The new James Bond story will start with M’s funeral. One man is missing from the graveside: the traitor who pulled the trigger and who is now in custody, accused of M’s murder – James Bond. In a mission where treachery is all around and one false move means death, Bond must grapple with the darkest questions about himself. But not even he knows what has happened to the man he used to be. I find that Horowitz has taken it upon himself to really deliver a decent spy/infiltrator novel with 007 starring and the ending was certainly to my liking. I would have liked to see where Fleming would have gone with his creation as the man died way too early. But this addition is certainly worthy and fits the times of the original 007 stories. Horowitz.captures the mood, pace and style of Fleming very well. the story thunders along with action galore in the Bond tradition. It whets the appetite for the 25th Bond film. Alex Gordon, Peterborough Evening Telegraph To be clear, Horowitz is in no way the first author anointed by the Fleming estate to continue the adventures of James Bond in book form. That tradition started in 1968 when Kingsley Amis wrote the 007 book Colonel Sun under the pen name “Robert Markham,” just four years after his friend’s death in 1964. But for Bond fans, all the “continuation” books are interesting, and the committed 007 completist will find strong entries like John Gardner’s License Renewed (1981) or William Boyd’s Solo (2013).

It is M's funeral. One man is missing from the graveside: the traitor who pulled the trigger and who is now in custody, accused of M's murder—James Bond. What makes the Horowitz books so compelling and unique is that they really feel like modern versions of Fleming's texts. Horowitz is the only Bond continuation author who was able to use unpublished Ian Fleming material and weave it into wholly original adventures. In Trigger Mortis, this results in some actual Fleming prose lifted from a manuscript called “Hell on Wheels,” which gives one racecar sequence a heart-stopping zing. In Forever and a Day, some of Fleming’s travelogue prose is incorporated, as are some concepts from an unmade James Bond TV series. While these details give the Horowitz Bond novels an extra touch of legitimacy, you’d hardly notice which aspects came from Horowitz and which came from Fleming. The prose style of these books is perfect. If Horowitz were James Bond’s tailor, he’d be like Eva Green in the 2006 movie version of Casino Royale, able to size up Bond and create the perfect suit for him with just one glance. By the time you read this review it may well be redundant. The publishers kindly sent me a review copy earlier in the year, but – thanks mainly, I suspect, to the Spanish postal service – it never arrived. They couriered a second copy, but the result is this review published almost a fortnight after the book was first released. Exciting high drama. Horowitz stays loyal to the fabulous Fleming formula. And for that he surely deserves another mission guiding the fortunes of the world's favourite superspy. Daily Express

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At the end of the last Fleming book The man with the Golden Gun we get the return of the oldish 007 more or less. The James Bond before he met his wife Teresa. Anthony Horowitz's second James Bond book will keep 007 obsessives happy with martinis, beautiful women and an enormously fat Corsican gangster. The Times *Best New Novels* WaMtK is a sequel to Fleming's final original novel The Man With the Golden Gun (James Bond #13 - 1965) and can also be read as an imagined end to the canon. That is the reason for my Ambiguous Ending Alert™, about which it would be a spoiler to say anything more. Internationally bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s third James Bond novel, after Forever and a Day.

I’d expect this kind of lazy writing from older books that at least have the excuse of being “of a different time”, but not from a novel published today (although maybe because it’s set in the ‘60s, Horowitz is trying to stay true to the literary conventions of the time?). It’s just embarrassing to read more than anything. It’s almost uncanny how well Mr. Horowitz summons Bond’s mindset . . . Yet this Bond also feels the winds of change: 'He had his licence to kill. But was it possible that in this new, more questioning age, that licence might have expired?' A drop of retro pleasures, a pinch of things to come; shaken, not stirred." — Wall Street Journal

Fleming Bibliography

Faking the Dead: M's death is faked to convince the Soviets that their plan to use a brainwashed Bond to assassinate M had succeeded. The objective is to maintain the illusion that Bond is still under the Soviet's control, so that he can return to Russia and infiltrate their new secret organization Stalnaya Ruska.

I was really looking forward to the books as the movie franchise with Craig after CR went a direction that was not my cup of tea, and not like the books about the mission but it turned into a bloody family soap.So it was a downbeat end for the Horowitz Bond trilogy, maybe even qualifying for an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert™. I am rather more hopeful for the new Kim Sherwood Double-00 trilogy which started off with Double or Nothing (September 2022) [4 **** stars] even if it is set up as an intentional icon-breaker. Katya Leonova is a far more rounded Bond lady than the norm for these novels, and Horowitz, I think, does well to make her changes of view and emotions believable. As for the villains? They’re all, quite rightly, thoroughly nasty bastards! Bookends: In the first Bond novel Casino Royale Bond contemplates resigning from the Secret Service after his torture at Le Chiffre's hands while his friend Mathis tries to convince him not to. In this novel, which serves as a coda to Fleming's canon, Bond recalls that conversation with Mathis, revisits his decision to resign from the Service, and this time round is determined to see it through. So well written and has the depth that sometimes Fleming didn’t bother with. The 60s Cold War setting works perfectly and there is that sense that Bond is struggling with the idea that his career may be coming to an end and wants to prove himself. But there also an understanding that it is his 00 status that defines him and he can’t imagine a different future. Bond was being abused and he thoughts of quitting. He should quit. Let someone else who hasn’t suffered so much to carry on this work. Being good at his work should make him feel appreciate and treasured as a good employee.