On the other hand there is some terrific action. Early on Bond is forced to flee after being captured. The writing is genuinely exciting. Later on there is more action, Bond forced to fight for his life and continue his mission. And the finale when he must return to the west. In these moments the book is hard to put down. But I don’t really buy Bond’s mission and all the mind control. It worked in The Man With The Golden Gun because Fleming didn’t elaborate too much. While Horowitz has researched mind control methods I just didn’t believe it. While Horowitz 007 was thinking about his past and who played a role in it towards which extend they played a role. You realise that this Bond is a very good 00 agent and does the job so well because he likes and enjoys the job. Some people are just like that. 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. Although Horowitz may not have the detailed descriptive talent of Ian Fleming his characters are spot on. Katya Leonova is a wonderful creation & worthy of any Fleming novel, as are many of the characters throughout this novel. Well, he said, that gun you gave me only had blanks, so I had to beat the bitch to death with a chair leg.

Forever and a Day is an explosive prequel to Casino Royale which promises to please Bond aficionados and a new legion of fans. Northern Insight **Book of the Month** This doesn’t really feel that way. Is government agent by nature, in days before HR practice has catch-on on the suffering of the work force. Whether deliberately or subconsciously there are elements of The Ipcress File here, but as that's a classic 60's spy story I can forgive him.With a Mind to Kill is a James Bond novel published in 2022. It is the third and final Bond novel by Anthony Horowitz, completing a loose trilogy that includes Trigger Mortis and Forever And A Day.

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 Horowitz is the only Bond continuation author who was able to use unpublished Ian Fleming material and weave it into wholly original adventures.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. At the same time, he knew, deep down, that love from Mary Goodnight, or from any other woman, was not enough for him. It would be like taking "a room with a view". For James Bond, the same view would always pall. Bond's brief marriage to Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service is discussed by Katya Leonova and Colonel Boris, with the latter expressing her belief that the marriage wouldn't have lasted long had Tracy survived due to Bond's inability to commit to a long-term relationship and domestic life. Towards the end of the novel, Bond muses that he was at least able to make Tracy happy before her death while he was unable to do so for Katya before she sacrificed her life to save his. 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

Ian Fleming Publications

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.