The  thriller which inspired James Bond, by Phyllis Bottome, the woman who taught Ian Fleming to write.

First published in 1946, Bottome’s hero shares many similarities with Ian Fleming’s Bond. It seems that Bond may not have existed without Bottome. It was at the school she ran in Austria with her ex-spy husband, Ernan Forbes Dennis, that she taught Fleming to write.

Mark Chalmers, 36, dark haired, athletic, keen on skiing and winter sports, speaks fluent French and German and has a taste for wine, food and women. Sounds familiar?

It is 1938, pre the Munich Agreement and post Anschluss. Chalmers, a master at Eton, is recruited by an old friend at the Foreign Office and introduced to his boss ‘B’. Chalmers reluctantly agrees to take on a hazardous mission for British Intelligence – to parachute into Nazi-occupied Austria and pass on information to a British agent. In case of trouble he is given a suicide pill.  

Chalmers has no intention of committing himself beyond this one job but once he reaches his destination, he finds himself sucked into the cause fighting fascism with the Austrian-German Underground - until there is no turning back. 

‘A thriller of a highly diverting and original kind, long overdue a new lease of life’ Miles Jupp