By Anthony Horowitz

Jonathan Cape, out now

M is dead – and James Bond has finally carried out his mission for Moscow…

Anthony Horowitz has achieved his aim of writing stories at three critical junctures in James Bond’s life – his first mission for the Secret Service (Forever and a Day), mid-career (Trigger Mortis) and what could easily be his last (With a Mind to Kill). It’s set after The Man with the Golden Gun but really is a continuation of Fleming’s trajectory for Bond that began with the death of Tracy in OHMSS (sorry if that’s a spoiler for a 60 year old book / 50+ year old film!). You could in fact trace it back even further to the way in which Bond views the world and what Le Chiffre tells him in Casino Royale…

To an extent, it’s the flipside of Kingsley Amis/Robert Markham’s Colonel Sun: there, the aim was to continue the literary adventures of 007, and Markham suggests that a hard shell accretes once more around Bond following his trip through Russia and brainwashing between You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun. Horowitz interprets events differently: Bond is learning to feel and to question, and at critical points those feelings lead him into what professionally could be mistakes – notably not seeing other agents as expendable in the service of the mission. This development takes Bond and Horowitz into territory that both John le Carré and Len Deighton explored in their spy stories – there’s a deliberate overlap with one of the most famous of the former’s novels towards the end and there’s unfortunate timing in the airing of an adaptation of the latter’s best known work just as this was coming out. Fleming moved Bond out of that world with the creation of Doctor No and Auric Goldfinger, and shoved him firmly into a more heightened reality with the creation of Blofeld and SPECTRE; Horowitz steers him back towards the reality of the spy world.

Horowitz emulates Fleming’s style – not just in the descriptions that owe an acknowledged debt to Thrilling Cities – and the book rockets along. There is a bit of an over-reliance on continuity references – From Russia, With Love is visited frequently, and you need a good memory of Golden Gun (or if you’ve got access, listen to the Radio 4 version!) to understand the various references – and Horowitz incorporates more real-life people than Fleming ever did. (There’s also the odd interesting piece of “new” continuity – M has a wife and deceased son…?)

However, with the new OO section novels coming in September, and a rethink clearly coming for the movies following Daniel Craig’s departure in No Time to Die, this is a timely reminder of the core elements of Bond, and it will be interesting to read Horowitz’s trilogy in chronological order a few months down the line.

Verdict: To Russia, With a Mission – an appropriate conclusion to Horowitz’s contribution to the saga. 7/10

Paul Simpson

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