Cobra Trap (Modesty Blaise series) by Peter O'Donnell
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Book Reviews of Cobra Trap (Modesty Blaise series)
Book Review: Good To The Last Drop
Summary: 5 Stars
Having read a lot of multi-book series in my life, I know from experience how unusual it is for a series of books to keep its 'core' to the final book. Sometimes, as with the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters, the series will just... fade. Even worse, as with the Anita Blake books by Laurell K. Hamilton, the series will actively turn on itself, becoming something almost unrecognizable to readers of the earlier books. It's a darned rare thing for a series to finish with characters, storylines, and spirit intact and strong.
The Modesty Blaise series is among that rare breed. I can't recommend these books highly enough -- all 13 of them, with no caveats whatsoever.
Book Review: Excellent collection of stories to end the Modesty Blaise series
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw a mention of Cobra Trap by Peter O'Donnell (Souvenir Press, 2010) in Alexiad recently and ordered it. I've always enjoyed the characters (Modesty Blaise, Willie Garvin, and their friends) and their adventures, and I enjoyed these stories, which cover a long time span... I've reread it already, as a matter of fact. The stories are Bellman, The Dark Angels, Old Alex, The Girl with the Black Balloon, and Cobra Trap. I liked Old Alex the most, but they're all good. Then I learned that there was another, earlier collection of stories, Pieces of Modesty, and I ordered that too. It also was excellent.Book Review: Book thirteen: the conclusion to 31 years of Modesty Blaise books
Summary: 4 Stars
"Cobra Trap" is the 13th and last book in the Modesty Blaise series of books. Peter O'Donnell wrote it in 1996, after a pause of 11 years; the second-last book, "Dead Man's Handle", was written in 1985.
The Modesty Blaise series of books started with "Modesty Blaise" in 1965 and consists of 11 novels and two collections of short stories, one of which is "Cobra Trap". These books were very popular, especially during the period from 1965 to 1980. As well as the books, Modesty Blaise also ran as a newspaper comic strip, starting in 1963 and running until 2001, with Peter O'Donnell being the only author during the entire run.
All of the Modesty Blaise books are action thrillers about Modesty and her trusty sidekick Willie Garvin. Modesty and Willie are ex-criminals who get involved in adventures all around the world, going up against nasty bad guys and risking their lives to save friends or to right wrongs. There is a major emphasis on unarmed combat and ingenuity, and the tone is intelligent, with a bit of humor from time to time.
"Cobra Trap" contains five short stories. They are somewhat unusual in that the stories cover very different periods of Modesty's life, with the first story starting in the past when Modesty is around 20, and the last story set in the future when Modesty is around 52.
Before getting into a more detailed review of "Cobra Trap" I'd like to suggest that if you haven't read any of the Modesty Blaise books, then please start at the beginning. The first six books in the series are wonderful, after which things go somewhat downhill. This book should definitely be read last.
Warning! The remainder of this review contains major spoilers, so don't read further if you haven't read "Cobra Trap" yet.
Here follows mini-reviews for each of the five stories:
"Bellman" - 3 stars
This story is in two parts. The first part is set in the early days of The Network, Modesty's criminal organization. Modesty (who is around 20 at this time) and Willie travel to South America to put an end to Bellman's drug business. Bellman ends up in a prison labor camp.
Fast-forward to about 8 years later, a year after Modesty has closed down The Network and moved to England. Bellman is out of prison and seeking revenge. He captures Modesty and Willie and sets them loose on a small deserted island off the coast of Scotland with three professional hunters who are trying to kill them.
The plot isn't all that great; the revenge killing idea is overused and the evil Bellman is more pathetic than scary. Nor do the three hunters seem to be particularly dangerous, so the excitement is missing and the story is almost boring.
Incidentally, this short story is based on one of the early Modesty comic strip stories, "The Killing Ground", from 1968.
"The Dark Angels" - 3 stars
This story takes place about a year after "Bellman". The Dark Angels is a team of three former British Special Forces soldiers who have become professional assassins. They take on the job of killing Gus, an elderly American businessman visiting England. But Gus has befriended Modesty and so Modesty feels duty-bound to protect Gus from The Dark Angels.
The climax occurs when The Dark Angels challenge Modesty and Willie to a man-to-man fight at a deserted high-rise construction site. It should have been very exciting but once again it fails. The fight scene is too contrived and artificial, and it doesn't help that Modesty and Willie violate their own standards by showing up unprepared.
Strangely enough, this story ended up being made into a Modesty comic strip in 2002, after Peter O'Donnell had otherwise terminated the production of new Modesty comic strips.
"Old Alex" - 4 stars
"Old Alex" is a follow-on story to "Dead Man's Handle", the last Modesty novel. This implies that Modesty is probably around 33. Once again the story involves a revenge killing, with Modesty finding herself imprisoned in a cave in the Pyrenees in Southern France.
Modesty is found and freed by Old Alex, a French farmer in his 70's. The action then moves to London, and we have three parallel stories involving the revenge killing, Old Alex, and a bully in a pub who beats up Stephen Collier, one of Modesty's friends. The three stories slowly but surely come together in a surprising and satisfying way.
One very unexpected thing about "Old Alex" is that Peter O'Donnell finally makes it very obvious that "Modesty time" and "real time" are two quite different units. It's very clearly stated that this story takes place in 1997. So now we have to accept that Modesty was around 26 in 1965 and is around 33 in 1997! Neat trick! Of course, this sort of thing is typical of many fictional persons, but seldom put forth this blatantly.
