Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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More Than a Female James Bond

The Night of Morningstar by Peter O'Donnell

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This is a recreational reread for me. I love the pulp novels of Peter O’Donnell and his exciting secret agent, Modesty Blaise, and reread the 13 novels every couple years. Modesty, in this novel, works with her equally competent partner, Willie Garvin, to combat a worldwide organization attempting to take over the world. In the other books, her beginnings as the head of a European crime syndicate is mentioned, but in this story, we watch her early retirement as she and Willie have decided crime […]

Heroine as Victim

Tregaron's Daughter by Madeleine Brent

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When I started reading this, I was surprised how similar the plot was to Madeleine Brent’s (Modesty Blaise writer Peter O’Donnell in reality) first novel, Merlin’s Keep. We have a spunky young lass, a dying father, a benevolent and rich foster father who takes her into his family, and a handsome young man with a checkered past who seems to dislike her but secretly pines for her. Cadi Tregaron from Cornwall is the spunky heroine. She takes care of her father in a small fishing […]

A Rose by Any Other Name

Merlin's Keep by Madeleine Brent

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As a big Modesty Blaise fan, I’ve always enjoyed Peter O’Donnell’s writing ability and reread his 15 Modesty books every couple of years. Imagine my surprise from his obituary to discover that he wrote gothic historic romances under the name “Madeleine Brent.” Merlin’s Keep (named after the birds and not the wizard) won the Romantic Novel of the Year for 1978. While I’ve probably never read a gothic historic romance in my life, I ordered several of his romances and started with Merlin’s Keep (because […]

I Should Reread These Modesty Blaise Books in Order

A Taste for Death by Peter O'Donnell

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I enjoy rereading all the Modesty Blaise novels, but two of the characters who fall in love in this book were an old married couple in the last one. While the exploits of Modesty and her partner, Willie Garvin, are exciting, this has one of the best fight scenes in all the Modesty novels. In fact, she has a scary encounter with a swordsman AND Willie meets up with a gorilla-like sadist who had battered him almost to the death during a previous encounter. Stuck […]

Like a Warm Blanket

I, Lucifer by Peter O'Donnell

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I, Lucifer by Peter O’Donnell (1967) – Some books are comfort food.  I grab them when I don’t want to read anything complicated.  The Modesty Blaise books by Peter O’Donnell are fine examples and sit on a convenient shelf in my library.  I have them all (thirteen novels but none of the comic strips), and they are a little formulaic but definitely re-readable. Modesty, if you didn’t happen to see several of the really bad movies made about her, is basically James Bond with décolletage.  […]



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