MODESTY BLAISE

Barry Forshaw recalls his conversations with his friend Peter O’Donnell (1920-2010), the English writer of mysteries and of comic strips who was best known as the creator of famed action heroine Modesty Blaise...

Are you a fan of Modesty Blaise? If you haven’t discovered her yet, you really should – and you have three options. There is the complete collection of the long-running comic strip, reissued by Titan Books, in which the late Peter O’Donnell’s immensely resourceful, highly intelligent (and highly sexy) female James Bond took on a variety of deeply unpleasant opponents in the capable company of her right-hand man, Cockney ex-criminal Willie Garvin – as accomplished in the violent arts as his companion. Or there are the Modesty Blaise novels, in which O’Donnell moved the superb command of suspense and characterisation of the comic strip into a series of pulse-raising espionage novels that are the equal of anything in the genre.

And then there are the films, the best-known being that directed by cult director Joseph Losey in 1966 and starring seductive international star Monica Vitti as Modesty, with Terence Stamp as the knife-wielding Willie Garvin; plus – the real coup (as it was seen at the time) -Dirk Bogarde, no less, as Modesty’s ruthless nemesis, the mastermind Gabriel. And with a talent list like that lined up, what could have gone wrong? But if you’re a fan of the film – and a lot of people are – Modesty’s creator might possibly have disagreed with you…. Over the years he often repeated to me his scorching view of Losey’s film (‘He ruined Modesty!’), and I don’t doubt that I would have heard the story again had I made one final phone call – which I didn’t.

MAKING THE LAST PHONE CALL

Why didn’t I do it? I was planning -Ireally was - to phone Peter O’Donnell to congratulate him on his 90th birthday in 2010. But I kept putting it off – putting it off, in fact, for a whole week. And a week or so was all Peter had left after that 90th birthday - so it was too late. The creator of Modesty Blaise – and one of the ablest thriller writers this country has ever produced, a man whose beautifully turned plotting has few peers – died shortly after the May Bank Holiday weekend. So why did I put off that phone call? There were reasons.

I have to say (with some shame) that I’d found the last few conversations challenging – no excuse, I know. Peter sounded ever more frail, his thought processes harder to follow, and the stories of his deteriorating health were longer (although always delivered with characteristically sardonic humour: “I have problems with standing straight and have to creep around. But, on balance, it’s better than the alternative…”).