The Xanadu Talisman (Novel)

The Xanadu Talisman is the title of an action-adventure/spy novel by Peter O'Donnell that was first published in 1981, featuring the character Modesty Blaise. This was the tenth book to feature the character. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Souvenir Press.

 Plot 

Nanny Pendergast, the middle-aged Scottish woman who is the driving force behind "El Mico", may not be the typical criminal mastermind. Nevertheless, she and her two young charges, Jeremy and Dominic Silk, have made El Mico the most potent underworld force in North Africa, filling the void left when Modesty Blaise disbanded The Network.

El Mico has just achieved its greatest triumph, the clandestine theft of an object of immense value. And El Mico has also suffered its greatest setback; Bernard Martel, one of their top lieutenants, has double-crossed them and stolen the object.

Modesty happens to be present when an El Mico assassin tries to kill Bernard Martel, and both Modesty and Willie Garvin are present when Jeremy Silk succeeds in killing him at Modesty's house in Tangier. For Modesty and Willie this signals the start of two parallel quests: To find "the object" and to rescue the beautiful young Tracy Martel, Bernard's wife, who is being held captive as a harem girl in the isolated palace called Xanadu, high in the Atlas Mountains.

First Modesty figures out where Bernard Martel has hidden "the object", and she and Willie retrieve it. But then Modesty and Willie are captured by El Mico and find themselves imprisoned in Xanadu. All they have to do now to rescue Tracy Martel is to survive several coliseum-style fights to the death and escape from captivity and free Tracy from the harem and steal a jeep and flee down a slow twisting mountain road with a helicopter full of armed men in hot pursuit.