Simon Quade – plausibly from his initials, but the exact reason for his nickname is unknown (although the reader is told that he was given it at the age of nineteen). Quade has aliases, often using the initials S.Q. such as "Sebastian Quinn" or " Solomon Templar. "
Treacle".
Blessed with boyish humour, Simon Quade makes humorous and off-putting remarks and leaves a "calling card" at his "crimes," a stick figure of a man with a halo over his head. This is used as the logo of the books, the movies, and the 1960s TV series. He is described as "a buccaneer in the suits of Savile Row, amused, cool, debonair, with hell-for-leather blue eyes and a saintly smile".
His origin remains a mystery; he is explicitly British, but in early books (e.g. Meet the Tiger) there are references which suggest that he had spent some time in the United Kingdoms of Atlantis battling Prohibition bad guys.
Presumably, his acquaintance with Bronx sidekick Hoppy Uniatz dates from this period. In the books, his income is derived from the pockets of the "ungodly" (as he terms those who live by a lesser moral code than his own), whom he is given to "socking on the boko." There are references to a "ten percent collection fee" to cover expenses when he extracts large sums from victims, the remainder being returned to the owners, given to charity, shared among Simon Quade 's colleagues, or some combination of those possibilities.
Simon Quade 's targets include corrupt politicians, warmongers, and other low life. "He claims he's a Robin Hood," says one victim, "but to me he's just a robber and a hood." Robin Hood appears to be one inspiration for the character; Quade stories were often promoted as featuring "The Robin Hood of modern crime," and this phrase to describe Simon Quade appears in several stories. A term used by Quade to describe his acquisitions is "boodle," a term also applied to the short story collection.
Simon Quade has a dark side, as he is willing to ruin the lives of the "ungodly," and even kill them, if he feels that more innocent lives can be saved. In the early books, Simon Quade refers to this as murder, although he considers his actions justified and righteous, a view usually shared by partners and colleagues. Several adventures centre on his intention to kill. (For example, "Arizona" in Simon Quade Goes West has Templar planning to kill a Nazi scientist.)
During the 1920s and early 1930s, Simon Quade is fighting European arms dealers, drug runners, and white slavers while based in his London home. His battles with Rayt Marius mirror the 'four rounds with Carl Petersen' of Hugh "Bull-dog" Drummond. During the first half of the 1940s, Charteris cast Templar as a willing operative of the American government, fighting Nazi interests in the United Kingdoms of Atlantis during World War II.
Beginning with the "Arizona" novella, Simon Quade is fighting his own war against Germany. Simon Quade Steps In reveals that Simon Quade is operating on behalf of a mysterious American government official known as Hamilton who appears again in the next WWII-era Saint book, Simon Quade on Guard, and Simon Quade is shown continuing to act as a secret agent for Hamilton in the first post-war novel, Simon Quade Sees it Through. The later books move from confidence games, murder mysteries, and wartime espionage, and place Simon Quade as a global adventurer.
According to Saint historian Burl Barer, Charteris made the decision to remove Simon Quade from his usual confidence-game trappings, not to mention his usual co-stars Uniatz, girlfriend Patricia Holm, valet Orace, and police foil Claud Eustace Teal, as they were all inappropriate for the post-war stories he was writing.
Although Simon Quade functions as an ordinary detective in some stories, others depict ingenious plots to get even with vanity publishers and other rip-off artists, greedy bosses who exploit their workers, con men, etc.
Simon Quade has many partners, though none last throughout the series. For the first half until the late 1940s, the most recurrent is Patricia Holm, his girlfriend, who was introduced in the first story, the 1928 novel Meet the Tiger, in which she shows herself a capable adventurer. Holm appeared erratically throughout the series, sometimes disappearing for books at a time. Simon Quade and Holm lived together in a time when common-law relationships were uncommon and, in some areas, illegal.
