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'In Secret Service' Reveals The Secrets Of A Lost Fleming Manuscript

New fiction novel features Fleming, Princess Diana, mystery and more...

Really nice find, K1. This sounds like a must-read.

I just saw this. Sounds like a crackerjack thriller. James Bond meets The Da Vinci Code. Great cover art as well.

Yeah, I got the same impression. I thought the deal with Edward VIII having ties to Nazism and Hitler was a bit outlandish when I first read it, but shows what I know, according to Wikipedia there's some 'possible' truth to it.

If my library gets it in, I may read it at some point.

Speculation about Edward VIII being used by the Nazis have been the object of several thrillers already. Two I can remember are:

Jack Higgins' 'To Catch A King' from 1979
-a (fictitous, most likely) attempt of the SS in 1940 to kidnap the Earl of Windsor from his home in Estoril, Portugese for further use as a political puppet after GB's invasion.

Len Deighton's 'SS-GB' from 1978
-a alternate-history thriller dealing with the successful invasion of Great Britain by the Nazis in 1941. London is a bombed-out city, the Government with Churchill at its head has flown to Canada. The King George VI is held prisoner in the Tower and I think Edward VIII has been re-installed as puppet-King.

However farfetched all this may seem today, the serious background to these storys is that the Nazis did indeed have plans for GB after their 'Operation Sea Lion' (code for the invasion of GB) would have been successful. And these plans didn't only include the British Nazi Party as part of their puppet-government but they also seemed to hope to get the Earl of Windsor as their head-of-state.

Similar speculation, although not to the same extent, around other persons of history such as T.E. Lawrence and Charles Lindbergh have been the theme of a few other novels.

This post has been edited by Trident: 31 May 2007 - 08:24

Sounds like an interesting book... might have to read it.

Very interesting... I may have to check this one out...

Sounds a bit MONEYPENNY DIARIES, as well as more than slightly old hat and predictable.

Sounds like an absolute load of old tosh, but might pass a few hours on a beach somewhere. Seems a bit weird to set what sounds like such an Anglo-centric book in the US, though.

I'm just afraid that "experts" on the wikipedia and elsewhere, will start treating the book as fact and claim there is a lost Fleming manuscript about Britain and the Nazis.

Nice find, K1. I think everyone would have missed this if it weren't for you and your site.

Has everyone been to K1's new website: K1Bond007.com. Very solid.

Actually there is, well sort of. Ian's brother Peter started (but never finished) a novel caled The Sett, about Britain's last line of defence should the Nazis invade.

Bits and pieces of this organisation (Home Guard types, but a little more lethal, with secret arms dumps secreted in badger type setts - hence the title - in the British countryside), have come to light in recent years.

Some details of this book are mentioned in Peter Fleming a Biography by Duff Hart-Davis and published by Jonathan Cape in 1974. There is also a later paperback edition, but I can't find mine to give details. This is a great book to read for those interested in the Fleming family.

I saw this today at Hastings but passed on the $25.00 price. Walmart.com has it for seventeen but I'll wait until my library gets a copy. I've been burned to many times paying twenty bucks for novels I ended up not liking.

A Bond fan who read this put a mini review on my Young Bond Dossier mySpace blog. He's wasn't a fan. Check it out.

Hmm...

Kind of a shame as it sounded like it could have been interesting. I still may give it a try.