The Saint's Getaway

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This story is virtually the third volume of a trilogy begun by The Saint Closes the Case and The Avenging Saint. Although it was written a few years after them—with, in fact, four or five other books in between—it was still first published as far back as 1933. I was a lot busier in those days.

In it, the Saint concludes his personal feud with Prince Rudolf, his most interesting opponent in the first two rounds. His other arch enemy, Rayt Marius, does not ap­pear in this one, and actually is only heard of again, post­humously, in The Saint in London. As I have had to explain in other prefaces, these were villains out of a mythology which today seems almost as dated as the Ruritanias from which they came. But this book, although the title may seem less appropriate now than the first one, in retrospect, actually winds up a sequence as well as an era.

Some of the more dated notions which motivated the first two books, the themes of mercenary war-makers putting strings behind the international scene, to activate the puppet but ambitious rulers of minor countries such as Prince Rudolfs, play an almost casual part in this story, and do not need elaborate explanation here. This book can stand, better than the first two, purely on its merits as an adventure and a chase.

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