A Taste for Death (Modesty Blaise)
Encyclopedia
- Not to be confused with A Taste for Death (P.D. James novel)A Taste for Death (P.D. James novel)A Taste for Death is a crime novel by British writer P. D. James, seventh in the popular Commander Adam Dalgliesh series. The novel won the Silver Dagger in 1986, losing out on the Gold to Ruth Rendell's Live Flesh. It has been adapted for television and radio.- Plot summary:In the dingy vestry of St...
A Taste for Death is the title of an action-adventure novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Peter O'Donnell
Peter O'Donnell
Peter O'Donnell was a British writer of mysteries and of comic strips, best known as the creator of Modesty Blaise, a female action hero/undercover trouble-shooter/enforcer...
which was first published in 1969, featuring the character Modesty Blaise
Modesty Blaise
Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip featuring a fictional character of the same name, created by Peter O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway in 1963. The strip follows the adventures of Modesty Blaise, an exceptional young woman with many talents and a criminal past, and her trusty sidekick Willie Garvin...
which O'Donnell had created for a comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
several years earlier. It was the fourth novel to feature the character. The book was first published in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
by Souvenir Press.
Plot summary
Canadian Dinah Pilgrim (blind since 11) and her sister Judy are vacationing in PanamaPanama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
. They're attacked on a lonely beach by a pair of gunmen, and Judy is killed and Dinah is taken prisoner. Fortunately, Willie Garvin is nearby and he intervenes, killing the two gunmen, and incidentally determining that they work for Gabriel, the villain from the first Modesty Blaise book.
Willie and Dinah go into hiding, knowing that Gabriel can mobilize the entire Panamanian underworld to search for Dinah. Modesty comes to their aid, and a deadly cat-and-mouse game ensues, with both Modesty and Willie barely surviving traps that should not possibly be survivable.
Back in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Modesty encounters Simon Delicata, a huge man with an ape-like build, and strength to match. A friend of Sir Gerald Tarrant is dead, and Simon Delicata is the killer. And Willie knows Simon Delicata from long ago, having been beaten senseless and near-fatally injured by him in a barroom fight.
Then Dinah is brutally kidnapped, and it becomes obvious that Gabriel and Simon Delicata are working together. Modesty and Willie travel to Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
and The Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
to rescue Dinah. But they're up against the most formidable opponents they've ever crossed swords with. Literally in fact; Modesty has to defeat the fencing master Wenczel in a duel to the death, and he's wearing a protective steel mesh jacket. The final fight, set in an abandoned Foreign Legion fort, occurs with Modesty incapacitated from a serious sword wound and Willie having to go one-on-one unarmed against the man-ape Delicata.