The Saint in New York

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I couldn't, even if I wanted to, pretend that this novel came of my typewriter yesterday. I am notoriously not a writer of historical stories, except those which have ac­quired that aura simply by being around so long; and the date of this one is implicit from the first pages of the first chapter.

It was conceived, and worked out, during the latter days of Prohibition in America, that Noble Experiment which ended in 1933—which the most simple arithmetic shows to have been a fair while ago. And no revision, even if I wanted to attempt one, could possibly transfer it to a later day.

So I can only hope that all those readers who were not even born when it happened will accept the background, which is actually about as authentic as any fictional back­ground can be. I can vouch for this, because I was there, antique as I am. I don't say that the plot had any factual foundation, as many of my plots have. But the kind of activities, the places, and the people who frequented them, are not nearly as far-fetched as they may seem today. In fact, more than one of them really lived then, and might be recognized by a few old-timers through his thin disguise.

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