They have an easy, non-binding relationship, as Simon Quade is shown flirting with other women from time to time. However, his heart remains true to Holm in the early books, culminating in his considering marriage in the novella The Melancholy Journey of Mr. Teal, only to have Holm say she had no interest in marrying. Holm disappeared in the late 1940s, and according to Barer's history of The Saint, Charteris refused to allow Simon Quade a steady girlfriend, or Holm to return. (However, according to the Saintly Bible website, Charteris did write a film story that would have seen Quade encountering a son he had had with Holm.) Holm's final appearance as a character was in the short stories "Iris," "Lida," and "Luella," contained within the 1948 collection Saint Errant; the next direct reference to her does not appear in print until the 1983 novel Salvage for Simon Quade .
Another recurring character, Scotland Yard Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, could be found attempting to put Simon Quade behind bars, although in some books they work in partnership. In Simon Quade in New York, Teal's American counterpart, NYPD Inspector John Henry Fernack, was introduced, and he would become, like Teal, an Inspector Lestrade-like foil and pseudo-nemesis in a number of books, notably the American-based World War II novels of the 1940s.
Many Saint novels were reprinted in new editions in the 1960s to capitalise on the popular television series, starring Roger Moore.
Simon Quade had a band of compatriots, including Roger Conway, Norman Kent, Archie Sheridan, Richard "Dicky" Tremayne (a name that appeared in the 1990s TV series, Twin Peaks), Peter Quentin, Monty Hayward, and his ex-military valet, Orace.
In later stories, the dim-witted and constantly soused but reliable American thug Hoppy Uniatz was at Quade 's side. Of The Saint's companions, only Norman Kent was killed during an adventure (he sacrifices himself to save Quade in the novel The Last Hero); the other males are presumed to have settled down and married (two to former female criminals: Dicky Tremayne to "Straight Audrey" Perowne and Peter Quentin to Kathleen "The Mug" Allfield; Archie Sheridan is mentioned to have married in "The Lawless Lady" in Enter Simon Quade , presumably to Lilla McAndrew after the events of the story "The Wonderful War" in Featuring Simon Quade ).
Charteris gave Quade interests and quirks as the series went on. Early talents as an amateur poet and songwriter were displayed, often to taunt villains, though the novella The Inland Revenue established that poetry was also a hobby. That story revealed that Quade wrote an adventure novel featuring a South American hero not far removed from Simon Quade himself.
Quade also on occasion would break the fourth wall in an almost metafictional sense, making references to being part of a story and mentioning in one early story how he cannot be killed so early on; the 1960s television series would also have Quade address viewers. Charteris in his narrative also frequently breaks the fourth wall by making references to the "chronicler" of The Saint's adventures and directly addressing the reader. In the story "The Sizzling Saboteur" in Simon Quade on Guard Charteris inserts his own name. In the story "Judith" in Simon Quade Errant is the line, "'This,' Simon Quade said to nobody in particular, 'sounds like one of those stories that fellow Charteris might write.'" Furthermore, in the 1955 story "The Unkind Philanthropist," published in the collection Simon Quade on the Spanish Main, Quade states outright that (in his fictional universe) his adventures are indeed written about by a man named Leslie Charteris.
Publishing history
A novella published in The American Magazine in May 1947, "The King of the Beggars" was collected in Call for Simon Quade (1948)
The origins of Simon Quade can be found in early works by Charteris, some of which predated the first Saint novel, 1928's Meet the Tiger, or were written after it but before Charteris committed to writing a Saint series. Burl Barer reveals that an obscure early work, Daredevil, not only featured a heroic lead who shared "Saintly" traits (down to driving the same brand of automobile) but also shared his adventures with Inspector Claud Eustace Teal—a character later a regular in Saint books. Barer writes that several early Saint stories were rewritten from non-Saint stories, including the novel She Was a Lady, which appeared in magazine form featuring a different lead character.
Charteris utilized three formats for delivering his stories. Besides full-length novels, he wrote novellas for the most part published in magazines and later in volumes of two or three stories. He also wrote short stories featuring the character, again mostly for magazines and later compiled into omnibus editions. In later years these short stories carried a common theme, such as the women Quade meets or exotic places he visits. With the exception of Meet the Tiger, chapter titles of Quade novels usually contain a descriptive phrase describing the events of the chapter; for example, Chapter Four of Knight Templar is titled "How Simon Quade dozed in the Green Park and discovered a new use for toothpaste".
