The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
Many novels are fantasies by their very nature — that’s why once they were considered dangerous for women. Although not all, of course; nobody yearns to be Shuggie Bain or Gregor Samsa or Miss Havisham.
But being James Bond or Jack Aubrey or Becky Sharp … well, that’s a different story. The nature of fantasies changes over time — women for many years would report dreams of being in the workplace that wouldn’t even occur to men, which accounts for some of the popularity of Jackie Collins’s novels. Our deepest fantasies do not lie when it comes to the till, as the 150 million readers who liked learning about Anastasia Steele being smacked on the arse surely attest.
