The latest James Bond novel not to have Ian Fleming as its author is Anthony Horowitz’s flippantly entitled Trigger Mortis, published this week.
Horowitz is a master of pastiche whose predecessors as exponents of brilliantly faked Fleming include Kingsley Amis, Sebastian Faulks, and William Boyd. Reviewing Trigger Mortis in the Financial Times, the zealous Simon Schama - whose fascinating study of great British portraits, tied in with the National Portrait Gallery and a new BBC television series is also out this week - has proved to be a bit of a Fleming himself.
His review - wonderfully witty, observant, substantial, and to the point - is a glorious tease, suggesting that the next James Bond novel to be written may well come from whom else but Simon Schama.
Not that Horowitz’s book is in any way disappointing. Though not perhaps quite the equal of William Boyd’s Solo - which is surely the most seductive and persuasive piece of neo-Fleming of them all, and the one which has the most disturbing ending - it is alive, fast-moving, and perfectly pitched, with a grippingly oblique prologue, an artful reappearance of the hard-edged American, Pussy Galore, and, before the story has gone very far, a vivid trip to 1950s Germany for a hair-raising car-race in Burburgring, south of Cologne, with Bond secretively at the wheel of (I speak as a non-driver) an alluring red Masarati.
Schama in his review conveys its freshness of flavour, scrupulously identifying one or two minor blemishes, just as Horowiitz himself works wonders of Bondian reincarnation and resourcefulness. As his recent piece of mock Conan Doyle confirmed, he knows how to feel his way into the style of authors he clearly cares about, and Trigger Mortis can be warmly recommended as a ripely convincing Bond experience.
15 September 2015
Horowitz is a master of pastiche whose predecessors as exponents of brilliantly faked Fleming include Kingsley Amis, Sebastian Faulks, and William Boyd. Reviewing Trigger Mortis in the Financial Times, the zealous Simon Schama - whose fascinating study of great British portraits, tied in with the National Portrait Gallery and a new BBC television series is also out this week - has proved to be a bit of a Fleming himself.
His review - wonderfully witty, observant, substantial, and to the point - is a glorious tease, suggesting that the next James Bond novel to be written may well come from whom else but Simon Schama.
Not that Horowitz’s book is in any way disappointing. Though not perhaps quite the equal of William Boyd’s Solo - which is surely the most seductive and persuasive piece of neo-Fleming of them all, and the one which has the most disturbing ending - it is alive, fast-moving, and perfectly pitched, with a grippingly oblique prologue, an artful reappearance of the hard-edged American, Pussy Galore, and, before the story has gone very far, a vivid trip to 1950s Germany for a hair-raising car-race in Burburgring, south of Cologne, with Bond secretively at the wheel of (I speak as a non-driver) an alluring red Masarati.
Schama in his review conveys its freshness of flavour, scrupulously identifying one or two minor blemishes, just as Horowiitz himself works wonders of Bondian reincarnation and resourcefulness. As his recent piece of mock Conan Doyle confirmed, he knows how to feel his way into the style of authors he clearly cares about, and Trigger Mortis can be warmly recommended as a ripely convincing Bond experience.
15 September 2015
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