City of Roses Psychiatric Institute patient James Flynn believes he’s a secret agent. Impeccably dressed, Flynn hilariously mistakes the staff for enemy agents and the other patients as operatives enjoying “much-needed R&R.” Naturally, when fellow patient Chloe claims someone is trying to kill her, Flynn is all ears.The institute staff believes Chloe tried to commit suicide. But Chloe, who is an actress, claims she nearly met her end at the hands of a local cinematographer. What’s more, the assault may have been related to an incident where Chloe accused an Academy Award-winning producer named Goldhammer of drugging and raping her. Flynn takes her at her word and, believing that she’s being held against her will at the institute, waits for the right moment to break her out.Author Haris Orkin is far from the first gifted storyteller to spoof James Bond, but he’s also taken the art form to new heights. Goldhammer has much in common with Mike Myers’ Austin Powers in Goldmember and the first Johnny English film, written by real-life Bond screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. Like those iconic characters, James Flynn possesses an amusing lack of self-awareness, as well as a habit of tangling with real-world villains he’ll never fully understand. It’s a winning combination that results in hilarious misunderstandings and compelling action scenes.With Goldhammer, Orkin delivers two significant contributions to the Bond parody canon. The first is the completeness of Flynn’s delusion, which creates wholly unique and highly memorable situational comedy. The second is the injection of serious social issues. Themes relating to date rape, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination, homophobia and even data privacy are core to the story. While these issues dampen the book’s overall comedic impact, they also make the concept of evil more contemporary and socially relevant than anything that has come before it.

A patient at a mental facility who believes he is a British spy stumbles upon a villain’s far-reaching conspiracy.James Flynn has been a patient at City of Roses Psychiatric Institute in California for 18 years, the entire time believing he is a special agent in Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The Don Quixote–esque Flynn grow up watching 1960s espionage films with such obsessive zeal they overtook his identity. He meets fellow patient Chloe Jablonski, an actor involuntarily committed for a suicidal drug overdose. She maintains she was roofied and raped by powerful movie producer Gary Goldhammer. Since he believes she has proof of the crime, Goldhammer pursues her, providing Flynn with yet another reason to spring into action. As it turns out, Goldhammer is an evil, egomaniacal man who has plans, employing a new technology, “to take over the mind of every person in America.” The author deftly presents the comically implausible—and uproariously funny—as credible; Flynn is insane, disconnected from reality, and undeniably brave and resourceful. “He was built for war.” He also has a peculiar penchant for finding genuine conspiracies and thwarting them, raising questions about the very strange nature of Flynn’s psychosis. Even though the plot is riddled with the darkest themes—violence, rape, mental illness—the novel remains more comic than tragic, even downright silly, and never truly disturbing. And Flynn is a compelling protagonist, as charming as he is unhinged, a handsome man who “was built like Jean-Claude Van Damme and moved like Bruce Lee.” For those readers in search of a farcical book that is intelligently rendered, this is a delightful novel, hilarious and inventive.A wonderfully humorous blend of James Bond and Don Quixote.