Kim Sherwood joins the esteemed company of writers such as Anthony Horowitz and William Boyd in penning a novel based around MI6’s hard-drinking, womanising assassin.
Double or Nothing is a bit different though — James Bond isn’t actually in it.
OO7 is missing in action, presumed dead, which leaves the rest of the OO section to pick up the slack when a billionaire megalomaniac, in possession of a quantum supercomputer, threatens the world’s ecological stability (such as it is).
So who are the new crew?
We have Joanna Harwood (OO3), an ex-surgeon turned MI6 spy
Joseph Dryden, a black, gay ex-special forces operator, and the current OO4
Sid Bashir (OO9), a Muslim chess prodigy with a license to kill.
Don’t worry; there’s plenty of back story along the way, which gives the reader a thorough grounding in the characters’ motivations for joining an organisation whose employees rarely make it to forty-five: the OO section’s mandatory retirement age.
As with all good Bond takes, the story clips along at a medium-fast pace, with vivid descriptions of globe-trotting locations (given the amount of travel involved, I’m surprised that a OO doesn’t arrive at her destination too jet lagged to murder anybody), and in depth characterisations from the ogliarch super villain down to the man working the elevator in MI6 headquarters. It all adds to the realism, but you will need to be patient as it takes a while before the author really puts her foot down. And speaking of putting your foot down — the author clearly likes her cars.
In keeping with tradition, the story accelerates to light speed in the final few chapters, though the inevitable dispatching of the villain did make me smirk and think, “Really?”
But overall, I really enjoyed Double or Nothing, and look forward to picking up the next one in the series.