Cobra Trap - Peter O'Donnell
London: Souvenir Press, 1996, Hardback in Dust Wrapper.Condition: Very Good — in Very Good Dust Wrapper. Dust wrapper a little sunned at the margin of the upper panel.
Signed by the author, without dedication, on the title page — without provenance.
From the cover: “Modesty Blaise, one of the most popular fictional characters in the world, is back in top form in this thrilling collection of five stories, always aided by her faithful lieutenant Willie Garvin.
Followers of Modesty’s adventures will know that in her early days in Tangier she ran a highly efficient organisation known as The Network, whose existence was tacitly approved by the authorities. The first story, Bellman, sees her in her Network days, set on dealing with a piece of unfinished business, and from then on there is no stopping her. The Dark Angels finds her retired from The Network and allowing herself to be manipulated, albeit reluctantly, by her good friend Sir Gerald Tarrant of British Intelligence, while in Old Alex she is trapped by an unknown enemy in a remote part of the Pyrenees.
The fourth story, The Girl with the Black Balloon, features an unexpected ally in the shape of a girl who seeks to sublimate the earthly aspects of her nature by going up in a balloon, which provides Modesty and Willie with a neat means of wrong-footing a particularly unpleasant gang of kidnappers. In the title story, Cobra Trap, the dauntless pair face the most testing assignment of their lives — to rescue their friends who are trapped by rebels in the jungle of Central America.
With their devastating combat skills, their breath-taking agility and their uncanny ability to anticipate their opponents’ next move, Modesty and Willie are unbeatable. The late Sir Kingsley Amis hailed them as ‘one of the great partnerships in crime fiction, bearing comparison with that of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’, and described the novels as ‘endlessly fascinating’. Cobra Trap, Peter O’Donnell’s first book about Modesty Blaise for eleven years, will be a welcome treat for her huge international following.”Illustrated with colour plates.
Jacket designed by Jim Holdaway. Size: 8¾" x 5½". Grey boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. In the Modesty Blaise series. 267 pages.
£88.50