Peter O'Donnell

Peter O'Donnell (11 April 1920 – 3 May 2010^[1][2]) was a British writer of mysteries and of comic strips, best known as the creator of Modesty Blaise,^[3] a female action heroine/undercover trouble-shooter. He was also an award-winning gothic historical romance novelist who wrote under the female pseudonym Madeleine Brent,^[4] in 1978, his novel Merlin's Keep won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.^[5]

Biography

Born on 11 April 1920 in Lewisham, London, O'Donnell began to write professionally prior to World War II at the age of 16. From 1938 and during the war he served as an NCO in mobile radio detachment (3 Corps) of Royal Signals Corps in the 8th Army in Persia in 1942. Afterwards his unit was moved to Syria, Egypt, the Western Desert, Italy, and Greece in October 1944.

After the war O'Donnell began to script comic strips, including the Daily Express adaptation of the James Bond novel, Dr. No. From 1953-1966 he wrote for Garth, and from 1956-1962 Romeo Brown (with Jim Holdaway as an artist).

In addition to the comic strips and graphic novels based on Modesty Blaise, O'Donnell published two collections of short stories and twenty novels. He wrote a play which was widely performed in the 1980s, "Mr. Fothergill's Murder," and wrote for television and film. He also wrote for women's magazines and children's papers early in his career.

His most famous creation, Modesty Blaise, was first published in 1963 in comic strip form. For the first seven years, the strip was illustrated by Holdaway until his death in 1970. Enrique Badia Romero then became the artist, and except for a seven-year period (1979–1986) he drew the strip until it ended in 2001.

In 1965, O'Donnell novelized his screenplay for a motion picture version (the final release of which in 1966 used virtually nothing of O'Donnell's original material), which was published as Modesty Blaise. This book was a huge success and O'Donnell would publish a dozen more novels and short story collections until 1996. Kingsley Amis said the novels were "endlessly fascinating"^[6] and that Blaise and Garvin were "one of the great partnerships in fiction, bearing comparison with that of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson."^[7]

At the request of publisher Ernest Hecht, he began writing gothic romance and adventure novels under the pen name of Madeleine Brent. The novels are not a series, but feature a variety of strong female protagonists. They are written in first person, take place in the late Victorian era, and although every protagonist has connections to England, part of each book is set in various locations around the world—including China, Australia, Afghanistan, and Mexico. Identity—the need to discover who she really is—is often a major part of the protagonist's struggle.

In 2001, O'Donnell retired from writing the Modesty Blaise comic strip and was also said to have retired from full-time writing. From 2004 to 2009 he wrote the introductions for a series of Modesty Blaise comic strip reprint volumes published by Titan Books; beginning in 2010, just prior to O'Donnell's death, another writer had begun composing these introductions. He was also interviewed for a special feature included on the DVD release of the 2002 film My Name Is Modesty, which was based on his creation.

O'Donnell's wish was that no one else write any future Modesty Blaise stories.

In 2007, working with young women students at Bullers Wood and Newstead Wood schools, he established an official Web site, Modesty Blaise, Ltd.

According to his obituary in the Evening Standard, O'Donnell had been suffering from Parkinson's disease in his later years.^[8]

Bibliography

As Peter O'Donnell

Modesty Blaise book series

1. Modesty Blaise (1965)
2. Sabre-Tooth (1966)
3. I, Lucifer (1967)
4. A Taste for Death (1969)
5. The Impossible Virgin (1971)
6. Pieces of Modesty (1972) (short stories)
7. The Silver Mistress (1973)
8. Last Day in Limbo (1976)
9. Dragon's Claw (1978)
10. The Xanadu Talisman (1981)
11. The Night of Morningstar (1982)
12. Dead Man's Handle (1985)
13. Cobra Trap (1996) (short stories)

O'Donnell has also written romance books and television (Take a Pair of Private Eyes) and movie (Revenge of She) scripts.

"Mr. Fothergill's Murder" first opened on 25 October 1982 at the Duke of York theatre, London, and was published by the English Theatre Guild. Among others, it was performed at the English Theatre of Hamburg in the 1987-88 season.

Madeleine Brent

• Tregaron's Daughter (1971)
• Moonraker's Bride (1973)
• Kirkby's Changeling (1975) (also as Stranger at Wildings)
• Merlin's Keep (1977)
• The Capricorn Stone (1979)
• The Long Masquerade (1981)
• A Heritage of Shadows (1983)
• Stormswift (1984)
• Golden Urchin (1986)

His other famous books are historical romances written under the pseudonym Madeleine Brent. The fact that Brent was O'Donnell was not made public until after the publication of the last of the Brent books.

References and sources

External links

• Modesty Blaise, Ltd
• The Modesty Blaise Book Site
• Peter O'Donnell at the Internet Movie Database
• Kristy Valenti's three-part article on Peter O'Donnell - Part one, Part Two and Part Three at comiXology
• Peter O'Donnell's 2001 interview with Publishers Weekly