The Spy Who Inspired Me (2020)

For legal reasons, this novel does not mention J*mes B*nd. Which is a shame, because it is a comedy based on the idea that Ian Fleming's famously macho spy might have been inspired by a woman…

It is April 1944, and chic armchair naval officer Ian Lemming is accidentally beached in Nazi-occupied Normandy. With no access to a razor or clean underwear, and deprived of his cigarettes, Lemming just wants to go home. But he is stranded with a young, though hugely experienced, female agent called Margaux Lynd, who is on a perilous mission to unmask traitors in a French Resistance network. So, as she bullies him across France and into Paris, Lemming receives a painful crash course in spy craft, and starts to fantasize about a fictional agent — male of course — who would operate only in the most luxurious conditions, and lord it over totally subservient women.

A world-famous spy is born…