Peter O'Donnell's fantastic characters, Modesty Blaise, Willie Garvin, and their associates, have so large a popular following that it is probably correct to accord them modern mythic status. He is adroit at mingling insouciant comedy with grim, sardonic cruelty. In a 1986 Contemporary Authors interview O'Donnell said the 1966 translation of Modesty Blaise to film was not successful, but she persists as the cartoon-series character from which she originated in the Evening Standard (May 1963), and she has qualities which, one might think, could readily be converted into a successful film or television series. O'Donnell has perhaps been most praised for his success in providing ingenious and seemingly original methods for getting his characters out of tight situations; his hero and heroine rely more on physical skills and improvisation than on high technology. Like Ian Fleming's James Bond, Modesty is a legend in her own lifetime inside the series of books...