Charteris had effectively retired from writing the stories in 1963, and served in an editorial capacity overseeing a new series of Saint novels and novellas by other writers.
The plot, as described by Barer, is science fiction, and depicts Templar's attempts to stop the distribution of a performance-enhancing drug that endows athletes with super-human strength.
Breaking a pattern he had maintained for nearly 40 years, Charteris chose not to submit Bet on the Saint to his longtime British publishers, Hodder & Stoughton.
Fleming Lee afterwards completed another comic strip adaptation, The Saint in Pursuit, which was accepted for publication by both Hodder & Stoughton and Doubleday/Crime Club after Charteris edited the manuscript.
To date, this "lost" Saint novel remains unpublished and a copy of the manuscript is kept with a collection of Charteris' papers at Boston University.