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Comments
Really hope that Horowitz will write another Bond novel after his next Daniel Hawthorne novel.
Well if they are sticking with Horowitz (and I think most would be happy if they did) he is a very busy writer.
James Patterson for example
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/books/article/tony-parsons-james-bond
Never read anything by Tony Parsons but he seems very sure of himself, like it’s just a matter of time before the estate calls on him. Writing a novel to occur between OHMSS and YOLT seems especially risky, as it's an extremely important time period for the character.
Has anyone read anything by him?
Never heard of him, but he can t be worse than Horowitz. Always Say Die as the title must surely be a joke?
Which doesn't mean I'm saying Fleming was bad, but that his secret was his fertile imagination, his first-hand knowledge of his time's history and magnetic personality, something that Amis and Horowitz can't beat.
It's a bit like Tolkien but vice-versa: he had an extraordinary imagination and capacity to create fictional universes. He was pure magic. That's why I love LOTR, The Hobbit and the Silmarillion.But stylistically, he was like a Mr. Know-it-all who wants to overcomplicate things and say "Behold my expertise on old-fashioned English". And I think his poems are terrible to boot.
I know, it’s real nasty.
Many people would probably rate Amis as a better writer than Fleming, though I don't think Amis's prose in Colonel Sun is considerably better than Fleming's. Horowitz has a functional but colorless prose style, so he isn't better than Fleming.
I've read Man and Boy, his supposedly comic novel about a custody battle, and I loathed it; a treacly story that made me dislike all the characters, and not well-written. Let's hope he's improved.
I only remember him as a journalist for NME, which doesn’t scream that he would be a good fit.
Have you read any Raymond Benson? :D
I'm the same. It's Fleming for the real stuff, Amis and Horowitz for sincere tributes worthy of Fleming, and the others are fun digressions with varying degrees of success.
Really and who will end up writing that book from the Patterson writing factory, it has been a long time ago the man actually wrote something himself.
I would prefer Daniel Silva myself a lot more.
So far, the only continuation author I have enjoyed is Wood. Haven t read Benson, Deaver or Boyd. (or Higson)
Yeah I remember that, it was just a pisstake exposing some of Fleming's more shallow elements. I'm not big Self fan but I thought he had a point at the time.
Not exactly conclusive then! :D
Possible to read somewhere? I’ll google it later
Thanks for pointing that out @Revelator @mtm.
Will Self's Bond story "License to Hug" is still available online for anyone interested.
I'd probably faster pick up Raymond Benson's novel Zero Minus Ten than Fleming's You Only Live Twice. That doesn't reflect the quality of the writing, but it does show which I thought was more entertaining.
You could say that the clue to his true character was there all along in the form of his surname. ;)
I agree. I think he’s better than Amis too as far as prose. I find Amis a slog. Wood did a good job with prose and character, but the story is reading a movie script not a book. Where Horowitz falls down is characters. I think they’re diet version Fleming. His stories I think are good too but nothing great. Still there great passages in his books. I’m kind of ambivalent about his return for a third at this point though. Maybe one more chance to really deliver or it’s time for someone new to take a stab.
I’d love to one day get a book I think can sit alongside Fleming. Even the best or most entertaining continuation novels are a shelf or two below Fleming imo. Fleming is an awesome writer, combining spectacular imagination with great plots and characters, great pacing, real world spy touches, vivid location description, insightful observations... all the while being breezy to read. No one comes close. He gets dissed by ignorant and pretentious people because his works are meant to be entertainment.
Ah no, thanks for that- I'm mistaken. I was remembering another pastiche in a newspaper, afraid I can't remember much about it though.
I think all the continuation books I've read are – one way or the other – a diet version of Fleming. But there's nothing wrong with that. I'd be interested by a third Horowitz book, because I felt that Forever and a Day was a better novel than Trigger Mortis, and I'd be interested to see what he could do with a third story.