Horowitz’s word is his true Bond
TRIGGER MORTIS by Anthony Horowitz Orion, £ 18.99
LET’S face it, Ian Fleming just didn’t write enough James Bond books. Including collections of short stories, he produced 14 of them but after he died in 1964, the success of the Bond films led to an increasing demand for new titles.
The latest film Spectre, due to be released this year, will be the 24th in the official series and just as the character of Bond has inspired posthumous films, a number of novelists have been commissioned to write posthumous books. Trigger Mortis is the latest and by far the most authentic.
Thanks partly to his versatility as a writer and partly to his access to unpublished writings by Ian Fleming, Anthony Horowitz gives us a Bond impressively close to the original.
Setting his story in the late 1950s he brings us the Sean Connery Bond whose spymaster is clearly the stern Bernard Lee version of M. Even Pussy Galore makes an appearance although it is unclear quite why as she has no real part in the main plot.
INSTEAD we are treated to several typical Bond girls including the splendidly named Jeopardy Lane who is described on the back jacket as “a girl like no other Bond has encountered”. Don’t believe a word of it, she is exactly like all the other Bond girls and thank goodness for that. The plot,
equally predictably, is full of fast cars, heavy drinking and an evil genius plotting to take over the world.
Thanks to his ploy of setting the story in the 1950s, Horowitz is able to make the Russians the villains in the form of counterintelligence agency SMERSH with the evil genius, a Korean called Jason Sin, in their pay.
If Sin’s sinful plan works, not only will the Empire State Building be reduced to rubble but the Russians will seize control of outer space itself and dominate it with satellites and weaponry.
Only Bond can foil them but not until he has been captured by Sin who, as always, decides to kill him in such a villainously imaginative and horrible manner that he escapes death and in the nick of time foils their plans.
As
always the cars, the women, the wine vintages and the anatomical details of the body parts hit by Bond when taking out the villain’s henchmen are described in loving technical detail. There is a delicate line separating imitation from parody and Horowitz stays on the right side of it to perfection.
My only reservation concerns some aspects of the plot which are even more far- fetched than usual. Can a man even with James Bond’s skills be expected to become a world- class racing driver in a week? Would M really expect Bond to risk a crash with a Russian during a Grand Prix to protect a British racing driver? And can anyone other than Uma Thurman in Kill Bill 2 survive being buried alive?
Never mind all that though, Trigger Mortis is a wonderful romp combining the pace of a Bond film with the style of a Fleming novel.