Steve Epting

This is a beautiful deluxe edition of one of the best comic spy stories I read (Queen and Country came to my mind when I first saw Velvet comic). Art is great, it feels like you are following a TV show frame after frame. Setting is also very well selected - Cold War period, 1970's. There are no omnipotent devices so common in today's fiction - everything requires investigation and field-work. At moments you truly sympathize with the security officer chasing down Velvet - she makes them jump all over the world after her only to find out they were chasing ghosts and are nowhere near to capturing Velvet.

Main protagonist, Velvet Templeton, works as a secretary for a director of ultra secret intelligence agency. When one of the agents gets killed in action she takes interest and soon find herself fighting on all fronts trying to escape people that are now trying to frame her and paint her as one of the conspirators. She is forced to run but decides to find out the truth and finally punish those responsible. What her enemies do not expect is that Velvet is not just a secretary - she is retired agent and what an agent indeed. In all aspects Velvet is female James Bond - both in the way she looks at male agents she works/worked with and the way she can control her emotions and eliminate threats without second thought. Mission comes first, everything else comes second.

Non-stop action, various locals, again art is just gorgeous. If you like novels like adventures of Matt Helm, Modesty Blaise, James Bond, [above mentioned] Queen and Country or novels like Mask of Dimitrios and of course Le Carre's works you will like this.

Highly recommended to all thriller and spy-fiction fans.… (mehr)