Modesty Blaise author Peter O'Donnell has died

[Jaqhama]

The author of Modesty Blaise, Peter O'Donnel has died

Peter O'Donnel, the creator and author of the Modesty Blaise books and comic strip series has died.
Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are perhaps the best female/male duo fictional action team characters ever created in novel form.

Peter O’Donnell died on May 3rd 2010, after celebrating his ninetieth birthday by a week. He is best known for creating the classic crime character Modesty Blaise with artist Jim Holdaway. The continuing thriller strips originally appeared in London newspaper, the Evening Standard in 1963 and ran for almost forty years.
The adventurer, spy, smuggler and seductress, had many fans including the likes of Quentin Tarantino.

Modesty Blaise was dubbed the high priestess of pulp, providing crime thriller storylines with sass, wit and a touch of glamour. Films were made starring the character in the sixties, eighties and nineties and O’Donnell wrote a number of novels as well as continuing the strip until 2002. At this point he requested that no more Modesty Blaise stories be written by anyone.
Titan Books recently began bringing the Modesty Blaise strip back into print, with sixteen collections of the classic strip and four more scheduled over the next year.
O’Donnell also wrote a number of gothic romance and adventure novels under the name Madeleine Brent for which he won an award, but his editor had to turn up at the presentation to accept the award, as no one knew the novels were being written by a man using a female alias.


Peter O'Donnell created a strong female character who was both real and vunerable, whilst also being tough and lethal.
Her partnership with henchman Willie Garvin was unique in that the two of them were always best friends and constant companions, yet never lovers.
The first six novels in the book series were the best.


No one else has ever come close to creating and writing stories about a female action character as well as Peter O'Donnell did.
I don't think I can give Peter a better epitath than that.


Regards: Jaq.