Amazon.com Review
Ian Fleming's bestselling thrillers relied for their appeal on the attractions of danger, especially in the sexual allure of their handsome, fearless, hardhearted hero, James Bond. Although the Bond of the movies is as devoted a womanizer as the character in the books, his sadistic tendencies are played down, as is his mental instability. In the most recent films, even the ubiquitous Bond cigarette is gone. Is nothing sacred?
Now Mabel Maney's giddy and outrageous spoof of the Bond books ousts the main character himself. As her story opens, James has been locked away in a Swiss sanitarium, having at last "lost his nerve." The British Secret Service plots to recruit his bookish, unambitious lesbian twin sister, Jane, hoping that in disguise, she will be a convincing stand-in for the world-famous agent.
Although thrilled by the tailored suit the government provides, Jane is a reluctant spy. What she doesn't know is that her new girlfriend, Bridget, ostensibly a cosmetic sales girl, is in fact a feminist counterspy struggling to foil a fascist scheme to put the aging Duke and Duchess of Windsor on the throne. Will Bridget misplace her top-secret cipher panties in a moment of passion? Can Jane avoid being killed for England? Can she keep the suit? With her usual flair for period detail, Maney (The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend) paints a vivid, irreverent picture of the Bond era and spoofs Fleming's lingering romance with Empire. --Regina Marler
From Publishers Weekly
At the start of this wacky lesbian spin on the Bond books, it's 1962, and the cranky, conservative Sons of Britain Society are plotting to overthrow Elizabeth II. Unfortunately, the Secret Service isn't up to full speed: its best agent has suffered a nervous breakdown, just before an important royal audience. Tall, handsome and desperately in need of cash, Jane Bond accepts œ1,000 to impersonate her brother James. She soon finds herself haplessly embroiled in a dangerous political conspiracy and happily ensnared in a hot romance with agent Bridget St Claire of G.E.O.R.G.I.E. (Greater European Organization of Radical Girls Interdicting Evil), who is also on the trail of the SOBS. Maney (The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend: A Nancy Clue Mystery; A Ghost in the Closet: A Hardly Boys Mystery) is known for her affectionately campy parodies of everybody's favorite teen sleuths, delicious burlesques in which these formerly chaste adolescents indulge in the love that dares not speak its name. There is an enthusiastic audience for this kind of fun gay fare, but Maney's latest book is short on fizz. Scenes both boring and pointless exhaustive detailing of bureaucratic procedures, inane conversations between minor characters, a protracted argument over what to have for breakfast keep the story from achieving an exciting pace. And the author's attempts to add psychological depth to her story are regrettable. Jane's recollections of her silent, difficult, depressed father to cite just one example have no place in what is ostensibly a sexy, saucy romp.
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