Ian Fleming

A signed and inscribed first edition of Thrilling Cities by Ian Fleming.

• Ian Fleming (English).
• London: Jonathan Cape, 1963.
• Inscribed to Una Trueblood, Fleming's secretary.
• With unclipped dustjacket, presented in a custom clamshell box.

Inscribed on the front endpaper by Fleming: “To Una/Who did so much of/the real work!/from/Ian Fleming.” The inscription is a warm one and Una is mentioned within the text of the book (”Take down a letter Miss Trueblood” – p. 28).

Una Trueblood was Fleming’s secretary at Kemsley. She typed up the television treatment that Fleming later developed into the novel Doctor No and, like many of Fleming’s acquaintances, she gives her name to a character in the novel: Mary Trueblood, secretary to the MI6 station in Jamaica. In the story, Mary Trueblood was a former Chief Officer WRNS and secretary to John Strangways, the head of the British Secret Service’s Caribbean station based in Jamaica. After assassinating Strangways for prying into Dr. Julius No’s business, his killers proceed to the station and murder Trueblood during her scheduled contact with London.

Both she and Strangways are placed in a weighted coffin and dumped in the Mona Reservoir; sinking into a fifty-fathom grave as the station and its records burn to the ground. After an official investigation is launched into their disappearance, the head of the Secret Service, M, noting her good looks, floats the idea that they might have run off together.

Una Trueblood, a real-life Miss Moneypenny, worked for over ten years as Fleming’s secretary at The Sunday Times. She was known as ‘a demon typist’ and typed the manuscripts of Fleming’s Bond novels upon his return from Jamaica each year. Trueblood was mentioned in Fleming’s Thrilling Cities and was known by Fleming for her professionalism and fastidiousness. Una once spoke of her boss’s move into literature: “He always said he only wrote Casino Royale, the first Bond book, because he was on the plane to Jamaica and he read such a bad, boring thriller that he thought he could do better himself.”