That is always a reason not to quote.
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Happening right now, but available to watch later as well. Kim Sherwood is interviewing Anthony Horowitz about With a Mind to Kill at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. There might be a few bits about Double Or Nothing, but seems to be mostly focused on Horowitz.
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I hope she talks about the villain next.
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A more positive than negative review. From The Telegraph UK. [quote=“MaxZorin, post:205, topic:2172, full:true”]
A more positive than negative review. Minor spoilers inside.
Minor spoilers inside.
Can the 007 series continue without Bond? This book has an answer
3 out of 5 stars
In Kim Sherwood’s novel Double or Nothing*, ‘Miss’ Moneypenny has become ‘Ms’, and is now a Jaguar-driving spymaster*
By Jake Kerridge
Whenever I read one of the many James Bond novels written by hands other than Ian Fleming’s, there always comes a point when my inner Alan Partridge mutters: “Stop getting Bond wrong!” I can watch even Roger Moore with pleasure in the films, but with a book, if I think for the briefest moment that Bond wouldn’t do that or say that or think that, the whole exercise suddenly seems rather pointless.
Kim Sherwood has sidestepped this problem in the first of a new series of novels set “in the Bond universe” and endorsed by the Ian Fleming estate: Bond doesn’t appear at all, except in the briefest of flashbacks. 007 is MIA, thought to have been captured by Rattenfänger, a terrorist group so ruthless as to make Smersh look like the Red Cross.
You might think a novel about the Double 0 Section of MI6 with no James Bond would be Hamlet without the Prince, but I can’t say I missed him much while I was bowled along by Sherwood’s yarn. Other familiar characters are here, however, albeit retooled for the 21st Century.
Miss – or, these days, “Ms” – Moneypenny has graduated from typing to running the 00 section, and drives a “1967 Jaguar E-Type Series 1 4.2 in British racing green”, newly converted to electric by Q Branch, where in the original novels she seemed like one of nature’s bus users. Q himself has undergone an even more radical transition than that of the bufferish Desmond Llewellyn into the hipstery Ben Whishaw in the films, but I won’t give away the details.
The focus of the novel is on not one but three Double 0 agents. 003 is Johanna Harwood, an ex-doctor who’s junked the Hippocratic oath. 009 is Aazar Siddig Bashir, a chess champion quietly appalled by Bond’s breezy amorality: gunning for baddies, part of his mind is focused on “trying not to want to kill, because a licence shouldn’t mean a desire”.
Finally there’s 004, Joe Dryden – gay, deaf, working-class and black. He’s also apparently not one for following the news, as Ms Moneypenny has to break it to him that the climate is in a spot of bother – “Modelling shows that if we continue business as usual, we could see a five-degree increase by the end of the century. Melting Arctic. Rising seas.” This is in the course of a briefing on tech billionaire Sir Bertram Paradise, whose geo-engineering schemes may represent the planet’s best hope. The trouble is that the Rattenfänger gang look to be trying to nobble Sir Bertram and hold the world to ransom.
As our three heroes get on with saving the day while also puzzling out who’s the mole in MI6 responsible for getting Bond captured, Sherwood bustles us round the world – from Syria to the Kazakh desert to Hong Kong – and treats us to a blizzard of well-executed set-pieces, including a thrilling boxing competition and a hair-raising encounter with a tiger.
Unshackled from the burden of fidelity to Fleming’s character, her book feels a lot freer and more spontaneous than the more conventional Bond continuation novels, while still managing to capture something of Fleming’s rollicking spirit – as well as sharing his taste for sadistic violence.
Sherwood – whose only previous publication is Testament, an acclaimed literary novel about a Holocaust survivor – has a nice line in banter between her Double 0s, and although she sometimes overwrites (“His chest was tight with smoke, which had poured down his throat like concrete eager to fill a void”), she is more often neat and concise.
There is the odd moment of guying the franchise – one villain lays “a mock hand over his mouth” and exclaims “I’ve said too much” after outlining his evil plan to a Double 0. But there’s also one of those foreign baddies who end sentences by saying “yes?” in a sinister way (“Always the knight in shining armour, yes?”) who doesn’t seem to be intended as a parody.
