Modesty Blaise & Other Heroines

[Texas Star]

In my thread about Suzanne Arruda's safari-going heroine www.suzannearruda.com Onomea said that he'll check her site, but is dubious about most heroines entertaining him. So to speak...

Is anyone here a Modesty Blaise fan? I loved those books, and the comics about her, although the several movies and a TV show were awful.

Do you have any other mystery or thriller heroines? TV heroines? I sort of liked Sheena, Queen of the Jungle in both of the TV series and in comics. My favorite screen heroines were Marguerite, Veronica, and Finn on the syndicated series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. (This has NOTHING in common with the Jurassic Park Lost World.)

Here are the three Lost World heroines. Marguerite Krux (say, Crew) is the brunette. Veronica has the jungle girl outfits, and Finn is the one with the crossbow, in black shorts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAX6HSQuNAI&feature=related There are MANY Lost World videos, but this is one of two (that I know of) dedicated to just the Treehouse women.

I usually prefer male protagonists, but the ladies are a nice alternative.

Anyone?

T-Star

 

[digi-shots]

I enjoy reading in general, either historical or fiction. Anytime I find a "series" that I enjoy, I usually starting reading and don't stop til I read them all.

Have you tried the Elizabeth Peters series...? They're light reading with another "female heroine" Takes place in Egypt during the last 1890's and goes into the 1920's or so. One of her favorite sidearms was the original S&W Ladysmith. When I first started reading the series, I had never heard of one, and subsequentially have added it to my "list" of S&W's to get. Like I mentioned, they are light reading mysteries with a good deal of Egyptian archeaology facts.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache...another+shirt+ruined&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The lastest series I'm reading is the J.D. Robb "In Death Series" (aka Nora Roberts). Another "female heroine", Lt. Eve Dallas of the NYPD of the year 2050.... following the "Urban Wars"! You might need to read 2 or 3 before getting totally hooked on them.

Other favorite author is Vince Flynn.

 

[Jack Flash]

Mrs. Peel ... Mrs. Emma Peel. Those outfits with the cut-outs on the sides were... uh, invigorating for a certain sixteen year old viewer.

Also loved Modesty Blaise.

 

[Texas Star]

Some of Modesty's outfits much resembled those worn by Dame Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel.

Check out the outfits in the Lost World video linked in my opening post.

T-Star

 

[Texas Star]

Modesty links:

Modesty Blaise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://modestyblaiseltd.com/ Author Peter O'Donnell discusses his work. Many scenes of the comics if you work the right buttons, at the top of the page.

http://modestyblaisenews.blogspot.com/

 

[walkinghorse]

Nancy Drew

 

[Alpo]

I used to read Modesty, when I was in high school. What was her guy's name? Willie? Carried two modified bowies with brass on the spines, so if he was in a knife fight and blocked with his, instead of the other knife sliding down his blade and cutting him the other knife's edge would catch in that soft brass. Don't know if that would really work, but I liked the idea. I remember, one book, her complaining that she wanted to wear a shoulder rig, but the boobs got in the way.

 

[Jack Flash]

... What was her guy's name? Willie?

Yeah, it was Willie. I always thought he was pretty lucky to work with her.

Anyone remember the story on how she earned the name "Modesty"?

 

[Texas Star]

I think she chose the name because she didn't know her own, and wanted to become a British subject. Thought the name seemed nice.

Willie Garvin had both a large Bowie knife, used in, "A Taste For Death", and smaller knives that he could conceal in sheaths inside a leather jacket. He threw those with great accuracy. They did have brass strips on the blade backs, although I've always doubted that theory of the brass catching an opponent's blade. It goes back to old time Bowie days.

One set of knives had Gerber Armorhide handles. The author did some good research.

Willie was a fine rifle shot, but not good with pistols. Modesty shot well with both, and used a kongo judo stick , as well as using her magnificent body well in unarmed combat, of which Willie was also a master. I think her manservant, Weng, was also very accomplished in unarmed combat. And Jack Fraser, the cynical intelligence deputy chief, had killed men with his hands.

Modesty also used a sword on one occasion, which told quite a bit about her fencing skills, which O'Donnell picked up by watching at a fencing studio for most of one day. He mentioned that in one of my links above.

In a Taste For Death, Garvin knifed a thug trying to kidnap a blind girl. Another thug found the body, saw the wound from his big Bowie, and said, "You'd not fix that (wound) with a styptic pencil!" I loved the droll British humor in those books...

T-Star

 

[Jack Flash]

This is from memory, from something I read 30+ years ago, so don't jump all over me if I get a few details wrong.

How she got the name "Modesty":
In the aftermath of WWII, in the lawless chaos of war-torn Eastern Europe, a girl had to fight tooth and nail just to stay alive. She had no surviving family, and could remember little or nothing of her past. She had to live by cunning and stealth, with no room for sentimentality or romance, and certainly no room for the social niceties our culture usually associates with the fair sex.

Somewhere along the line, she took up with an elderly professor who was fleeing one of Stalin's many purges. When they were just getting to know each other, he asked her name. She said "Call me whatever you like." She then proceded to strip naked and bathe in a nearby stream, in full view of this man she barely knew and anyone else who happened by.

Being of a ironic turn of mind, he christened her "Modesty".

IIRC, anyways...

 

[Texas Star]

The elderly professor part is right. I don't recall the other part. I'll try to find time to sort through my books and see if I can find that. It should be in the first book, circa 1965.

The professor may have been fleeing the aftermath of WW II, not Russians in particular. But the lowering Iron Curtain surely contributed.

When I saw Finn in the Third Season of The Lost World,and how Prof. Challenger rescued her and taught her to read, I was reminded of this frail profesor, who taught Modesty while she scrounged food for them. But Finn was 22 and deadly with her little crossbow, and Challenger was no sick old man. Far from it.

Modesty had a sharpened nail or some such that saved her from most attempted assaults. She told Willie later that even something small will be avoided by most predators, if it is fierce enough. (She was about 12 when she was with the old prof.)

Then-Sgt. O'Donnell met such a girl, trying to survive in the Middle East in the 1940's. His British intelligence unit fed her and maybe gave her some money and clothes. He always wondered what had become of her. She was his inspiration for Modesty in later years.


T-Star