The Lifeline (sometimes written as The Life-Line) is a 1946 thriller novel by the British writer Phyllis Bottome.

[1] It has been suggested as a direct influence on Ian Fleming, who had once attended a school run by Bottome, and his later creation of the James Bond stories.

Equally the protagonist Mark Chalmers may have been partly based on Fleming himself.

[3] An Eton schoolmaster heading off on his annual visit to the Austrian Alps, which has recently been annexed by Germany agrees to a casual request from a Foreign Office friend to carry a message to the country.

Before long he finds himself embroiled in the anti-Nazi resistance and targeted by the Gestapo.