This is the second entry in our “Where to Start with James Bond Continuation Novels” series by Freddy Lowe. Read the first instalment, on Kim Sherwood's Bond trilogy.
Best Anthony Horowitz James Bond Book to start with: Forever and a Day
Best book in the Horowitz James Bond Book Series: With a Mind to Kill
Horowitz writes with Fleming's crispness and clarity. I read all three very quickly.
Freddy Lowe
The short version of this article is that Anthony Horowitz's 007 trilogy is brilliant. If you are an Ian Fleming fan, reading Horowitz is a no-brainer. I have him and Kim Sherwood to thank for getting me into James Bond continuation literature. His whole trilogy is worth reading, and he has a standout stone-cold masterpiece in With a Mind to Kill. One would expect no less from a writer also responsible for Foyle's War and several episodes of ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot.
Three Books, Three Eras of Bond
The unique thing about Horowitz's trilogy is that each book is associated with a particular Ian Fleming novel. Trigger Mortis — his first one, published in 2015 — is a sequel to Goldfinger. (We open with Bond putting up Pussy Galore at his house. He's not very happy about it.) Forever and a Day is a prequel to Casino Royale; it shows how he became a Double O. With a Mind to Kill is a follow-on from Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun. Without spoilers, it is a very finale-coded book — it pitches itself as a definitive end to Bond's story. And it is a spine-chilling one.
Where to Start (and Why the Order Matters)
For this reason, I would recommend starting with Forever and a Day, then reading Trigger Mortis, and finishing with With a Mind to Kill. It's like Star Wars or Narnia: you want the chronological order, not the release order. You get a satisfying arc that way. You start with Bond's origins, then see him mid-career, and finish with a haunting finale. That order also has the benefit of being in ascending order of quality.
The main positive about these books is how compulsively readable they are. Horowitz writes with Fleming's crispness and clarity. I read all three very quickly. They also have a sense of humour, which is always welcome in a 007 novel. Sixtine tells Bond in Forever and a Day to make love “more slowly this time. You make love like a schoolboy.” (I've always found it amusing when Bond girls criticise his performance in bed, considering his reputation for sexual prowess. Like when Tracy calls him a “lousy goddam lover” in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.) A similar moment happens later in the mission when Bond is trying to set off a firework: “What he had, he hoped, was an effective bomb. He wondered how he would explain himself to Sixtine if all he managed was an attractive display of pink sparks.” I did laugh at that.
With a Mind to Kill: The Standout
Another amusing moment comes in With a Mind to Kill, when Bond is undercover in Russia and has to convince the top brass that he's a converted Communist:
“Together, we have struck a blow for world peace and the destruction of the capitalist machine,” Bond commented. He wondered if he was laying it on thick. But no. Ideology could never be too thick for these self-styled freedom fighters.”
If you like cynical jabs at communism, With a Mind to Kill is for you. It's set in 1960s Moscow and, jokes aside, makes it very clear that this environment was actually not at all funny. The novel hauntingly captures the oppressive atmosphere: “The young lovers that [Bond] would have seen clinging onto each other on every corner of London or Paris had stayed at home. Or perhaps they'd never met.” Without spoilers, the witch-hunting totalitarianism of 1960s communism is a major plot point and leads to several genuinely chilling reveals.
On that theme, one of the standout elements of With a Mind to Kill is the plot twists. It's got far more plot twists than the average Bond story, and they are as unsettling as they are genuinely satisfying. This is perhaps unsurprising for a writer with a background in murder mysteries.
Bond's mission is to convince Russia that he is a converted Communist (and that he has successfully killed M after the events of Fleming's Golden Gun), so he is constantly in a state of paranoia. Is he being played? Are they convinced by him, or only pretending to be? Is their friendliness a sign he can relax now, or is it another trap? Horowitz exploits that atmosphere to unsettling effect. (I could say so much more, but that would risk spoilers.)
The Trilogy's Small Flaws
The trilogy's only real downside is that With a Mind to Kill outshines the other two. (Which is the best critique to give any author — that they are only superseded by themselves.) Forever and a Day and Trigger Mortis are not as subversive. They are just good, gripping stories. They also stick more closely to the James Bond formula, so they are slightly more predictable. Nothing wrong with that — we all need gripping stories with familiar tropes! — but they play it comparatively safer.
A small spoiler for Casino Royale readers follows. Another very small critique is that Forever and a Day has some incongruence with Casino Royale. In Casino Royale, Bond hates women getting involved in missions because he thinks they're overemotional and complicate things. He wouldn't think that after the events of Forever and a Day. His relationship with Sixtine, the female ally, is very positive. He even tells M at the end, “I certainly couldn't have got away with it without her,” which feels like something he would say in Dr No or Thunderball, not pre-Casino Royale.
Anthony Horowitz vs. Kim Sherwood: Mirror Images
But these are minor sticking points, because there is really no argument against reading Horowitz if you are a James Bond fan. He makes a fascinating contrast with Kim Sherwood's Bond trilogy because they are mirror images of each other. Sherwood's books are extremely emotive. Hurricane Room is a tear-jerker in places. They are powerful reads designed to move you. They are also literary thrillers with a more complex and dense writing style than Fleming's. Horowitz's novels are almost the opposite. They are wonderfully quick and easy reads — and extremely plot-driven — with less explicit focus on emotional resonance. (Though in fairness, Trigger Mortis has a very moving, proto-Sherwood moment at the end of Chapter 20. I can't say more without spoilers. Similarly, Sherwood's books do have their unputdownable, fast-paced moments. It's apples and oranges. Both writers are great.)
An ironic similarity between them is that both With a Mind to Kill and Hurricane Room present themselves as “finales” to the James Bond story. Both are consistent with Ian Fleming's canon, and yet they are mutually incompatible. I still can't decide which I like best. There is a whole podcast waiting to be made comparing them in more detail. (And don't forget No Time to Die — Bond fans these days are spoilt for choice for emotional finales.)
The Verdict
In short, if you haven't bought and read Anthony Horowitz's entire James Bond trilogy yet, do it now. It is very worth your time. James Bond fans are very lucky to have his books at our disposal, and I suspect most would agree he is one of the best continuation writers.
Enjoyed this? Read the first article in the series on Kim Sherwood's Bond trilogy. Got your own ranking of the Horowitz trilogy? Join the conversation in the Spybrary Facebook group.
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