The Ian Fleming Estate won’t let just anyone write a James Bond novel, and I think that’s a good thing. Sebastian Faulkes made a decent job of it, and now Anthony Horowitz has taken a very similar tack of moving everyone’s favourite hard-drinking, hard-smoking mysgonist spy right back to his roots, dropping Bond right back to the start of his career just after World War II. (If I remember rightly, Faulkes’s outing was set in the sixties).
Following the murder of 007 in France, the British Secret Service is forced to promote a new agent fresh out of training: James Bond, a decorated war hero from Naval Intelligence takes the dead agent’s number and travels to France to avenge his death. It’s pretty much the standard Bond adventure: find the woman, find the villain, sleep with the woman, kill the villain. And as with all the 007 books, it’s not so much the plot as how it’s told. Horowitz tells it very well. The genius of setting the story in the mid-forties is that it immediately restricts you: there are no satellites for electronic surveillance, no invisible cars that can shoot missiles … nope, in the good old days, all Bond had was a pistol and a radio (and he was lucky if the radio worked). So without the gadgets then Bond is a much better read. Continue reading “Book review: Forever and a Day by Anthony Horowitz”
So, it’s here at last! The continuing sleuthy adventures of Comoran Strike, his Gordian Knot of a love-life and his “will-they-won’t-they” relationship with his very capable partner in crime-solving, Robin Cunliffe.
This is the fourth book in the series (and I’ll quickly add that they make really good telly), and takes us through a rather complex plot involving strangulation of a child and how it all ties together with the murder of a prominent MP who I get the feeling was modelled on Boris Johnson. It’s set against the backdrop of the London 2012 Olympics, but to be honest, I’m not sure why, as this didn’t really add much to the plot, other than giving one of the characters a job. So aside from that one small niggle, how was the rest of it? Well, I’m not going to delve too deeply into the story, but it’s written to the same standard we’ve come to expect from Robert Galbraith (yeah, she’s sticking with the name). The prose is clean and precise, with a fantastic lightness of touch and some well-executed patches of humour. It’s a little bit more cerebral than the other books in the series: a lot less running around (which Strike does really well considering he’s an overweight detective missing a leg) and a lot more talking to witnesses and potentials suspects. If you’re the kind of reader who likes to solve the crime as you’re going along then you might need to make notes, because you’re not just looking to solve a murder, you need to battle your way through a couple of other mysteries along the way, which may be why I didn’t enjoy Lethal White as much as I thought I would. There’s a lot of fluff in here, and I think it’s a bit too distracting.
I think the other problem I had with the novel was the sheer number of characters: there were a least a small village of players here, and unfortunately, most of the were very similar. They were split into two broad groups: the rich (posh, privileged, shallow and very annoying), and the poor: (just annoying) which made it difficult to get a sense of how the characters were tied to the plot, especially during the sequences where Robin and Strike are reviewing the case together. I mean, ‘Fizzy’ and ‘Tizzy’ as two character names? Throw us a bone here … And of course while all this is going on, Robin and Strike have very complicated personal lives to deal with, which we have to deal with along with them.
I will say though that once you get your head around who’s who then the book really starts to motor.
I guess the problem with writing a book with multiple intertwined plots is that at some point, the whole thing has to be tied together. Clues slowly resolve into patterns that take you closer to the culprit … that’s what usually happens. In this case, the whole case (and a few other loose ends) were tied up in a rather large and awkward information dump right at the end. I have to say, I wasn’t too keen on it.
So, did I enjoy it? As I said, yes I did, though not as much as the others (I think Silkworm is my favourite). From a writer’s perspective, it’s an excellent example of quality writing. Nevertheless, I’m going to be a little harsh, give it six out of ten, and look forward to a return to form for the next one.
The Ian Fleming Estate won’t let just anyone write a James Bond novel, and I think that’s a good thing. Sebastian Faulkes made a decent job of it, and now Anthony Horowitz has taken a very similar tack of moving everyone’s favourite hard-drinking, hard-smoking mysgonist spy right back to his roots, dropping Bond right back to the start of his career just after World War II. (If I remember rightly, Faulkes’s outing was set in the sixties).