In Saving the Queen and in each subsequent novel, the hero solves a problem involving a threat to national security, has a sexual adventure, faces death and returns home to Sally. The threats to national security are fairly suspenseful because Buckley tells the reader who the villain really is and makes him worry until Oakes catches on. Of course the reader knows that Oakes or Rufus will certainly figure out what the villain is doing and stop him before it is too late, but the way in which this is done is enjoyable.

Blackford Oakes's sexual adventures have an interesting history. According to Buckley, Vladimir Nabokov, one of the most important writers of the second half of the twentieth century, advised him to include at least one sex scene in each novel to make it commercially successful. In this book, Oakes has sex with Queen Caroline nine times...