EXTRACTS: The Modesty Blaise Companion Expanded Edition © 2018 The Book Palace (425 PAGES in Full edition)

E X P A N D E D E D I T I O N T H E M O D E S T Y B L A I S E C O M P A N FOREWORD I have known Laurie Blackmore for many years now, and I well recall seeing a first draft of the Modesty Blaise Companion he compiled some seven years ago. It’s difficult to find the right word for my reaction when I saw it. “Gobsmacked” would be the most accurate, but as I pretend to be a literary sort of cove I’d better settle for “astounded”. I found it hard to grasp that anyone could tackle the job of going through every novel, compiling an alphabetical list of every character (totalling 800 plus), then writing a description of that character and its prime function in each of however many novels he or she featured in, giving the page number of each first appearance in each one. To me this seemed a stunning achievement, yet it was topped three years later when Laurie produced an expanded draft in which he had listed every character ever to appear in the Modesty Blaise strip stories. This involved listing 1300 plus characters from the 95 stories told in 10,000-plus daily strips, giving the title of the story, and in these cases, the number of the relevant strip in which each made a first appearance. Now, seven years on from when he began, Laurie has produced what must be a final and fully illustrated Companion for both the strip stories and the novel characters. In this, what I can only call the fully comprehensive Modesty Blaise Companion, you will find splendid thumbnail illustrations of every character, large or small, to have been drawn in the strip stories over the years, with a description of the role each one played. You will also find a selection of illustrations of the novel characters that have been drawn from time to time and have crossed over between strip story and novel. Finding and selecting these illustrations, sifting through the strips of all relevant stories – no small task. I know that some Modesty/Willie fans are keen collectors of the strips and novels, and like to re-read stories or the parts of stories they have most enjoyed, so if you are one of them and you’re reading this now I hope you’ll find many hours of happy browsing in the pages that follow. Perhaps a name or picture or title will jog your memory of a story or incident long forgotten that you’d like to look at again. Thanks to Laurie Blackmore, Honorary Modesty Blaise Archivist, the Companion will enable you to go straight to it. My thanks to him for his long labours. Peter O’Donnell V