By Kim Sherwood

HarperCollins, out now

 

In the wake of 007’s disappearance, the burden falls on three younger 00 agents…

This is a radical departure for the Ian Fleming Foundation, after 15 or so years of new James Bond books that – with one notable exception – hewed firmly to Ian Fleming’s creation and timeline. We’ve only just had the conclusion of Anthony Horowitz’s trilogy of tales that encompassed the agent’s entire career, and now we have something that basically blows everything we thought we could take for granted out of the window.

(That notable exception is of course Jeffrey Deaver’s Carte Blanche, of which I know I’m one of the minority of fans. That redeveloped Bond for the 21st century, keeping some of the precepts, but modernising things. The Dynamite comics have done something similar.)

Sherwood has a huge task in reinventing the Bond world once more – something that the movie producers are also facing, and, as is clear from the current crop of interviews, they’re not racing it. Double or Nothing has elements of Fleming in it, both in the fiction and the writing style, but it doesn’t feel beholden, as the continuation authors have, to be a replication.

I’m a firm believer that if you write a Sherlock Holmes story, there’s no point having it narrated by Watson unless you’re going to emulate Conan Doyle’s style; but we’ve had plenty of ersatz Fleming, some of which has been excellent, others of which I’ve read on release and only gone back to if research has required it. Here, some of Fleming’s fascinations are echoed, and even some of his stylistic tricks (go back and read the interrogation scene in Goldfinger that’s been superseded in popular memory by its laser-enhanced movie counterpart and you see where some of the sequences here have their roots). One trick we could have perhaps done without replicating is Fleming’s inaccuracies over geography (the description of Lewes is wrong; I can’t speak to anywhere else). But in an odd way the whole thing feels almost more like a souped-up version of John Gardner’s Bond, not so much in specifics as in the areas that it’s chosen to alter for a new era.

There’s a larger question to be asked about this series: namely, why use Bond, if you’re going to change so much? The presence of 007 hangs over this throughout, but the problem is it can’t be the James Bond we know from Fleming – there are references back to previous cases but they must all have happened in moderately recent time (and Sherwood’s invocation of Fleming’s rule that 00s retire at 45 really doesn’t help the suspension of disbelief that all this could have happened while Bond was in the section and he’s still not reached mandatory retirement age). Yet two of the characters are drawn from distinctly Cold War tales, both within For Your Eyes Only, and that dichotomy is a distraction for the Bond-savvy reader. And the experiences this James has with the other characters – both new and “legacy” – are clearly different in tone and outlook.

Also, there’s yet another instance of what I’ll call Mission: Impossible syndrome (the need for those rebooting to do away with and/or completely change the nature of a central part of the original – Jim Phelps’ behaviour in the de Palma film, Vulcan in the 2009 Star Trek movie) that I’m sure is meant to make us believe that anything is possible… but after No Time to Die, we already know that anything in the Bond world can and will be countenanced. And, as Jeff Goldblum would no doubt point out, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

On a personal level, the biggest irritation, though, is the character names, drawing from screen versions of the Bond world. Johanna Harwood: credited scriptwriter. Bob Simmons: stunt guy, forever memorialised in quizzes as the first person to play Bond on the big screen. Sid Bashir: an amalgamation of actor (even using Sid’s full name at times) and character from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – who wanted to play at being James Bond (given what happens, is there some deeper meta meaning here?!). I don’t believe for one second that there wasn’t discussion about this – nothing on an official Bond book goes through “on the nod” – but I was really hoping for a reveal similar to that in Mathis’ death scene in Quantum of Solace that these are purely cover names…

These are, though, criticisms of the set up, a lot of which may not be on Sherwood’s shoulders. Does she pull off the reinvention? On the whole, yes.

Once you get used to the idea that there are familiarly-named characters doing unfamiliar things – the way in which SIS operates is noticeably changed – the focus is on the three surviving members of the 00 section, who are markedly different in pretty much every way conceivable from James Bond. Joseph Dryden is, to my mind, by far the best of these, a man with weaknesses that he has made strengths, and helped by spending the vast majority of the story away from the others, dealing with the direct threat (again, there are some Gardner echoes from Licence Renewed in terms of the perceived bad guy), while navigating a difficult path with a former lover.

Harwood and Bashir are interlinked on a professional, personal and storytelling level throughout the book, and they’re also the strongest links back to 007. There’s a mole hunt, as well as a new evil organisation, and no, there’s no mention of a certain Mr Blofeld… although somehow it won’t surprise me if the third book in the trilogy ties him in. The action sequences are taut (and follow the current style of dropping into first person thoughts without any sort of indication visually with italics etc.) and Sherwood gets an energy into a car chase that is sorely lacking in many other examples recently, reminding me of some of the best of Adam Hall’s Quiller thrillers. The plotting is convoluted but tracks through, and Sherwood juggles the multiple plotlines well, providing a diverse and multifaceted world that I’m looking forward to returning to soon.

Verdict: It’s a good solid thriller – and it would be even without the 00 universe trappings, although I am intrigued by the prospect of encountering Sherwood’s take on Bond properly in book 2, or more likely, 3. 7/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk