It has been a long wait, but finally the LITERARY James Bond is back. While John Gardner and Raymond Benson were very good writers and storytellers, they were definitely carrying on the adventures of the MOVIE Bond between movies! Good yarns, but hardly Bond.



This does not mean that Sebastian Faulks is definitely the new Ian Fleming ... but he comes close. Faulks states that he went back to the original Fleming books to study the style and it shows. He has resurrected Bond with all his cynicism, faults, habits and prejudices; Bond even hates Q-Branch gadgets!



The villain, unfortunately, is not as larger-than-life as Goldfinger, Blofeld and Scaramanga were. He is even overshadowed by his privileged henchman, Chagrin. Faulks spent more time developing Chagrin than he did Gorner and I felt that I knew Chagrin as a person better than I did Gorner. The one element that was missing was the villain's biographical chapter.



The Bond girl was a strange character and she seemed more adept at handling the situations, she found herself in, than the international banker that she was. If bankers are really as skilled as she turned out to be, how does Faulks account for the occurrences of bank robberies around the real world?



Other familiar elements are the obligatory sacrificial lamb and the Bond allies. Nice to see Felix Leiter and Rene Mathis back in the novels. Last time these two were seen in books, Leiter was hooning around on a electric wheelchair and Mathis was blinded from constant torture. You know a British writer is responsible for the story when the Americans are shown to be opinionated and self-interested. Since Bond's mission does not benefit the USA, then the CIA don't help Bond. Benson would never have written such a thing.



Congratulations, Mr. Faulks. You have written a superb James Bond novel and kept the Fleming legend alive. Please write another adventure soon.

This is actually one of my favourite Bond novels. Faulks does a brilliant job in his turn writing as Ian Fleming. I believe he captures the essence of Fleming's famous character and the feeling of Fleming's style; which if Birdsong is anything to go by, is vastly different to his own. As I said, this is one of my favourite Bond novels, it is fun, easy to read and Faulks has done a brilliant job with the settings with the story taking place 40+ years ago. Recommended read for any James Bond or spy novel fan.