Honor Among Spies

May 1, 2004
Fawcett's mediocre third effort (after Death to Spies and Siren Song) to portray Ian Fleming as the prototype for his creation, James Bond, finds the former MI-5 operative in postwar retirement on Jamaica enjoying the good life, or at least trying to. An importunate letter from an old colleague now living in New Orleans, Prescott W. Quick, suggests that more is known of their spy past than is healthy for them. Sharing Bond's resolve and patriotism if not his suavity and access to exotic weaponry, Fleming abandons his island retreat and heads for New Orleans. There Fleming and his somewhat unreliable colleague race a formidable police inspector known as the Red Dwarf to locate a suspected killer who possesses sensitive information about himself and Quick. Kinky sex, voodoo and the ambience of New Orleans at Mardi Gras as well as the treacherous surrounding bayous give the author plenty of atmospheric material to work with, but these promising ingredients never quite gel into a gripping story. Still, the large Bond following should ensure that plenty more Fleming adventures flow from Fawcett.

May 1, 2004
Ian Fleming would like to put his World War II espionage career and his grisly postwar assassination duties behind him. Not possible, thanks to a plea for help from Prescott Quick, another of "Churchill's boys." Fleming is loathe to get involved, but since it appears someone may be in a position to expose the existence of Churchill's secret cadre of postwar assassins, he flies to New Orleans, where Quick has established himself as a streetwise private investigator. Fleming and Quick settle into a Holmes and Watson relationship as more murders surface that may be connected to the bad old days. New Orleans in the late forties is a murky mixture of racism, voodoo, police corruption, and sexual profligacy. Fawcett, who also writes the Mycroft Holmes series, weaves an arresting fictional persona out of the raw material provided by the life of the James Bond creator. This series improves with each entry, in no small part thanks to the author's uncanny ability to create a vivid sense of time and place.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)