Mrs Mo's Review: Olivis Joules and the Overactive Imagination

Move over James Bond. A sexy new crime fighter is in town and she responds to Olivia. Oliva Joules.

Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones Diary, brings us an even more remarkable heroine for the 21rst century. With a mix of Bridget and Bond, Fielding brings to life a journalist turned super sleuth in a fun and action packed adventure.

Olivia Joules has just been demoted from International news coverage at the Sunday Times to the style pages due to her wandering imagination and ability to miss relevant stories. She has been assigned to the launch of a new skin care line in Miami and is thrust into the Hollywood/Starving Actor/Life in Excess world. She suddenly catches the eye of uber producer Pierre Ferramo whom she thinks looks like Osama Bin Laden in disguise. She immediately lets her imagination take over and becomes convinced that Ferramo is a terrorist secretly plotting an Al-Qaeda attack in Miami and tries to follow her instinct and meet her deadlines.

When an explosion rips apart the grand OceansApart floating luxury apartment cruiseliner, Olivia suspects Ferramo is behind it and decides to make it her mission to unravel his plot. Her world becomes engrossed in amateur espionage with freelance journalism as her ruse. Olivia soon discovers that she is not the only one snooping for information. Her hotel is bugged, drugs are planted in her luggage and soon the MI6 (UK's Secret Intelligence Service) is questioning her connection to Ferramo.

As fate would have it, Olivia gets recruited to the MI6 and lets Ferramo's obsessive courtship continue as she aids in his capture.

While the plot is fun and enticing, it sometimes reads like a Bridget Jones fantasy world with butt kicking and sexy sick pack abs in scuba gear. And I kinda felt like the Obsama Bin Laden/Al-Qaeda storyline was a little too current to have fun with. The story was addicting and I looked forward to Olivia's next adventure, trying to get a mental image of what this would look like on screen. I enjoy Fielding's humor and writing style and really don't care that the plot is a little over-the-top. That's what makes the book exciting!