McGinnis Fawcett-Crest Painting

I always wondered what it would cost to own a Robert McGinnis original, especially one of his Modesty Blaise pieces... apparently, a lot!

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Modesty Blaise Photo Shoot for Storybook Magazine

Model Anica Kovac poses as Modesty Blaise in a fashion editorial for Story Book magazine.

The Modesty-themed layout uses an interesting mix of photography and comic-styled artwork; you can see the full editorial here.

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Pieces of Modesty and Souvenir Press - more details

A very helpful person from Souvenir Press has provided some more details about the new Pieces of Modesty paperback cover artwork, and about the series reprint in general.

Q: What made Souvenir Press decide to reprint the entire series as of the year 2000?

A: Souvenir Press decided to reprint the books in a uniform series after the US rights reverted (because we could then distribute them in both the UK and USA, making it economical to keep the books in print). All the Modesty Blaise books are in print, though occasionally some titles slip out of stock and we try to reprint any out of stock title as soon as possible (last month we reprinted 'Sabre Tooth', and 'Cobra Trap' the month before that).

Q: Tell us about the cover art, particularly for Pieces of Modesty.

A: Our new paperback editions of the Modesty Blaise books use the original cover art from the hardback editions. However 'Pieces of Modesty' was published in paperback by Pan without a hardback edition, so we didn't have an image to work with. We tried to keep to the style used on the original hardback covers of 'Modesty Blaise' and 'A Taste for Death', which both use illustrations of weapons on the cover rather than illustrations of Modesty (which are used on the other books).

The Pieces of Modesty cover was designed by a company called eDigital (whose designer is Jim Banting). The illustration of the moon with the lips inside it was taken from the original Modesty Blaise cover while the illustration of the bow and arrow was taken from an illustration library so there is no artist as such.

Q: Avid Modesty Blaise collectors have been trying to get their hands on the Penguin India boxed set, but it's near impossible to buy it from overseas... does Souvenir Press have any plans for a boxed set?

A: The Penguin India box sets look very good, that came about because Thomas Abrahams (who was running Penguin India at the time) had been a huge Modesty Blaise fan since his teens. I'm afraid that we don't have any plans to do such a box set though.

Thanks to Souvenir Press for the information!

'Pieces of Modesty' is currently available in the UK, and will be published in the US and Canada in the Fall. (You can use the Amazon widgets on the left to buy or pre-order.)

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Pieces of Modesty - First Printing by Souvenir Press!

Stop the presses!
Actually, don't stop them, because I've been waiting years for this...


Souvenir Press started reprinting the Modesty Blaise novels back in 2000 -- the first time this publisher had printed them in paperback. Souvenir Press was the 'original' publisher of the series, having printed the first U.K. hardcover editions, with one exception... Pieces of Modesty.

I still, after all these years of research, haven't been able to find out why Souvenir Press never published Pieces of Modesty. Mysterious Press published it in both hardcover and paperback in the U.S.A., and Pan printed the novel in paperback in various english-speaking countries (U.S.A., Australia, and the U.K.)

The next mystery arose when Souvenir began reprinting the series in paperback: did this mean they had bought the paperback reprint rights to Pieces of Modesty along with the reprint rights to the others? A few years ago, a placeholder appeared on Amazon U.K., but it began to seem like this must have been a mistake, as no book appeared. (The last one published by Souvenir had been Cobra Trap, in 2006).
The new paperback reprints used the cover art from the original hardcover printings. So the more exciting mystery for me, the collector of Modesty Blaise book covers, was: if Souvenir were to finally print Pieces, what would they use for the cover art? This was the only book without any 'original' cover artwork.

Well, the book has now appeared Amazon UK and Amazon Canada, with a release date March 2010, and a cover that fits well with these editions! The source of the artwork is still a mystery, however; I won't be able to find out who the artist is until I get my hands on the book. It looks very similar to the Holdaway covers for the first two books, so either this is an old Holdaway drawing, or a new one created to match his style.
UK readers, you'll be able to get it as of March 4th; I'll have to wait until March 31st. No word yet on when it will be available on Amazon USA. So whoever gets their hands on the book first... please let everyone know who the cover artist is!

You can see all the english-version Modesty covers collected here; books in other languages can be found via this page.
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John Dankworth

U.K. jazz legend Sir John Dankworth, who scored the 1966 Modesty Blaise film, passed away at age 82. You can read the BBC online article and watch the news clip here.


Sir John scored over twenty films; you can read an interview with him from the Journal of British Film and Television here.

You can find a number of versions of John Dankworth's Modesty Blaise theme on YouTube, including the Jonathan and David film version, and also the great Virginia Vee rendition. On iTunes, there is a wonderful version performed by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (I'm not sure if they're playing to an arrangement of Gorillaz's creation, or if Gorillaz sampled this arrangement and then transposed it, but the two sound remakably alike) -- if you've never heard the NYJO one, it's well worth a listen.

The film version:


and the jazz orchestra version:


A discography of John Dankworth's music can be found on Discogs.

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