Bonus FFB on Wednesday: Dragon's Claw -- Peter O'Donnell

Dragon's Claw opens with Modesty Blaise sailing a yacht from Australia to New Zealand.  She's alone and doing fine when she sees an inflatable boat with one passenger who's not doing fine at all.  And a shark is after him.  Modesty rescues the man, who turns to be Luke Fletcher, quite a famous artist who had mysteriously disappeared from England.  He has no memory of how he came to be in the boat or where he's been.  Modesty sees no reason to become involved in that mystery, but she does help Fletcher to begin painting again.  And then he's murdered.  That's a big mistake on the part of the killers, as Modesty vows to find them and repay them in kind. 

The main villain in the novel is a tad bland, but he has some colorful helpers, including a preacher who's a fast-draw and a killer, a nymphomaniac, and a fey heist mastermind.  Modesty and Willie Garvin are eventually captured wind up on an escape-proof (ha!) island with them and a bunch of underling henchpersons, and the battle of wits and bullets really begins in earnest.

Like all the Modesty Blaise stories and novels I've read, this one is a ton of over-the-top fun.  I'll be reading another book in the series soon.