Francine Mathews Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Francine Matthews writes about Ian Fleming's role in British war intelligence and the basis for her novel Too Bad To Die.

I shouldn't blame Ian Fleming for my years in the CIA—probably John le Carré is responsible for those—but it's true that Fleming's character, James Bond, casts a long shadow over every woman who wants to be a spy. Bond Girls are so glamorous, and they die so horribly, tripping on their high heels with a gasp of "James!" as a sniper fires. My own training was more practical: dead drops, agent handling, escape and evasion, explosives—but I was allowed to carry a lipstick that perfectly matched my field camouflage.

I remembered all that as I invented the character of Siranoush in Too Bad to Die: a Bond Girl with a vengeance, running circles around Ian Fleming. I love to write fiction based on the secret battles of World War II, and Fleming is behind any number of them. I ran into Fleming so often, in fact, that I began to wonder how much of his story was truth, and how much fiction.

I learned that the man friends referred to jokingly as a "chocolate sailor," because he looked too good to be true in his reserve naval uniform, found a home and a calling amid the white lies of war. Fleming had grown up in the embrace of the British aristocracy: educated at Eton and Sandhurst, the scion of a ...