Modesty Blaise (novel): Difference between revisions
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* [[Checkpoint Charlie]]: In "The Giggle Wrecker", Modesty and Willie have to sneak a Soviet detector across the Berlin Wall.<ref>After a conventional attempt at smuggling him across in the trunk of a car not likely to be searched due to diplomatic plates fails, they go for Refuge In Audacity and shoot the defector ''over'' the Berlin Wall using a Human Cannonball rig salvaged from a bankrupt circus.</ref>
* [[Code Emergency]]: See [[Something They Would Never Say]].
* [[Combat Pragmatist]]: If Modesty and Willie have a religion, it is this. One of the crowning examples is her final martial-arts battle vs. Mr. Sexton in ''The Silver Mistress''. Sexton being a world-class karate master who has equal speed with Modesty despite being immensely larger and stronger, Modesty loses her first match to him in a [[Curb Stomp Battle]]. In her rematch, she makes sure to fight Sexton while nude and greased up (so that he can't grapple), in a dimly lit cave (Modesty has superior night vision and, being the lead party in a stern chase, has had more chance to have her vision adjust) with an uneven, rocky floor (Sexton has spent the majority of his career fighting in dojos or tournaments, on exercise mats, and so isn't used to uneven surfaces), and after having swum a long way through icy-cold water to reach the cave in the first place (so Sexton's muscles are still stiff from cold, while Modesty has had several minutes to perform warm-up exercises as she reached the cave first). Having stacked every advantage in her favor possible vs. a proven superior opponent, Modesty then pulls out a narrow victory and kills him.
** Modesty applies a similar principle, only with guns, vs. Reverend Crisp in ''Dragon's Claw''. Crisp is perhaps the greatest quick-draw expert in the world, over a full tenth of a second faster than Modesty, and so she has absolutely no chance vs. him in the quickdraw match that the villain is forcing her to fight him in and knows it. Modesty's solution? To start shooting at Crisp while still walking ''towards'' the duel arena, at a distance of approximately 50-plus meters... a distance she is far more likely to hit Crisp at than vice versa, as he is a close-quarters quickdraw specialist while Modesty is a long-range competition markswoman. Sure enough, despite firing five shots to her three he misses with all five<ref>In fairness, 150+ feet is a ''long'' way to hit anything with a handgun, even for a good marksman.</ref>, while she puts two out of three right into his torso.
* [[The Con]]
* [[Contemptible Cover]]: During the 1970s and '80s, most of the books got stuck with [
* [[Criminal Amnesiac]]: Willie in the novel ''Dead Man's Handle''.
** Played with in that the bad guys did not find Willie in this state, but instead deliberately kidnapped and brainwashed him.
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** She wasn't born blind (she went blind as a young girl due to a bout of meningitis), so its arguable that her superpowers and blindness are just a coincidence because she ''was'' born with the latter.
** Psychic powers are also routinely seen on non-blind people in this universe; Lucifer is perhaps the most powerful psychic known and is entirely physically<ref>Emphasis on 'physically', as he's hopelessly insane.</ref> healthy, Willie has danger sense that is outright precognitive (at one point receiving a warning of a car-bomb attempt on Modesty over half an hour ahead in time and while he was across town), and Modesty's old yoga instructor Sivajii is never seen on-screen but is referred to in backstory as having been clairvoyant.
** However, Dinah does have one of the classic Disability Superpowers of blind people -- her hearing is ridiculously acute. As in 'Dinah, please tell me exactly where the sniper firing a crossbow at us in this pitch-dark urban environment is standing.' 'I can hear him rewinding the bow, he's about thirty feet that way.'
* [[Distant Finale]]: "Cobra Trap" is set at least a decade, possibly more, after the events of the novels and comic strip.
* [[Distracted by the Sexy]]: Personified by a trick Modesty uses on occasion called "The Nailer" in which she'll strip to the waist and enter a room topless. The momentary distraction caused by seeing a sexy female enter suddenly is often enough for Willie or Modesty to get the upper hand (lampooned in a mid-1970s comic strip when the Nailer is noted as being less effective because men in the 1970s have been exposed to increasingly amounts of sexually explicit films and magazines).
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{{quote|"Modesty, my old!" Caspar snatched up her hand and kissed it. "I am possessed by a brilliant idea. Let us get married ''tout de suite'', old bean. ''Heiut!'' ''Oggi!'' As captain of the ''Delphine'', I will perform the ceremony. Tovarich Garvin shall be best man."}}
** Subverted in that Caspar is a con man using [[Obfuscating Stupidity]] and when not 'in character' he speaks in plain English.
* [[Genius Ditz]]: Dr Giles Pennyfeather needs specific prompting to realize that
* [[Grenade Hot Potato]]: "A Better Day to Die" in ''Pieces of Modesty''
* [[Hearing Voices]]: ''The Impossible Virgin''; {{spoiler|it's the "fake voices from hidden radio" variation}}.
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* [[If You're So Evil Eat This Kitten]]: ''The Night of Morningstar'' has a tragic version where {{spoiler|Ben Christie ''actually goes through with it'', because he had just found out that the villains were going to execute a terrorist bombing later that night killing tens of thousands and he absolutely could not die or blow his cover before he had a chance to warn someone. Then, after he murders an innocent teenaged girl to prove that he's not an infiltrator, the villains laugh at him and inform him that they already knew he was CIA even before the test started, and they just wanted to have fun with him. Ben doesn't really survive the revelation.}}
* [[I Know Madden Kombat]]: Cricketing skills allow a missionary to play [[Grenade Hot Potato]] in "A Better Day to Die".
* [[Impossible Mission]]: Any time Sir Gerald Tarrant asks Modesty for help, it is only because all remotely sane solutions have either no hope of working or have already failed. The only exceptions are when he asks her for an inconsequential favor as a friend, not business, and it invariably blows up into one of these anyway.
* [[Improvised Weapon]]: At least [[Once an Episode]]
* [[Ironic Nickname]]: Her mentor started calling her "Modesty" as a joke (she doesn't know her real name).
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