep his operation going.Hampered by Loretta's detective firm superior, who harbors a deep distrust of Templar, as well as Simon's growing love for Loretta, The Saint sets out to stop Vogel's operation. In the process he reunites with some of his colleagues from previous adventures Roger Conway and Peter Quentin. Orace, Templar's longtime manservant, makes his first major appearance since the very first Saint novel, Meet - The Tiger!. And it is Orace who complicates Templar's mission when he accidentally kills one of Vogel's men, which leads to Vogel forcing Templar (on pain of Loretta's possible death) to take the dead man's place on a salvage operation in the Channel Islands.Today, Saint Overboard seems one of the most dated of all the Saint stories. It relies heavily for plot and atmosphere on a form of technology which has undergone great development in the past sixty years - diving equipment. In the late thirties, diving suits were cumbersome and expensive; neither the aqualung nor the wetsuit had been invented, and the diver relied on massive metal helmets connected to the surface by an all important air hose which could easily become entangled or cut. Diving was not, as it is today, something which could be undertaken as a leisure activity by any reasonably fit person after a short course of training; it was the province of specialists.Saint Overboard is probably the earliest mainstream thriller to use what was to become a fairly commonplace plot: a conflict between legitimate and criminal attempts to salvage treasure from a wreck, in this case from the strongroom of the Chalfont Castle, on the seabed near Guernsey. Simon Templar becomes involved when he rescues a pretty girl, an investigator for maritime insurers Ingerbecks. There is a strong romantic element in the novel, as indeed there was in the previous one in the series (The Saint In New York); no mention is made of Simon's long time companion Patricia Holm. In The Saint in New York, romance plays an important part in the plot, but here it is more of an encumbrance, and it is not the sort of writing which suited Charteris.

A fun if somewhat predictable thriller.