"The Girl with the Black Balloon" - 4 stars
This story takes place when Modesty is around 38 years old, and involves an international terrorist gang who kidnaps important people and holds them for huge ransoms. But they make the mistake of brutally killing a British agent who is a friend of Modesty's, so she and Willie set out to free the latest kidnap victim and destroy the gang.
What makes this story better than average is the even greater than usual amount of ingenuity shown by Modesty and Willie. I also liked Lucy, the girl with the black balloon and a figure that was "truly excellent" (Willie's opinion) and the "excitable hormones" (her own admission). Lucy and her black balloon help Modesty and Willie get into the bad guys' lair, and the story has a happy ending when Willie gets invited into Lucy's lair.
"Cobra Trap" - 4 stars
From the humorous to the deadly serious. Dinah and Stephen Collier, good friends of Modesty and Willie, are in Central America, and get trapped in a rebel uprising. A very contrived situation is then presented. Modesty and Willie alone and with limited firepower have to hold off a group of 250 approaching rebels in a narrow gorge for an hour or so to save the lives of the Colliers and 50 other innocent people, including a lot of children.
Modesty, who is now around 52, is still fit for fight, but she has just received her death sentence. She knows she's going to die within a couple of months from an inoperable brain tumor. She is thus willing, even eager, to make this her last stand. She tells Willie to go back to the others and make his escape with them, but then Modesty is fatally shot and Willie has to hold out a bit longer, and then he too gets fatally shot.
There are two factors that can console the otherwise devastated Modesty fan.
As mentioned, Modesty is around 52 when she dies, and considering that she was 33 in 1997, and that a "Modesty year" lasts several normal years, we can safely assume that the action in "Cobra Trap" takes place quite far out in the future. We can thus be sure that Modesty is still alive and well right now, and will probably outlive all of her most loyal fans, those of us who discovered her back in the 1960's and 1970's and followed her since then.
The other factor, and one that I found really inspired, was that at the start of the story Willie talks about a near-death experience he'd had long ago. In his near-death state he had found himself on the slope of a kind of valley with a kind of silver stream or path at the bottom, and he could hear the song of the stars. And he was alone in this valley.
At the end of "Cobra Trap", when Willie dies, he is back on the slope of the valley with the mystical silver stream or path at the bottom, and he can hear the song of the stars again. But this time he's not alone, he can sense Modesty's presence there with him.
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So there you have it, five stories featuring Modesty at approximately 20, 28, 29, 33, 38 and 52. Two poor stories and three that are OK. The plots are all too contrived, but Modesty fans will forgive this.
Once again, do yourself a favor and start reading the series from the beginning. Don't read this book until you're done with the others, or at least have read the first six. When you do it this way you'll probably agree that "Cobra Trap" is a suitable ending for the series.
Rest in peace, Modesty and Willie.
Rennie Petersen
Book Review: Cobra Trap
Summary: 4 Stars
For nostalgia only.Not of the same standard as the previous novels/short stories, but still indispensible to devotees, if only for the 'wrap-up' last story.Book Review: All good things must end...
Summary: 3 Stars
After an eleven-year hiatus following Dead Man's Handle, the last novel in the series, this book collects five short stories, including, as most readers by now probably know, the last Modesty & Willie caper.
O'Donnell alone can say why he decided to write - and publish - a final chapter on their saga. It may have been that he felt he had done all he could with the duo: a writer, no matter how talented and creative, will have just a certain number of stories he or she has to tell, particularly in popular adventure fiction and even more (or less, as the case may be) when writing about regular characters. Once you're done, you face the danger of starting to repeat, or worse, make a parody of, yourself.
The long interval may be an indication that O'Donnell was, in a way, through with Modesty and Willie. And so may be the fact that the stories in Cobra Trap, while skillfully written, are somewhat trite and rehashed in plot. "Bellman", for instance, is an adaptation of a "filler" early comic strip, "The Killing Ground", produced for syndication outside the UK during a newspaper strike in Britain. "The Dark Angels", by its turn, was belatedly adapted to a comic strip, ten years after its publication as prose and five years after the daily strip had run its course; it features a rather ingenious plot twist at its ending, but is still short of O'Donnell's best. The villains here and elsewhere in the stories for the most part read like so many cardboard cutouts, with none of the depth and complexity of, say, Gabriel, Mr. Sexton or Simon Delicata.
Only "Old Alex", although starting from a weak springboard - the revenge killing, much as in "Bellman" - can be said to be truly inventive in a sort of "flux" way, yet it too is a closure of sorts. Also, it features a recurring "baddie", Sir Angus McBeal of Salamander Four, popping out very much out of the blue. Also again, no less than two stories co-feature the Colliers, Steven and Dinah, who by now seem to be just waiting in the wings to show up time and again. And, to cap it off, John Dall makes an all too brief comeback in the title story.
Nonetheless, O'Donnell does manage to wrap it up nicely, providing a plausible and, in a way, moving final episode. Still, if you're a novice to the Modesty Blaise series, do not start off with this book. Read all of them, in chronological order, and try to collect as many of the daily strips as you can. Only then you'll get the flavor of "the perfect mistress of her art" and her erstwhile sidekick.
I, for one, miss them.
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