Kim Sherwood's James Bond Double O trilogy divided 007 fans. Freddy Lowe has read all three novels — here's his honest verdict, plus where to start and reading order.
Kim Sherwood James Bond Book to start with: Double or Nothing.
Best Kim Sherwood James Bond book: Double or Nothing, with Hurricane Room as a close second.
A James Bond novel without James Bond present is not the most obvious elevator pitch. But that is the premise of Kim Sherwood’s Double or Nothing, the first of her modernised James Bond trilogy.
More moving than the average spy novel, and that makes them very powerful reads
Freddy Lowe
Sherwood is a lesson in ‘saying outlandish things out loud – because you never know if the right person might be listening’, to use her own words. When Testament came out in 2018, Kim Sherwood’s first (and, prior to Bond, only) novel, it was positioned in a bookshop next to Anthony Horowitz’s With a Mind to Kill, at which point she tweeted a photograph saying ‘one step closer to my dream of writing Bond’. The Fleming estate saw this and made her the first woman to write a Bond novel. It’s a lovely story, a lesson in never being cautious and always being outlandish.
Sherwood’s trilogy is a serialised narrative that demands to be read in order.
Many continuation authors write standalones: with Horowitz’s trilogy, you could read them in a random order and enjoy them fine (although the poignance of With a Mind to Kill’s ending means you might want to save that one for last). But Sherwood’s books are one huge three-volume story. They are set in the 21st Century; she has kept to Fleming’s canon but pushed it along in time, so that Bond in our era is roughly in his 40s.
In Book 1, Double or Nothing, 007 is missing – captured or killed, MI6 don’t know – and we follow a group of young agents trying to find him. The trio of new heroes are Johanna Harwood (003), Sid Bashir (009), and Joseph Dryden (004). Dryden is a gloriously gay army veteran who communicates with Q via a computerised cochlear implant. Harwood and Bashir are an item and, for all their challenges, are basically MI6’s resident power couple. Harwood is thoughtful and reflective, but also tough as nails when she needs to be, and has an at-times laugh-out-loud disregard for the rules that you can’t help but suspect is Sherwood’s own.
While searching for Bond, they also investigate a terrorist organisation called Rattenfänger (basically Sherwood’s SPECTRE), who are suspected of involvement in his disappearance. In Book 2, A Spy Like Me, the heroes have deduced that Rattenfänger is funded by smuggling and people trafficking. Dryden pursues the smugglers (a mission that takes him to the heart of the Taliban), while Harwood continues the pursuit for Bond, convinced she has finally located him.
In Book 3, Hurricane Room, James Bond is indeed discovered alive, and he and Harwood must escape Russia and rejoin Moneypenny, Dryden, and the others in a spectacular showdown against Rattenfänger. Without spoilers, the final battle takes place on an exploding mountain. (For all Sherwood’s seriousness, she never entirely sacrifices Bond’s requisite over-the-top silliness.)
Sherwood’s best novel, in my view, is Double or Nothing. It is not only a funny, gripping, moving novel in its own right, but – and this will sound odd to fans, but it is true – it is fantastic having Bond absent. It means his legacy haunts the pages like a spectre. The heroes’ whole mission is to track the man down, meaning we Bond fanatics get treated to 400 pages of these characters eulogising our favourite spy. It’s a novel-length fan tribute. By making him absent, Sherwood mythologises him and makes us love him more.
This was a masterstroke for audience sympathy. Any continuation writer faces the (impossible) challenge of satisfying everyone’s very different interpretations of this iconic character. Having him absent means the reader can allow their own version of the character to haunt the pages.
These choices obviously faced some backlash for making Bond ‘woke’ (for backlash, read: about three people ranting on Twitter). She was once accused online of ‘castrating’ Bond (have these people not read Casino Royale?), or, as one Goodreads user said, writing a novel where ‘all white men’ are bad. But when you actually read Double or Nothing and (no spoilers) see how 007 – quite literally – has the last word, the absurdity of that Goodreads comment is revealed.
The next two novels maintain this positive start, especially in Hurricane Room, which finishes the story very emotively. I wasn’t quite ‘a sobbing mess’ by the end – as David Lowbridge-Ellis claimed to be – but I definitely got misty-eyed. Sherwood clearly loves Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me (quite rightly), because there is a beautiful homage at the end to Bond’s famous letter to Vivienne Michel. Dryden’s relationship with his lover, Luke (005), was also a storyline that got me.
If these novels have any real downside, it would probably be an overabundance of detail. Sherwood’s background in literary fiction is very noticeable. Her writing is eloquent but also dense, with a lot of exposition, and my attention did sometimes wander, most notably in A Spy Like Me. It is a wonderful sequel, but it was my least favourite of the trilogy for its disorienting abundance of characters and separate storylines. Sherwood herself admitted in an interview that A Spy Like Me got so confusing that she rang her mum and said, ‘I’ve lost the plot – literally’. At times, so did I.
(The novel does end, though, with Harwood taking on the villains in a glorious staircase fight worthy of Daniel Craig’s No Time To Die rugby scrum – so that makes it worth it.)
This, in fact, applies to all three novels: these are not Fleming’s crisp easy reads with a sole focus on one hero. (Read Anthony Horowitz’s continuations for that.) These are sprawling, exposition-heavy ensemble pieces. They are admirable, but they require concentration.
Having said that, they do reward the concentration, especially Hurricane Room, which, as mentioned, will tug at the heartstrings of the hardcore Bond fans. Perhaps the best thing about these novels is their acknowledgement of the fact that Bond, despite his ultra-stoic reputation, is broken and traumatised. As Sherwood said in an interview, Fleming’s Bond is ‘suicidally depressed – in every single book’. For all their fun adventure, Fleming’s novels are also explorations of a traumatised psyche pushed to the limit. That is his appeal: Bond is a fantasy of resilience, being able to push through even the most psychologically trying circumstances. The wonderful thing about Sherwood’s books is that they bring that emotional element to the forefront.
So whilst her books are hard-going, they are also more moving than the average spy novel, and that makes them very powerful reads. They are invaluable additions to the Bond canon and Sherwood has done the fandom a great service.
Follow Freddy Lowe
Views expressed are the author's own, not necessarily those of Spybrary.
What do you think? Let Freddy and 5,000 other spy fans know in our free Spybrary community, now in its ninth year.
We are on the look out for more spy fiction and espionage history opinion posts. Interested? More intel at Write for Spybrary.
Please note that any purchases made with an Amazon link earn Spybrary a small commission, which helps us pay our reviewers. Thank you for supporting Spybrary.
