Meet the Tiger
First edition
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| Author | Leslie Charteris |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Saint |
| Genre | Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Ward Lock |
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Publication date
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1928 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Followed by | Enter the Saint |
Meet the Tiger is the title of an action-adventure novel written by Leslie Charteris. In England it was first published by Ward Lock in September 1928; in the United States it was first published by Doubleday's The Crime Club imprint in March 1929 with the variant title Meet – the Tiger!. It was the first novel in a long-running series of books (lasting into the 1980s) featuring the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". It was later reissued under a number of different titles, including the unofficial Crooked Gold by Amalgamated Press in 1929 which failed to credit the authorship of Charteris, and the best-known reissue title, The Saint Meets the Tiger. In 1940 the Sun Dial Press changed the title to Meet – the Tiger! The Saint in Danger.
Templar is introduced as a young adventurer 27 years of age, who is independently wealthy and accompanied by a manservant named Orace. Templar and Orace stay in a pillbox that Simon has purchased from the Ministry of Defence in the small North Devon seaside town of Baycombe, their intent to foil a plan by a mysterious individual known only as "The Tiger" to smuggle stolen gold. Templar's motivation is to settle an old score with The Tiger, with whom he has had prior dealings though he's never actually met the villain, and to return the gold to its proper owner and collect the reward.
Meet the Tiger is not a "whodunit" but rather a "whoisit", as the identity of The Tiger is not revealed immediately and Templar (and the reader) is left guessing as to which inhabitant of Baycombe is the villain.
During this adventure, Templar meets a young socialite named Patricia Holm and falls in love with her, even more so once she starts displaying distinctly "Saintly" qualities, including sharing Templar's taste for adventure and danger. Holm becomes the protagonist for the middle third of the novel during a period when she believes Templar to be dead and decides to continue following his plan to foil the Tiger. Holm went on to become a recurring character in most of the Saint stories published over the next two decades, although she never again took the spotlight as she did in Meet the Tiger. Orace meanwhile, features in the same role of manservant/housekeeper in subsequent books. In the 1934 novel 'The Misfortunes of Mr. Teal' Charteris introduced another recurring ally, an American gangster named Hoppy Uniatz, an old friend and accomplice of Templar's from their adventures in New York.
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Wikipedia