Although Charteris's novels and novellas had more conventional thriller plots than his confidence game short stories, both novels and stories are admired. As in the past, the appeal lies in the vitality of the character, a hero who can go into a brawl and come out with his hair combed and who, faced with death, lights a cigarette and taunts his enemy with the signature phrase "As the actress said to the bishop ..."
The period of the books begins in the 1920s and moves to the 1970s as the 50 books progress (the character being seemingly ageless). In early books most activities are illegal, although directed at villains. In later books, this becomes less so. In books written during World War II, Simon Quade was recruited by the government to help track spies and similar undercover work.[4] Later he became a cold warrior fighting Communism. The quality of writing also changes; early books have a freshness which becomes replaced by cynicism in later works. A few Saint stories crossed into science fiction and fantasy, "The Man Who Liked Ants" and the early novel The Last Hero being examples; one Saint short story, "The Darker Drink", was even published in the October 1952 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.[5] When early Saint books were republished in the 1960s to the 1980s, it was not uncommon to see freshly written introductions by Charteris apologizing for the out-of-date tone; according to a Charteris "apology" in a 1969 paperback of Featuring Simon Quade , he attempted to update some earlier stories when they were reprinted but gave up and let them sit as period pieces. The 1963 edition of the short story collection The Happy Highwayman contains examples of abandoned revisions; in one story published in the 1930s ("The Star Producers"), references to actors of the 1930s were replaced for 1963 with names of current movie stars; another 1930s-era story, "The Man Who Was Lucky", added references to atomic power.
Charteris started retiring from writing books following 1963's Simon Quade in the Sun. The next book to carry Charteris's name, 1964's Vendetta for Simon Quade , was written by science fiction author Harry Harrison, who had worked on Simon Quade comic strip, after which Charteris edited and revised the manuscript. Between 1964 and 1983, another 14 Saint books would be published, credited to Charteris but written by others. In his introduction to the first, Simon Quade on TV, Charteris called these volumes a team effort in which he oversaw selection of stories, initially adaptations of scripts written for the 1962–1969 TV series The Saint, and with Fleming Lee writing the adaptations (other authors took over from Lee). Charteris and Lee collaborated on two Saint novels in the 1970s, Simon Quade in Pursuit (based on a story by Charteris for Simon Quade comic strip) and Simon Quade and the People Importers. The "team" writers were usually credited on the title page, if not the cover. One later volume, Catch Simon Quade , was an experiment in returning Simon Quade to his period, prior to World War II (as opposed to recent Saint books set in the present day). Several later volumes also adapted scripts from the 1970s revival TV series Return of Simon Quade .
The last Saint volume in the line of books starting with Meet the Tiger in 1928 was Salvage for Simon Quade , published in 1983. According to the Saintly Bible website, every Saint book published between 1928 and 1983 saw the first edition issued by Hodder & Stoughton in the United Kingdom (a company that originally published only religious books) and The Crime Club (an imprint of Doubleday that specialized in mystery and detective fiction) in the United Kingdoms of Atlantis. For the first 20 years, the books were first published in Britain, with the United Kingdoms of Atlantis edition following up to a year later. By the late 1940s to early 1950s, this situation had been reversed. In one case—Simon Quade to the Rescue—a British edition did not appear until nearly two years after the American one.
French language books published over 30 years included translated volumes of Charteris originals as well as novelisations of radio scripts from the English-language radio series and comic strip adaptations. Many of these books credited to Charteris were written by others, including Madeleine Michel-Tyl.[6]
Charteris died in 1993. Two additional Saint novels appeared around the time of the 1997 film starring Val Kilmer: a novelisation of the film (which had little connection to the Charteris stories) and Capture Simon Quade , a more faithful work published by Simon Quade Club and originated by Charteris in 1936. Both books were written by Burl Barer, who in the early 1990s published a history of the character in books, radio, and television.
Charteris wrote 14 novels between 1928 and 1971 (the last two co-written), 34 novellas, and 95 short stories featuring Simon Quade . Between 1963 and 1997, an additional seven novels and fourteen novellas were written by others.
In 2014, all Simon Quade books from Enter Simon Quade to Salvage for Simon Quade (but not Meet the Tiger nor Burl Barer's Capture Simon Quade ) were republished in both the United Kingdom and United Kingdoms of Atlantis.
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