Granted, this isn’t noir. Still, I see no reason to confine myself to one subgenre of crime fiction. Charteris and his successors (sci-fi novelist Harry Harrison was the ghostwriter for this one) wrote with a distinctive, florid style. But Simon Templar is just a pulp hero with purple prose.
I like pulp art as much as the next guy, but this cover is completely inappropriate for the book it contains. This book was published in 1964. Because Harrison is borrowing Charteris’ literary style, it reads like it was written even before that. But the styles depicted on the man and woman appearing on the cover appear to be from at least ten years after 1964.
Still, don’t let poorly drawn cover art keep you from The Saint’s adventures!