The book could do with a little more of that magical vitality that makes you happy to swallow any absurdity in Fleming’s novels, but I suspect this series is only going to get better.
Click bait. I’d like to hope no-one is that stupid given one of Marvel’s most successful films made use of different actors playing one role - and I do mean it made more money than any of us will ever see.
The fact every person who read that knew what character and film I I meant proves my point.
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Reading that review I have no desire to read this book which seems filled with bad ideas.
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I had the same reaction - I’m going to pass on this one. Calling it Bond does not make it what I’m here for.
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What I really think are silly, fan-fiction-esque ideas:
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Moneypenny is now M, a promotion which seems highly unlikely
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Bond is captured by the main baddies (hints at the scrapped Boyle idea?) and since he can’t stay kidnapped apparently must be freed by the three Double O´s at the end of the novel; Bond always needs help, I know - but now it´s other Double O´s which have to come to his rescue? I liked him better when he used his wits to outwit his opponent. In all fairness, I don’t know whether this rescue by the three Double O´s will happen in the novel. But if not - why mention that Bond has been kidnapped by the same baddies they are after? Surely, they cannot forget about him? Or shrug him off?
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Apart from giving those Double O´s names which so obviously are part of the Bond “universe” they also seem to keep up with the old “we dislike Bond because he is amoral and such things”-trope and read like diversity bingo. And, um, wouldn’t deafness be a problem for a Secret Agent?
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By the way: there is… a MOLE in Mi6! John Gardner wants his plot back? P&W were consultants?
If that review above really is a true reflection of the content, this novel seems to be the product of focus groups, putting everything in one basket. Horrible.
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This has actually been my personal take since first hearing about the project. My interest level has just fallen through the floor. And I am reading With a Mind to Kill right now and am on a bit of a Bond literary high.
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Same here, unfortunately. Coincidentally, I just got a note that Waterstones has drawn the money for that limited edition from my account, so it should be on the way. Maybe not the first Bond continuation novel on my shelf that remains unread (most of them, actually).
Ah, the down sides of being a completist collector 
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You mean he shares one of the most salient traits of Fleming’s Bond?
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I still hold out hope that these elements can all come together into something worthwhile.
I don’t much mind making Moneypenny an actual spy - it’s already been confirmed that M is a distinct character, so it’s possible she’s been slotted into the Chief of Staff role. A Tanner by another name.
As for the “diversity bingo” elements, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that these are aspects of the characters being most heavily marketed. There’s no reason to suspect that inclusivity will somehow compromise the novel. There surely are and have been hearing-impaired spies. Perhaps 004 has some ability, like Bond’s propensity for gambling, that makes him especially suitable for particular missions.
The locations also sound great!
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It does sound quite eccentric.
Probably won’t bother, when it comes to it, but that is because I am a corpulent, truculent old fart and I embrace that barrel of diversity a bit too much these days.
Sir Bertram Paradise
Oh dear.
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Those names indeed. Who signed off on that?
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Mark from accounts
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Sounds like I’m the only one who’s still interested in reading it?
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I am. I always interested in reading Bond material that isn’t written by Purvis and Wade in the last 20 plus years. At least it’s trying different ideas and possibly new takes on old things. It deserves a chance.
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Two things can be true at once.
‘Double or Nothing’ can be, as some of us feel, a book that is straying much to far from the Ian Fleming “formula” that it just stops being of immediate interest.
At the same time, whatever it is can still make for an entertaining read.
For me personally, I have a TBR pile of books a mile high, and for ‘Double or Nothing’ to push its way to the top of that and put itself in my hands next week, it has to offer me the type of story I come to a Bond novel to read, and this just doesn’t seem to be offering that.
Might I give it a chance someday? Sure. I’m not dismissing it outright. But right now I have ‘Heat 2’ calling me on my nightstand. If ‘Double or Nothing’ had seemed different, I probably would be reading that next instead.
It takes more than just calling it ‘Bond’ to interest me.
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Willing to give it a chance, but I have a distinct feeling that (and I’m quoting an email from a former literary agent for IFP, from the time when they shot down our entire fan fiction section a few years ago) “They certainly diminish rather than enhance the original novels.”
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