WILL FLEMYNG

Full Name:	Will Flemyng
Nationality:	British
Organization:	British Intelligence
Occupation	Agent

Creator:	James Naughtie
Time Span:	2014 - 2023

ABOUT THE SERIES

Will Flemyng is a former agent with British Intelligence.

Nowadays he hold a far higher position with considerable more authority and responsibility; he is currently described as being "a Foreign Office minister" in the British government. His days of being placed behind enemy lines vying for answers to obscure questions and risking his life every time he did his job were well behind him and he would never have expected to have to call upon those old skills and instincts again. He would have been wrong to think that.

The timeframe for Flemyng's forced return to the covert world is the mid-70s, July of 1976 for the first recorded adventure, said to have been the hottest month on record up to that time for Great Britain. The second adventure takes us further back to the time - near 1967 - that Flemyng was still in the Game. The third returns to Flemyng's present in the late 70's with the Troubles in full session and Flemyng having advanced in accomplishments to be an Ambassador.

Flemyng, formerly of MI6 and now "in government" is often richly dressed displaying a "man of style and purpose", especially with his tanned and slim body and a face with sharp edges "giving him a clear profile:. His form might still be impressive even after a few years out of the action but it does carry the remnants of those days, including a scar which runs from his neck across his chest which he "picked up in Vienna where "the spies enjoyed opera .. as well as thrills in the street".

Flemyng is of Scottish-American lineage, one of three sons with one of his brothers chosing American citizenry and working for the American Secret Service while his other brother opting to remain in the family estate in Altnabuie, Scotland, just north of Glasgow.

Good Lines:
- "Flemyng believed that most secret servants came in two guises: the silk-smoothies who were quiet and always listening, or the unbuttoned wild boys who were always talking."

BOOKS

Number of Books:	3
First Appearance:	2014
Last Appearance:	2023


1			The Madness Of July Written by James Naughtie Copyright: 2014 "It is a sweltering July in the mid-1970s, and for Will Flemyng, foreign office minister, the temperature is rising with each passing hour. A mysterious death has exposed secret passions in government, bringing on a political crisis that will draw him back into a familiar world of danger and deceit. For Flemyng has a past. He was trained as a spy for a life behind enemy lines and now he's compelled to go back. In the course of one long weekend he must question all his loyalties: to his friends, his enemies, and to his own two brothers."

2			Paris Spring Written by James Naughtie Copyright: 2016 A prequel. "The cafes are alive with talk of revolution, but for Scottish-American Will Flemyng—a spy working in the British Embassy—the crisis is personal. A few words from a stranger on the metro change his life. His family is threatened with ruin and he now faces the spy's oldest fear: exposure. Freddy Craven is the hero and mentor Flemyng would trust with his life, but when he is tempted into a dark, Cold War labyrinth, he chooses the dangerous path and plays his game alone. And when glamorous, globe-trotting journalist Grace Quincy, in pursuit of a big story, is found dead in the Pere Lachaise..."

3			The Spy Across the Water Written by James Naughtie Copyright: 2023 "Faces from the past appear from nowhere at a family funeral, and Will Flemyng, spy-turned-ambassador, is drawn into twin mysteries that threaten everything he holds dear. From Washington, he's pitched back into the Troubles in Northern Ireland and an explosive secret hidden deep in the most dangerous but fulfilling friendship he has known. And while he confronts shadowy adversaries in American streets, and looks for solace at home in the Scottish Highlands, he discovers that his government's most precious Cold War agent is in mortal danger and needs his help to survive."

MY COMMENTS

The writings of author James Naughtie as he tells us of three different periods of time in the life of his star character, Will Flemyng, reminds me considerably of the works of John Buchan nearly a century before. The time period is, of course, quite a bit different and Flemyng is/was a professional spook while Buchans Richard Hannay was a very gifted amateur. But there is a feeling of upper crust meeting low-lifes in a fight to the death throughout a lot of his three adventures - at least when those upper crust folks are not vying for survival with people on their own strata. Flemyng, the experienced spy, falls back with a bit of stumble here and there to his days in the cloak-and-dagger world and it is fun watching him not really want to go back to the old ways but kind of secretly relishing it at the same time.

GRADE

My Grade: B+

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