Modesty Blaise: Death Trap

The latest volume of Titan's Modesty Blaise series has just been released (23 November). The new book, Death Trap, reprints three stories which originally ran in the Evening Standard between October 1976 and January 1978, all written by Peter O'Donnell and drawn by Enric Badia Romero.

'The Vanishing Dollybirds' reintroduces readers to Willie Garvin's circus which was introduced in the 1972 story 'The Bluebeard Affair'. The story begins with Modesty and Willie enduring the hospitality of an oil sheik when a young girl hurls what could be a bomb at the car they are in; the bomb is, in fact, a jar of marmalade and the assassin is Dolores, a performer at Gogol's Circus. Dolores believes her sister has been kidnapped by white slavers whilst performing in the Middle East and, despite Willie's assurances that she is probably just having a good time, she approaches the same agency which offered her sister work. The agency, run by a Major Hamilton and his wife, is known to British Intelligence as they gather information during their trips east. Dolores is proved right and badly hurt by one of a group of criminals engaged by Hamilton -- a group that prides itself in making killing an art form.

'The Junk Men' opens in Turkey with Willie performing stunts for a new movie directed by Eddie Grant, who previously appeared in the 1968 story 'The Galley Slaves'. Modesty's well-established hatred of drugs and drug dealers comes to the fore as she discovers that the film may be a front being used by a trio of traffickers to discover the whereabouts of a plane-load of smuggled morphine that crashed nearby only for the contents to vanish without trace.

In the title story, Modesty is targeted by an Eastern European state as a way to discredit Sir Gerald Tarrant of British Intelligence. A plot is hatched to murder Modesty's holiday companion, causing her to seek revenge; the plan is to have her arrested for espionage when she tracks down the assassin. However, there is a double-cross being plotted by Brosni, the head of overseas espionage to remove Sebek, his chairman. Modesty seems reluctant to respond to the murder of her friend and lover but is, in truth, biding her time, waiting for Willie to get into a position where he can assist her escape from such an obvious trap.

The strength of the Modesty strip was always the unbreakable bond between Modesty and Willie, a belief and trust in each other that cannot be shaken whatever position they find themselves in. They rarely initiate a story but react to a situation they have been dropped into. Peter O'Donnell has said that this means he often starts a storyline by creating the villain; once that has been done, the storyline and its resolution follow. For this reason, the villains in the Modesty strip are usually larger than life and often quite bizarre -- Bubbles is a good for instance in the first story here: for him an assassination should be creative and artistic; the setting and circumstances are as important as the actual killing itself.

All three stories are superb, held together by O'Donnell's meticulous plotting and his knack for putting his characters in impossible situations and getting them out again in ways the reader is unlikely to have thought of. Titan are doing a fantastic job of bringing these stories together and every volume to date is highly recommended. The introductory material is usually very good, in this volume a look at two of the strips that were censored when they originally appeared in the USA. But the stories are what will keep you coming back for more and the good news is that another volume, Yellowstone Booty, is due out next summer. Meanwhile, if you've not read Modesty before, you already have twelve volumes to collect.

• Modesty Blaise: The Gabriel Set-Up. ISBN 978-1840236583, 26 Mar 2004.
• Modesty Blaise: Mister Sun. ISBN 978-1840237214, 25 Jun 2004.
• Modesty Blaise: Top Traitor. ISBN 978-1840236842, 22 Oct 2004.
• Modesty Blaise: The Black Pearl. ISBN 978-1840238426, 17 Dec 2004.
  
• Modesty Blaise: Bad Suki. ISBN 978-1840238648, 25 Mar 2005.
• Modesty Blaise: The Hell Makers. ISBN 978-1840238655, 24 Jun 2005.
• Modesty Blaise: The Green-Eyed Monster. ISBN 978-1840238662, 23 Sep 2005.
• Modesty Blaise: The Puppet Master. ISBN 978-1840238679, 24 Feb 2006.
• Modesty Blaise: The Gallows Bird. ISBN 978-1840238686, 23 Jun 2006.
• Modesty Blaise: Cry Wolf. ISBN 978-1840238693, 20 Oct 2006.
• Modesty Blaise: The Inca Trail. ISBN 978-1845764173, 25 May 2007.
• Modesty Blaise: Death Trap. ISBN 978-1845764180, 23 Nov 2007.