The Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel [Import] [Paperback]

Kate Westbrook (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: John Murray (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719567424
• ISBN-13: 978-0719567421
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.9 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,716,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Oh, Jane...", May 16, 2008

By 

John Cox (Studio City, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Moneypenny Diaries (Hardcover)

The Moneypenny Diaries is the first in a trilogy of books by Samantha Weinberg (a.k.a. Kate Westbrook) chronicling the heretofore untold adventures of M's popular personal secretary. Until now, Miss Moneypenny has only been a figure behind a desk with a particular fascination for an agent with the number 007. But now she has a first name (Jane), a rich past (colonial Africa), and quite a few "Bondian" tales to tell of her own. The Moneypenny Diaries also reveal exactly what happened to 007 during those dark days between the books 'On Her Majesty's Secrete Service' and 'You Only Live Twice.' We even get to see Bond and Moneypenny join forces and play a major role in the real-life Cuban Missile Crisis!

I've now read the entire series (via the already released UK editions) and I highly recommend getting this excellent first book and getting hooked. It is a VERY good series and a must for Bond fans. Fans of the films might be a bit surprised to see their super agent in such a poor mental state after the murder of his wife, Tracy...but that's what makes the Bond books such a different (and, IMO, a far more rich) experience. The Moneypenny Diaries is a great way to start that experience.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining book, May 11, 2007

By 

M. Haddad (Cairo, Egypt) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Moneypenny Diaries : Guardian Angel (Paperback)

I thought this book would be full of laughs and "behind-the-scenes" giggles at the expense of Bond (all in good fun, of course). It isn't, not at all, but it is, nonetheless a really good book! It is well written, with details that correspond to the Ian Fleming series, and even to Ian Fleming himself. I look forward to the next in the series.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really Moneypenny!, July 9, 2008

By 

Jeanne Tassotto (Trapped in the Midwest) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Moneypenny Diaries (Hardcover)

Imagine that Miss Moneypenny of James Bond fame was a real person, as was Bond himself and that all the Bond adventures were based on fact. Astonding right? Now imagine that your quiet aunt Jane, was in fact Moneypenny and not the just the career civil servant you had always thought. This is the premise of the series (three books to date) of novels drawn from the secret diaries kept by Moneypenny and delivered ten years after her death to her niece, Kate, a Cambridge lecturer.

Kate has decided that the diaries should be brought to the public's attention to reveal what really happened behind the scenes of some of the most significant events of the late twentieth century. She has chosed to release the volumes, one year at a time with the events and people depicted therein properly documented and footnoted in a scholarly manner. The year she has decided to begin with is 1962, the year of the Cuban Missle Crisis and the year Bond was married and left a widower in a few hours time. Through Moneypenny's diaries we are returned to London of the swinging sixties, into the shadowy secret realm of MI6 to meet the real M, see the shiny new gadgets developed by Q and learn there is more, much more to the efficient Moneypenny than we had ever guessed.

This is a delightful take on the Bond saga. The author manages to remain true to the original stories and characters while intruducing new threads into the Bond universe. Soon the reader is caught up into the on going questions of what really had happened to Moneypenny's father during the waning days of WWII, to whether or not she could really trust her enigmatic 'R', who the mole in MI6 really was and whether or not Bond ever did keep that long promised dinner date. Hopefully more will be revealed in the next installment of Moneypenny's secret diaries.