DESIREE FLEMING

Full Name:	Desiree Fleming
Nationality:	American
Organization:	The Bureau
Occupation	Agent

Creator:	Max Van Derveer
Time Span:	1967 - 1967

ABOUT THE SERIES

       Desiree Fleming is an agent with the Bureau.
       This is not the FBI. but a different agency with the U.S. government, one dealing in counter-espionage and apparently having a large playing field with operations in other parts of the world, like the CIA, and inside America, like the aforementioned FBI. It is headed by "Holly" (no other name given), described as "small in stature, pure white hair sticking up from his skull like oat shoots, pleasant patrician face, a man who looked like he could be any of Washington's big politicos, or anyone's father."
       When we first meet Fleming, she has just recently graduated from the Bureau's training and is about to become a full time active agent. She is 23 years old and eager to become involved in something with some action. She is pretty but really does not care one way or the other about it. "For as long as she could remember, she had had total disdain for changing style and fad. She was a champion of comfort. Short hair, easy to clean and manage", she was fond of capri pants and loafers which allowed her to move quickly and freely. This would come in handy a time or two.
       We learn early on she is the daughter of the Bureau's most experience and successful agent, one who is there when she has her first mission and who obviously taught her a lot but there is no doubt she is independent and more than happy to work on her own. She shows immediately she has a keen eye for detail and can handle herself under pressure and is not afraid to speak her mind or take her own initiative when she is certain she is right.
       She is young but feisty.

NOVELLAS AND SHORT STORIES

Number of Stories:	3
First Appearance:	1967
Last Appearance:	1967


1			Why Not Bomb Las Vegas? Written by Max Van Derveer Copyright: 1967 Found in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, v20 #5, April 1967. At a sporting event in a small city, remote controlled small drones attack with explosives, killed dozens and frightening the citizenry. Another attack soon thereafter creates almost a ghost town. The Bureau is after who is behind it and since newcomer Desiree Fleming was actually at the first event, she is literally and figuratively in the middle of things.

2			Sam, The Secret Weapon Written by Max Van Derveer Copyright: 1967 Found in The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Magazine v1 #6 - October, 1967. Desiree Fleming and others from the Bureau have been tasked with protecting several key scientists about to meet to create a revolutionary new weapon. Her protectee, Sam, is the main man behind the invention and the one most in need of protection but he chafes at her intrusion, and her presence.

3			The Courier Written by Max Van Derveer Copyright: 1967 Found in The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Magazine v2 #1 - December, 1967. [plot unknown]

MY COMMENTS

With only three adventures to go by, and these being novelettes, it is hard to get a good picture about Desiree Fleming but from the little we have, I like her. The quick thinking and independent attitude is appealing. The writing is straight-forward and solid though a tad plain and a bit staccato in parts. Still, the stories are interesting and swiftly consumed. I would have been happy with more, which is a positive, but was not too upset by there being no more, which is not.
These tales are obviously intended to be filler stories for the magazines in which they appeared, added value to the main attraction, and as such, they are worth the time spent reading. Being such, though, it is hard to get any feeling whether Fleming might have been ready for the center stage.

GRADE

My Grade: B-

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