Wednesday July 11, 02:51 PM
New 007 adventure to hit book stores
James Bond is back between the covers.
British novelist Sebastian Faulks has written a new Bond novel to mark the centenary of creator Ian Fleming's birth, Fleming's family has announced.
The new 007 adventure, Devil May Care, will be published on May 28 next year on what would have been Fleming's 100th birthday. The Fleming estate said the novel is set during the Cold War and involved espionage across two continents in "several of the world's most thrilling cities".
The family announced last year that it had commissioned a "well-known and highly respected" writer to create a new adventure for the suave superspy, but had kept the author's identity secret.
Speculation had centred on thriller writers including John LeCarre and Frederick Forsyth.
Faulks, 54, is best known for a trilogy of novels set in France - The Girl at the Lion d'Or, the World War I saga Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, a World War II Resistance story that was made into a movie starring Cate Blanchett.
Faulks said he was surprised but flattered to have been chosen.
Rereading Fleming's novels, he said, "I was surprised by how well the books stood up".
"I put this down to three things: the sense of jeopardy Fleming creates about his solitary hero; a certain playfulness in the narrative details; and a crisp, journalistic style that hasn't dated," Faulks said.
Faulks said his book's style was "about 80 per cent Fleming".
"I didn't go the final distance for fear of straying into pastiche, but I strictly observed his rules of chapter and sentence construction. My novel is meant to stand in the line of Fleming's own books, where the story is everything.
"I hope people will enjoy reading it and that Ian Fleming would consider it to be in the cavalier spirit of his own novels and therefore an acceptable addition to the line," he added.
Fleming, a journalist and wartime intelligence officer, introduced James Bond in Casino Royale in 1953. The stylish, womanising spy went on to appear in 13 more books, the last two of which, Octopussy and the Living Daylights, was published in 1966, two years after Fleming's death.
Other writers have since written Bond books, including Kingsley Amis - who published Colonel Sun in 1968 under the pseudonym Robert Markham - and Charlie Higson, who imagines the spy as a teenager in his series of Young Bond novels.
Corinne Turner, managing director of the family-owned Ian Fleming Publications, said the family was delighted with Faulks' manuscript and that Barbara Broccoli, producer of the Bond films, had been impressed by its verisimilitude.
There was no word on whether Devil May Care would be filmed. All Fleming's original Bond novels have been turned into movies, most recently last year's Casino Royale.
Devil May Care will be published in Britain by Penguin and in the United States by Doubleday.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/070711/2/13xx3.html
It will probably be the base for Bond 23 with our dear Daniel Craig. Loved these bits: "the novel is set during the Cold War and involved espionage across two continents in "several of the world's most thrilling cities"" and "Barbara Broccoli, producer of the Bond films, had been impressed by its verisimilitude"
There is a radio interview to the author at BBC, probably with more data but I have not listened to it yet
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/ ... 30&go.y=12
New 007 adventure to hit book stores
Moderator: Germangirl
New Bond Book
What great news. I read all the book as quickly as I could get my hands on them when I was younger and new Bond will be amazing, especially as I'll be able to imagine Daniel as I read it