[Pulpmeister]

Having re-read the epic novel The Count of Monte Cristo, I have also re-read several other novels which use almost exactly the same basic plot.

You will remember that Edmond Dantes, falsely jailed for 17 years, escapes, locates a buried treasure, comes back as the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo, unrecognised. His vengeance on those who ruined him is appropriate: the man who became a wealthy banker finishes up broke; and so on. The punishment fits the perpetrator.

Alexndre Dumas' book is enormously long, and high Victorian in many respects, and it should be borne in mind that the standard English translation most commonly found is both shortened (but still a whopping 500,000 words!) and somewhat bowdlerised in spots. A lesbian relationship hinted at in the English translation, is much plainer in the original; and some scenes which the translator thought might to too strong for 19th Century English readers were toned down also. And no, I have not read the recent modern, unexpurgated translation.

I don't know if the basic plot has been used before Dumas; more than likely I suspect. But the Monte Cristo plot has certainly been used many times since. One author even used the plot it in two novels.

E Phillips Oppenheim's The Long Arm of Mannister (1909) and The Channay Syndicate (1927) are essentially the same novel, in which a businessman is done in the eye by his associates, takes the rap, and then systematically punishes his former associates in various ways. Channay is the better one by far. In Mannister, the way the hero was done in the eye was never stated. In Channay, it is. Both were serialised first in American "slick" magazines as 10 short stories, the first dealing with the initial betrayal, then a chapter each for the baddies being chastened, and chapter 10 as a wrap-up.

Max Brand's Destry Rides Again (1930) is a very compact version in a Western setting. Destry, a young troublemaker, is framed for a robbery and jailed. He knows he didn't do it; he knows the witnesses were lying. Out again, he returns to town to gain satisfaction. And it isn't by wholesale slaughter, as so often it is in action movies, but targetted and appropriate. (The book, by the way, bears no resemblance to the movie versions whatsoever, other than the name Destry).

Jeffery Archer's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1976), is a variant. In this, there are four victims, and one perpetrator. Their revenge is for each to swindle the swindler out of the exact amount that they lost. In typical Archer fashion, there is a twist in the tail.

One Monte Cristo version whose title and author unfortunately escapes me, is intentionally very close to the original and obviously meant to be recognised as such as, if you like, a modern remake. It is set in the 1970s to start with, in the Vietnam war, in which a group of soldiers betray an army colleague by framing him for drug dealing; the 'copter taking him to Saigon for trial crashes, and he is captured by the NVA. Many years later, he escapes, unearths a treasure worth a fortune, and goes home to the USA, and then the revenge follows the Monte Cristo plot very closely. (And the hero adopts the alias Chris, just to help reader grasp the origin of the story.) Quite well done, I enjoyed it, but it was a long time ago that I read it, and all I recall of the title is the one word "knife". A lengthy prowl around the Internet has failed to help me identify it, and my paperback was disposed of long ago.

If you simplify the plot down to one villain and one or perhaps two victims, you have the good old "biter bit" or "worm turns" plot, the mainstay of thousands of short stories. Practically every short story writer has employed it In one form or another, seriously, humorously, or otherwise, even P G Wodehouse.

A typical example, with a humorous tone, is by that Old Reliable Leslie Charteris, called "The Star Producers", from the short story collection The Happy Highwayman (1939). In it we meet two theatrical con-men Waldermar Urlaub and Homer Quarterstone, who con theatrical hopefuls. The Saint intervenes on behalf of a victim or two, cons the con-men with their own con, and there's a very nice twist in the tail.

The Monte Cristo plot still has legs. A version set in an entirely alien society on an alien planet, with motivations and retaliations arising from the alien culture you have created, could be a fruitful variation. (And, for all I know, it's already been done).