Rank The Rest Of The Continuation Authors' Villains

Books Other Continuation Authors
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This week’s rankings deals with the rest of the continuation authors’ villains. Again, those authors eligible to be considered are Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffrey Deaver, William Boyd, Anthony Horowitz, and characters from Charlie Higson’s On His Majesty’s Secret Service. Other authors available to be used, if you wish, are Samantha Weinberg, Kim Sherwood, Vaseem Khan, and characters from Raymond Benson’s Felix Leiter novel, The Hook And The Eye.

So how do you rank them? I rank them as:

  1. Sun Liang-tan – COLONEL SUN – (Kingsley Amis) – An unemotional, sadistic villain who’s presence hovers over the entire novel. He has shades of Ian Fleming’s Julius No, but he still manages to distinguish himself from Fleming’s iconic mastermind. Sun also has a very nasty torture procedure that he gruesomely puts James Bond through. A great villain.

  2. Jason Sin – TRIGGER MORTIS – (Anthony Horowitz) – Another villain whose presence dominates his story. Another No/Sun type who wants revenge on the U.S. for personal reasons. But, again, despite that, Sin distinguishes himself from the others. Horowitz comes up with a creative way for Sin to eliminate his enemies–the drawing of a card of deathd featuring all manners of ways to die. Absolute genius. And, as a result, we get a fantastic Bondian escape from one such death card. Another top-notch villain.

  3. Boris Leonov – WITH A MIND TO KILL – (Anthony Horowitz) – A great villain in a story we didn’t know we needed. Horowitz brilliantly closes a vital gap in Bond history by having M send 007 back to the Soviet Union to terminate the man who brainwashed his top agent. Leonov is coldly analytical and frightening in that he can completely bend a man’s mind to his will. His scenes are all interesting and his demise is very satisfying.

  4. Sigmund Stromberg – JAMES BOND, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME – (Christopher Wood) – Stromberg is similar to the film version’s Karl Stromberg (a character I like more than most it seems). Wood also adds a few extra layers to his backstory which further improves the character. Overall, Stromberg is probably a middle of the road villain in the novels, but for the rest of the continuation authors, he’s in my top five.

  5. Hugo Drax – JAMES BOND AND MOONRAKER – (Christopher Wood) – Not to be confused with Fleming’s Hugo “Hugger” Drax in Moonraker. (They ARE different characters even if they have the same name, rocket/space shuttle name, and novel/novelization title. :wink:) Drax is again similar to his film’s counterpart and in my top five of the continuation authors’ villains, though I think I prefer Michael Lonsdale’s cinematic version.

  6. Irwin Wolfe & Jean-Paul Scipio – FOREVER AND A DAY – (Anthony Horowitz) – FAAD has two villains for the price of one. The American film mogul Wolfe is the instigator of the scheme wanting to pay back the country (the U.S.) for whom his sons fought and died for in World War II. He, however, is not as interesting as his partner in crime the European drug kingpin Scipio. Scipio is extremely large and equally scary. His scenes are filled with menace and danger, and he is one of the most memorable villains in the entire series. If I were ranking just Scipio, I would probably put him third on this list, but since he shares the villain spotlight with Wolfe, the two of them land in the sixth spot.

  7. Julius Gorner – DEVIL MAY CARE – (Sebastian Faulks) – Gorner initially seems like a really solid villain, and then toward the end Faulks takes the piss out of the story and has Scarlett Papava admit to Bond that she made up his backstory. It’s a meaningless admission. The story worked perfectly as she originally stated it. But with the admission, it not only hurts the novel, it drops Gorner’s standing as well.

  8. Felicity Willing – CARTE BLANCHE – (Jeffrey Deaver) – A rare female villain. However, Felicity doesn’t otherwise stand out all that much. She’s not inherently evil, per se. She’s more just in it for the money. I probably would have preferred her being the main Bond girl. Regardless, she is okay as the villain, but, ultimately, is nothing special.

  9. Geraldo Gil aka Red Beard aka Caballo – THE MONEYPENNY DIARIES: GUARDIAN ANGEL – (Samantha Weinberg) – A major-general in the Cuban security services who serves as a double-agent against the Americans in the lead up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not much else is known about Gil, but he does have a threatening presence when confronting Bond.

  10. Vladimir Grushenko – THE MONEYPENNY DIARIES: SECRET SERVANT – (Samantha Weinberg) – This was the guy who Weinberg made out to be Bond’s brainwasher Col. Boris. But since then, we’ve gotten Horowitz’s more “official” version of Col. Boris in WAMTK, Boris Leonov, who is more satisfyingly calculating and evil than Weinberg’s version. As a result, I now look at Grushenko (in my own continuity so as to make it work canonically, so to speak) as overseeing Leonov’s brainwashing of 007 instead of being THE Col. Boris. Grushenko is a bit mysterious in the initial going, but by the end, he’s given himself up as a defector to Moneypenny and MI6 and, as a result, loses a bit of his edge and he drops a bit in my view.

  11. Jean Marchés aka Black Jacques – THE MONEYPENNY DIARIES: FINAL FLING – (Samantha Weinberg) – A scientist who develops a deadly virus. Very little is known about him other than what is listed previously and that he is elusive. He probably doesn’t deserve to be quite this high, but I put him here because he developed a scary virus and there is a little mystery to him.

  12. ??? – THE HOOK AND THE EYE – (Raymond Benson) – Due to the novel’s recent release, I’ll elaborate more on this character in the hidden details so as to avoid potential spoilers.

Summary

Michael Brinkley – Leiter’s friend and former boss surprisingly turns traitor. He sets Leiter up to be a patsy on a road trip to Texas, fully expecting him to fail, but Leiter overcomes his obstacles and completes the mission. Brinkley isn’t as evil as the others above him on the list and, consequently, falls to here.

  1. Hulbert Linck & Solomon Adeka – SOLO – (William Boyd) – A rich businessman and a West African military general team up to try to take over Zanzarim’s oil reserves in the middle of a civil war. The partnership dissolves, however, when one backstabs the other. Not much is really known about either man as they are only in about two or three scenes each, and neither one makes much of an impression–especially Linck. They are two of the weakest villains in the entire series.

  2. Æthelstan Wells – ON HIS MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE – (Charlie Higson) – Wells has dreams of becoming the king of England, but is more of a wannabe poser and is not really a threat. He’s not interesting and not any fun either. Probably the worst villain in the series.

So how do you rank them?

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