Take Over (James Bond)

Spy author Donald McCormick believes this "remarkable story" is perhaps Ian Fleming's strangest legacy.

[1] In 1970 a retired bank officer and his daughter who have never been identified claimed to have transcribed works from the "great yonder" by deceased authors.

[2][contradictory] Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, died on 12 August 1964 of a heart attack.

In December 1969, when Vera was recovering from an illness, she glanced at her mother's framed photograph on the piano and wished they could still talk.

Eventually Mrs. A. began dictating new works of fiction by deceased authors who would not let death hamper their literary ambitions.

Also in this spiritual consortium were Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, Edgar Wallace, Ruby M. Ayres and W. Somerset Maugham.

For example, the authors "described a room in a private house as a lounge," something Peter Fleming believed his brother Ian would never do no matter how "villainous the occupants."

Vera, who sat with pad on knee, quickly wrote in her mother's handwriting that Ian "realizes the book is not his style but hopes to be able eventually to get this over correctly, although it may take time.

Peter Fleming believed that under normal circumstances it would have been remarkable enough for someone like herself and in her position to write over one hundred thousand words in eight months.

Duff Hart-Davis, himself also a novelist, notes that "the sheer energy needed to put 100,000 words on paper is enormous," and could not discern where Vera's "momentum could have emanated.

"[3] Hart-Davis believes that Peter Fleming failed to consider the possibility that Mr. A. had unknowingly transmitted the communications "telepathically and subconsciously" to Vera.

"[7] No matter, this incident "greatly enlivened"[3] Peter Fleming's final winter - he died of a heart attack in August 1971 - and "in the spring of 1971" wrote an article which he submitted to The Sunday Times who accepted it offering £500 for the "first British serial rights" and made it the weekly main feature[3] publishing it in their July 18, 1971 issue.

"[3] In November 1970, soon after meeting Peter Fleming, Vera began to transcribe a 30,000 word anthology entitled Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Within two months Edgar Wallace had written five stories, H. G. Wells and Ian Fleming two each, Arthur Conan Doyle and W. Somerset Maugham one each.

In early 1971, after finishing Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Vera began transcribing a full-length novel by Maugham.Hope and fear continuously cantered in and out of my uncertain mind as I gazed from the opened latticed window upon the scurrying, fluttering, eddying autumn leaves caught and twirled hither and thither by the wind.This too, Peter Fleming read.

"[2] Having written several thousand words, Vera ceased transcribing the work when her husband - who had been ailing for some time - died in February 1971.