Modesty Blaise is one of the great fictional spy/crime thriller characters. Her nightmarish childhood left her psychologically damaged but she learnt to turn her psychological damage into assets that made her more dangerous and more formidable. She acquired the ability to shut down completely psychologically whenever she was in a really unpleasant situation and this now gives her an extraordinary resistance to pain and suffering.
Modesty became a very successfully criminal. She is now not so much reformed as retired. Like that other great fictional rogue, the Saint, she feels no remorse or guilt for her criminal past. She gave up crime because she was smart enough to quit while she was ahead. Like Simon Templar she has an amazing ability to find adventure. In fact adventure finds her. She sometimes does jobs for a British counter-intelligence agency but she is strictly a freelancer. Modesty is her own boss. If the agency wants her to do a job for them she does it in her own way on her own terms. Modesty takes orders from no-one.
She is also rather complex emotionally and sexually. Willie Garvin was her righthand man in her criminal days and he is still her righthand man. The emotional bond between them is intense but unconventional. They know they can never sleep together. Which is not to suggest that Modesty has a problem with sex. She has a healthy enthusiasm for it. She has no difficulty forming emotional attachments with men, but those attachments remain loose and temporary.
A Taste for Death begins when Willie, on holiday on a remote island, witnesses a murder. He witnesses it at long range and cannot prevent it. Two hoods are about to murder two girls but they kill only one of them. For some unknown reason they want the other girl alive and undamaged.
Willie rescues the surviving girl. She is a blind Canadian girl named Dinah. And the reason the hoods wanted her alive cannot be because they hope to hold her for ransom. She has no money and her family has no money. She also possesses no knowledge likely to prove useful to a criminal gang or a spy ring.
While this is happening an archaeologist is murdered in London. There is no obvious connection between these two events but of course a connection does eventually emerge. And the reason for Gabriel’s interest in Dinah slowly becomes clear. Dinah has a peculiar talent. A very useful talent.
Gabriel is not the principal villain on this story. That rôle is played by Simon Delicata, a giant of a man and a man far more dangerous and evil than Gabriel. He’s a wonderful creation.
Most of the action takes place in the desert, at the site of an archaeological dig. Modesty and Willie have a plan but it misfires and this time there seems likely to be no way they can escape with their lives. But Modesty and Willie never give up and Dinah’s strange talent comes to their aid.
There is action and excitement, there is a vast criminal conspiracy, there is suspense. The peculiar talents of Modesty and Willie are called for. While they both possess the kinds of abilities you expect, such as formidable combat skills, what really makes Modesty and Willie so dangerous is their extraordinary psychological self-training. Both Modesty and Willie will face fights to the death with the odds stacked against them but it is their mental toughness and flexibility that will give them a chance of survival. Modesty also has a frightening willingness to put herself in extreme danger quite willingly, and to endure tremendous punishment. It’s a price she is prepared to pay if it will give her a psychological edge.
A Taste for Death is top-notch action adventure fiction. Highly recommended.
I’ve reviewed the earlier Modesty Blaise novels, Modesty Blaise, Sabre-Tooth and I, Lucifer, which are all excellent. I’ve also reviewed several of the earlier volumes of the collected Modesty Blaise comics, The Gabriel Set-Up, The Black Pearl and The Hell-Makers which I also highly recommend.
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