'Mr Mortdecai, why do you suppose I and my superiors have preserved you from death at very very great trouble and expense?'
Charlie Mortdecai - degenerate aristocrat and victim of his own larceny and licentousness - has no idea. Until it is made clear to him that he must marry the beautiful, sex-crazed and very, very rich Johanna Krampf. The fly in the ointment is that Johanna thinks nothing of involving poor Charlie in her life-threatening schemes such as monarch-assassination, heroin smuggling and - worst of all - survival training at a college for feminist spies. Perhaps, it's all in a good cause - if only Charlie can live long enough to find out.