Modesty Blaise A Taste For Death by Peter O'Donnell **** 1/2 / *****
The fourth Modesty Blaise novel starts with Willie Garvin noticing the grisly death of Judy Pilrim while her blind sister Dinah escapes. The murder was ordered by the criminal mastermind Gabriel and Dinah was kept alive because although blind she has a psychic ability to find buried objects. pipes, treasure...etc. Garvin rescues Dinah and threw a series of coincidences Modesty Blaise and her sometimes boyfriend Steve Collier become involved and it become apparent that not only Gabriel but the giant killer Simon Delicata working with Gabriel need to use Dinah Pilgrim to find buried treasure. It's difficult to judge the Modesty Blaise books by The James Bond Books even though they are the same genre. The Books are clearly designed to be fun fast reads. And that they are. There's violence and sex o'pleanty and O'Donnell proves just as adept at moving a story a long in novel form as he is in Comic strip form. Willie Garvin gets a bigger role here but as always it's clear it's Blaise who is at the end of the day the boss. That Garvin (the male) is Robin to Blaise (the female) batman is what makes these stories work so well.
The first four novels in the series were all well done and there isn't much to separate them in terms of merit. I would put A Taste Of Death just below Sabre-Tooth and just above I Lucifer and Modesty Blaise. The Next book in the series is The Impossible Virgin.
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