I could make a case for FAAD being the better, too. I just prefer TM. It’s a personal taste thing, but as you say, both terrific and re-readable. I really hope we get more OO7 from Horowitz.
He has pitched a third, and his publisher is on board, he was just waiting to hear back from IFP last time he mentioned it (scroll up)
Yeah, I spotted that upthread. It allowed a swell of optimism in me. My fingers are crossed. Makes typing damned hard but crossed they remain.
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Hosted by Anthony Horowitz
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When you write Bond being psyched out by water, you know you’ve embarrassed yourself.
When the opposition knows of your promotion to 00 status…the day after you were promoted, it reeks of poor judgment. No agency in the world of 195-something would have information THAT fast.
No Bond writer should ever have the arrogance Horowitz had, nor even the disdain of Skyfall he claimed. To me he’s a pathetic writer who’s just one inch above Boyd…and Solo was really, truly god awful.
Get Bond away from Horowitz. It’s time for a more modern take anyhow. Enough is enough.
He didn’t write that? (This might not be the point you desire to make, I accept).
Horowitz on NPR - Bond comes up a few times
Bond wasn’t scared about water - he was told he would be disfigured with hydrochloric acid. I’d be psyched out by that possibility as well.
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I’m not yet through with Forever and a Day, page 51 and little chance of getting through it soonish. And already I had a couple of issues with it.
But…
I think they are mainly due to haste and could have been ironed out with some proper editing and a bit more in depth research. Bond didn’t have a Bentley Continental in storage but a 4.5 litre. Describing the handling of a Jaguar XK 120 as ‘sluggish’ in comparison to the Bentley, although the ‘Blower’ is almost 600 kilos heavier and the leaner Jaguar is decidedly closer to the road, simply reeks of lack of research.
Avoiding the name of the former 007 seems gimmicky and much is made of the second kill that comes closer to an exam - an exam Bond passes of course but Horowitz takes pains to establish that Bond’s target really deserves it and Bond makes sure he doesn’t kill an innocent victim of circumstance. This is something we would expect today. But I’m not sure it sits well with Bond.
There is a ‘modern’ feel about the 50 pages I’ve read so far. Or at least a distinct absence of a 50s feel. Bond parking his car at Regents Park and taking a ten minute walk to the office struck me as odd. Why would he do that? Lack of parking space at the Service? A wealthy citizen of Stockholm in the 50s living in a flat protected by an alarm system like a bank’s?
Then the many many references to Fleming’s personnel - Troop, Tanner, Ponsonby, Moneypenny, May - the first meetings with these given the entire weight of what is to come later…I don’t know. I’d rather it wouldn’t have been written as a prequel and left out much of the explanatory stuff to justify Bond’s lifestyle. And must Bond really meet a CIA officer whom he overpowers at gunpoint without much fuss and who also helpfully happens to have a genuine CIA ID in his wallet?
These are of course only a couple of notes on the first 50 pages, not a verdict on the book as a whole that really only just started there. I think Horowitz is much better on the suspense department than Boyd, he’s got the pacing and the command over the intrigue right. If he was allowed to write a modern Bond story that would certainly benefit from his strong sleeve and he’d have no trouble with awkward constructions to make his work fit into Fleming.
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Tellingly, I don‘t remember much from that book - apart from the acid scene. Which annoyed me because I knew Bond would not be disfigured. It‘s the cheapest cliffhanger, being resolved too fast and glibly. Authors need to create tension much more interestingly.
I liked that bit, it was nice to have a more psychological threat from one of the villains, but I don’t recall it ever being really followed up on. It’s FAAD’s failing in comparison to its predecessor; Trigger Morris had a great villain, but forgettable female lead, FAAD was the other way round. Perhaps with a third book Horowitz can give both characters equal amounts of attention.
There are certainly elements that yell “we aren’t moving release date” but that is a FAR more common issue in films, tv, books and comic books than it should be. The tail definitely wagging the dog.
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My benchmark for Horowitz are his Alex Rider books, a series that shamelessly took the best of Fleming’s adventurism and ran with a teenage protagonist. Slick adventure writing that didn’t care about the ludicrousness of the situation* and worked perfectly fine for it. Horowitz can write such pieces and it’s no small feat to succeed with young readers because they usually spot pretty fast if your heart is not in it.
What I think hinders Horowitz is when he has to use the period setting - and to some extent Bond himself in that setting because Horowitz walks into the trap of trying to inject snobbishness, superiority and misogyny when he, Horowitz, is not really given to it. That didn’t work well in Trigger Mortis and I’m not yet sure I buy the Bond he draws in Forever and a Day.
The other things, the wrong Bentley, the Jaguar, the CIA ID, that’s all just minor stuff a once-over would deal with effectively. More importantly, the ‘prequel’ monicker should have been dropped to get rid of that ‘first episode’ feeling. And really, why not go all the way and let Horowitz write a modern Bond story where he doesn’t have to write around the tombstone of unpublished Fleming material?
*Ludicrous, really? Given what we’ve learned about the use of children spies by the UK domestic authorities Alex Rider’s work for SIS seems only half as ridiculous these days…
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Isn´t it a missed opportunity to have no Bond adventure written in the timeline of the current movies?
Sure, they couldn’t have known that this would have filled the emptiness of no new film available for at least a year. But wouldn’t that be an idea to pursue for the future?
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The modern view point, without question, would suggest IFP should’ve hired him to do a modern set story (and indeed the very 21st century view is VERY prominent in his other works, even his Sherlock Holmes duo) but the manner in which Horowitz has said about his books needing to be in Flemings timeline kinda makes me suspect IFP mandated it…which in turn makes me wonder just how badly Carte Blanche sold.
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IFP as a company has shifted away a bit from the simple cash cow approach of the old Glidrose days. Today their emphasis seems to be firmly on promoting Fleming’s works and keeping them in the public eye. Many Bond fans today haven’t read Fleming and if that trend kept up it would soon become difficult to keep his books in print. Just look how obscure many once celebrated names of crime and thriller writing have become since the turn of the century, from Chandler to Ambler to Hammett to Cheyney. Even Robert Ludlum wouldn’t be recognised any more if it wasn’t for a couple of films that have nothing to do with his works - while his works in turn have been copied by real life it would seem…
Insofar I understand IFP’s policy to keep their focus on Fleming’s timeline and personnel. Whether it’s a good idea if you are in the market for the best possible Bond continuation is a different matter.
Would a modern Bond book serve to bridge the gap? It would probably depend who was the author but IFP have had little luck with them - until they picked Horowitz. The thing is Horowitz really seems to like doing them, which is a huge plus. Apparently Charlie Higson was the same with his series and one would have expected he gets a chance at a more adult-oriented work.
It seems indeed like a missed opportunity that especially Craig’s run wasn’t accompanied by a couple of modern Bond books - I think they might even be an idea as novelisations after the fact. Something written not with the deadline of a script, and not solely to promote the films but to deepen the story. Maybe such a book would even work as a single tome that tells the entire story arch.
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There’s a Helfenstein style book called for on how the Bond novels are made post Fleming.
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Now that would be brilliant!
And to think, a prose retelling of SPECTRE, not having to follow every beat of that film but going its own way revising the Blofeld story…
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It’s a pitch!
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One would have to have seen that last chapter first…
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