The Holy Terror (The Saint)

The Holy Terror (The Saint)

The Holy Terror is a collection of three mystery novellas by Leslie Charteris, first published in the United Kingdom in 1932 by Hodder and Stoughton. This was the eighth book to feature the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". When published in the United States for the first time, also in 1932, the title was changed to The Saint vs. Scotland Yard.

The three stories in the book are loosely interconnected and take place over the course of roughly nine months, according to the text. This book is notable for bringing Patricia Holm back into the forefront. The character, depicted as Templar's on again-off again girlfriend since the first book in the series, Meet - The Tiger!, had been virtually relegated to cameo appearance status after the novel The Last Hero and had been absent from a number of stories and novels since. Here she becomes an active participant in Templar's schemes once again. Charteris does not obscure the clear implication that the unmarried Templar and Holm are living together at the time of these stories—something that is commonplace today but was rare in popular fiction in the early 1930s.