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 I I, LUCIFER First published 1967 by Souvenir Press Ltd., London and simultaneously in Canada by the Ryerson Press. René Vaubois, head of the Deuxième Bureau has been granted his long standing wish to meet Modesty Blaise and they are having dinner on a bateau mouche on the Seine. At the end of the meal he sets her a theoretical problem. How can you make the blackmail of rich individuals and government employees work? She replies that unless you can threaten without exposing the source of the threat, kill without detection and devise a completely foolproof method of collecting the money, it does not make sense. He then adds a further layer to the problem. What if a list of people under threat was circulated first and all of the people on that list died soon afterwards, almost all from what seemed to be natural causes, how seriously would future threats be taken? Modesty thinks, very seriously but is puzzled and considers it an extravagent idea. Later that evening she and Willie are obliged to foil two attempts to murder Vaubois both witnessed by Professor Stephen Collier, Modesty’s latest bedfellow. They are seeing the end result of the diabolical blackmail scheme devised by Seff, a former puppeteer who, when the theatre was no longer able to provide him a living, found he had a natural talent for crime. He realised that the young man he now calls Lucifer had an extraordinary precognative ability and when given an object belonging to any individual was able to predict their imminent death. He used this as the basis for a large scale blackmail operation. Lists were sent out of people who were predicted by Lucifer to die. Some names on the list had not been predicted to die and it was these who were the blackmail victims. If they failed to pay they were murdered either by Seff’s main employee Jack Wish, a one time Mafia enforcer, or by hired killers. Vaubois was on a list, failed to pay, failed to die a natural death and had to be murdered. When Wish learns how and why the attempts were foiled he advises Seff to let this one go. Seff has solved all of the problems posed by Modesty. The lists are posted by a dupe, the killers untraceable and the method of collection unique. Modesty and Willie talk to Sir Gerald Tarrant. He tells them that the government has received threats but it is not his department. They lean on him to help them and learn that Krolli knows who arranges the killings but he is in a labour camp in Yugoslavia. They spring him and he gives them the name of Wish. They locate Seff’s current base but when Modesty does a recce her cover is blown by Stephen Collier who has been innocently employed by Seff to try to improve Lucifer’s success rate. Modesty and Collier are taken with Lucifer to a new base in the Phillipines where Modesty is able to exert enough influence on Lucifer to cause a revolt. Willie joins her at the new base by following the trail of a blackmail payment demanded from her friend John Dall. The story climaxes with hellish fighting and a diabolical casting down – plus some fun with the dolphins. 405