Thrilling fun with Bridget Bond

FictionAt a glamorous face cream launch in Miami, beauty journalist Olivia Joules finds Osama bin Laden.

Well she thinks she does, but then, as the title of the book warns, she does have an overactive imagination.

He's a bit small for Osama but, she reasons, he could have had "the length taken out of his legs" and had a bit of plastic surgery, and however unlikely it seems, her encounter with the mysterious Pierre Feramo convinces her that she has found the world's most wanted man. "I'm going to get to the bottom of it. I'm going to bring him to justice, save the world from terror and become a twenty-five-times millionaire" - and that's the broad outline of the plot of Helen Fielding's new novel.

Despite the kidnappings, bombs, treacherous statuesque beauties, double agents and glamorous locations, Fielding's new book is not so much a spy thriller as a chick-lit caper; more Bridget Bond than James Bond.

Fielding tries hard to make her new heroine as different as possible from her phenomenally successful creation Bridget Jones, but is not entirely successful. Olivia is so drop-dead gorgeous that in a crowded room of pneumatic-breasted starlets, she's the one that attracts the film producer; she's very merrily single, multi- talented and she does what she damn well likes. It's clear from the start that she would never be caught short on a date wearing her granny knickers - she's more of a La Perla thong girl.

As a teenager she saw her parents and brother mowed down at a zebra crossing and resolved there and then "not to give a shit" and thanks to some smart investments of her parent's insurance policies she has the money to do just that. Once she files her beauty cream story and chickens out of telling the FBI her Osama theory, she's off on an adventure, following the by-now smitten Feramo.

He turns out to be an al-Qaeda operative and Olivia is recruited by MI6, so the action ricochets around the globe from LA and Honduras to an oak-panelled country pile in the English countryside, where she is trained up and supplied with spy gadgets.

But while Olivia speaks Arabic, has killer weapons sewn into her Wonderbra and a ring that doubles as a saw, klutzy Bridget keeps breaking through. Before her first hot date with Feramo in LA she has a facial that leaves her face covered in red welts; she may be armed to the teeth by the professionals but doesn't go anywhere without a hat pin, and while on her life-threatening MI6 mission she takes an impromptu detour to the pyramids and ends up accidentally buying a large Egyptian rug that she has to lug around, quite hilariously, for a couple of scenes.

As with all Fielding's novels there's no sense that she's taking the whole business too seriously, she just seems to be having a great time nailing her characters (the PR woman in Miami "with the sort of frightening white-toothed smile that looks like that of an angry monkey") and creating vividly observed relationships and scenes. The plot is too loose and fanciful to appeal to fans of spy thrillers but Fielding fans will enjoy every minute of this funny, very easy-going novel.

Bernice Harrison is a freelance journalist and Radio Critic of The Irish Times

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination By Helen Fielding Picador, 344pp. £12.99