Johnny Fedora is a fictional

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

secret agent Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

who was the protagonist of 16 novels published between 1951 and 1971. Written by Shaun Lloyd McCarthy, under the pseudonym of Desmond Cory, Fedora was dubbed by literary critics as the 'thinking man's

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

'. Preceding Bond, Fedora was also a hired assassin ("hired to kill"), but for many the Fedora plots were more complex and intellectual. The son of a

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father and

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mother, Fedora was driven as much by a need to avenge the death of his parents (at the hands of Spanish fascists) as by patriotism or loyalty to

British Intelligence The Government of the United Kingdom maintains intelligence agencies within three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These agencies are responsible for collecting and analysing foreign and d ...

. He got his start working behind the lines during WWII, assassinating Nazis. The debonair Fedora was always a tough and competent agent, and his first adventures were written in a more light-hearted manner than the latter ones. Like Bond, he had passionate affairs with a wide variety of women around the world (though never as a ruse to gain intelligence), but his relationships tended to be more nuanced, and sometimes spanned several novels. The final books in the series featured his nemesis, Feramontov, a deadly and highly skilled

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agent, whose ruthlessness went as far as trying to detonate a nuclear bomb in Spain. 1960's ''The Head'', atypical of the series as a whole, featured Johnny, temporarily without any mission from his handlers, getting involved in a publicity stunt for a film that involved carting a massive statue of Jesus to the top of a high Spanish mountain.

Novels

#''Secret Ministry'' (1951) #''This Traitor, Death'' (1952) #''Dead Man Falling'' (1953) #''Intrigue'' (1954) #''Height of Day'' (1955) #''High Requiem'' (1956) #''Johnny Goes North'' (1956) #''Johnny Goes East'' (1958) #''Johnny Goes West'' (1959) #''Johnny Goes South'' (1959) #''The Head'' (1960) #''Undertow'' (1962) #''Hammerhead'' (1963) #''Feramontov'' (1966) #''Timelock'' (1967) #''Sunburst'' (1971)

External links

Johnny Fedora Website

Desmond Cory's famous secret agent - published July 2008] Fictional secret agents and spies, Fedora, Johnny Series of books {{novel-char-stub