Modesty Blaise (novel): Difference between revisions

* [[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).

* [[Double Standard]]: Averted; both protagonists routinely take lovers. Willie more than Modesty, admitted. By the last arcs in the strip, Modesty has several old flames who she routinely cycles between, with all parties involved aware of the others. Willie, on the other hand, has a lot of flings and one-night stands, with Maude Tiller (and in the book version, Lady Janet Gillam) as the recurring love interest.

* [[Even Evil Has Standards]]: While she was running her crime syndicate, Modesty refused to deal in drugs. Or prostitution. Or anything that would require killing innocent people or police. Or even killing other criminals, except in self-defense or defense of another. Although they did a rather large amount of killing re: that last.

** This continues into the post-Network era. On countless occasions in literature and comic strip, Willie and Modesty make a conscious effort to go for "sleeps, not keeps" whenever possible, but at the same time will make a deliberate decision to kill if they deem it appropriate.