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'On His Majesty's Secret Service' by Charlie Higson (2023)
mtm
United Kingdom
https://www.ianfleming.com/higson-returns-with-brand-new-adventure/
A new Bond adventure written by Charlie Higson to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III: On His Majesty’s Secret Service will be published on May 4th, with all royalties going to support the work of the Literacy Trust.
Set in 2023, 'Bond is sent at the last minute to thwart an attempt to disrupt the Coronation by the wealthy, eccentric and self-styled Athelstan of Wessex, who is on a deadly mission of his own to teach the United Kingdom a lesson. Can Bond dismantle his shady plans and defeat his privately hired team of mercenaries?'
Waterstones have it as 144 pages, so seems to be about half the length of a standard Bond, perhaps more of a novella, but that seems good to me.
A new Bond adventure written by Charlie Higson to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III: On His Majesty’s Secret Service will be published on May 4th, with all royalties going to support the work of the Literacy Trust.
Set in 2023, 'Bond is sent at the last minute to thwart an attempt to disrupt the Coronation by the wealthy, eccentric and self-styled Athelstan of Wessex, who is on a deadly mission of his own to teach the United Kingdom a lesson. Can Bond dismantle his shady plans and defeat his privately hired team of mercenaries?'
Waterstones have it as 144 pages, so seems to be about half the length of a standard Bond, perhaps more of a novella, but that seems good to me.
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Comments
This will please many fans who often speculated why IFP didn't do the obvious and hire Higson to write an adult Bond novel (after his already proven track record with the successful 'Young Bond' series). This is certainly music to my ears as within the literary Bond I've always had a preference for the more traditional contemporary-set adult Bond novels in the Fleming-Amis-Gardner-Benson-Deaver mould.
It's also great to have an adult Bond novel set in the present day again and tying it in to King Charles III's coronation with a spin on the On Her Majesty's Secret Service title (in its 60th year of publication no less) is a lovely touch. Higson had Young Bond foil an assassination attempt on the King in By Royal Command (2008) so this sounds like a timely variant of that earlier plot. It also calls to mind the plot by the crazed serial killer villain David Dragonpol (my namesake!) to assassinate Princess Diana and the princes William and Harry on a Royal Family visit to Euro Disney resort in Paris in John Gardner's Never Send Flowers (1993). It's interesting that Charles and his former wife Diana now both feature in the plots of two Bond novels set 30 years apart!
Higson mustn't have had very long to write the novel considering HM Queen Elizabeth II only died on 8 September 2022 and King Charles III acceded to the throne that day. That may explain its shorter length as a Bond novel, as pointed out by @mtm above. It also marks the first time we've had adult Bond continuation novels in two consecutive years (after Horowitz's With A Mind to Kill in 2022) since the Raymond Benson novels ended in 2002. It's also great that the novel will benefit such a worthy charity as the National Literary Trust. So, it's great news all round!
I haven't read the Young Bonds, but people seem to generally like Higson's writing, so I'm looking forward to it.
It's definitily a smart marketing move and nice to see the people behind Bond trying a little bit to come/stay in the public consciousness.
The idea of a 'self-styled Athelstan of Wessex' as the baddie looks at first glance like Johnny English-style silliness, but it's not much sillier than Blofeld wanting recognition as being the Count De Bleuchamp in the original OHMSS, so it's probably more Fleming than it seems! Higson is the writer who got closest to the feel of Fleming if you ask me; he got Fleming's slightly twisted and perverted sense of danger, and got the sometimes-silly and far-fetched aspect of his ideas just right. So to see how he tackles adult 007 will be great. Fingers crossed it's a prelude to a full return, but if not it should still be a good read. Presumably it will have a cover in the style of the new Fleming reprints by Webb & Webb, with a big '007' dominating it?
Quite fun that it's 60 years since OHMSS 1 was published. And the book is actually set on the day it is published: that's lovely.
Quote from Higson on that:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/secret-service-charlie-higson-james-bond-bond-national-literacy-trust-b2311556.html
Not much more than a month ago! That's pretty impressive.
I don't know if she's in it.
:)
My only little bits of contention are the fact that it's set during the real life Coronation, which eh, personally not a fan and I feel it could come off a little cringy and at worst propaganda-y. Also minor spoilers for By Royal Command but Higson has already written 'James Bond foiling an assassination plot on the King', I don't know whether that's a help or a hindrance but we'll see.
Yeah I know what you mean: hopefully any forelock-tugging is kept to a minimum. Happy & Glorious was fun in 2012 but fingers crossed this isn't too much of a re-run. I have faith in Higson that he'll take it seriously though: I think he respects Bond and Fleming too much. If it doesn't end with Bond turning down a medal or knighthood or something I'll be surprised :)
If the King does turn up to somehow give Bond a hand funnily enough he won't be the first superspy he's assisted in print: when he was the Prince of Wales he gave Jack Ryan backup in Patriot Games!
https://www.bookdepository.com/On-His-Majestys-Secret-Service-Charlie-Higson/9781915797070
She may!
Oh yeah, Heinrich XIII. Prince Reuss. He's pretty far off the actual former Emperial family Hohenzollern. They are also still around, but as far as I know stopped being outspoken Nazis somewhere in the 50s or 60s. The Reuss' are like a sideline to a family that used to rule small parts of Thuringia.
The objectively funny thing about this family is that they - at some point - decided to name every man in the family Heinrich with an ordinal Latin number after the name and they re-start at I. every century. So this guy's grandfather was Prince Heinrich XXXIV. but his father actually was a Heinrich I. -but like the 8th Heinrich I Reuss in history. It's all very mad and quite Johnny English ("It's Heinrich!" "Which Heinrich" "The 13th." "He's been dead for 40 years!" "No, the new 13th." "We have a new 13th?" etc etc)
The disturbing thing is that this guy in fact a figurehead of a terrorist strain of the Reichsbürger movement which is basically a specific German flavour of sovereign citizens, who claim the Federal Republic is illegitimate and the German Empire still exists and so on and so forth. His group planned a violent coup - they didn't get to start it, but had former and serving German Special Forces soldiers in their group, so they probably would have done some serious damage and they not been rumbled. He and his co-conspiritors have been in jail since about December...
Anyway.
Yeah it's quite a bizarre and dangerous story, quite like something Fleming would make up!
To quote Sean connery’s 007
“I must be dreaming”
There's no ebook option on Amazon in the UK yet either as far as I can tell; I'm sure it'll just appear when it's published. It certainly says it'll be available as one.
Fact is also that a twice- or even farther-removed cousin or nephew of his, who bears the name of Heinrich XIV. Prince Reuss, informed the media right afterwards that the rest of the family has been considering No. XIII to be completely off the rocker for quite some time. I'm much more concerned about an active judge at a Berlin administrative court, who also happened to have been a Bundestag deputy for the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (with quite a number of neo-Nazis in their membership) also being part of the core group.
Really? Where does it show it will be avail as a Kindle download?
From the official release:
“On His Majesty’s Secret Service will be available digitally as an eBook, as an audiobook (read by Charlie Higson), and as a hardback, online and in bookshops from 4 May. ”
OK thanks. I would -assume- USA as well.
I wouldn't get my hopes up too much, this seems like a one-off event thing. But fingers crossed! It's nice that they're releasing Bond literature set in present day, so they clearly haven't abandoned the idea. Would love to see Charlie Higson write some adult Bond novels.
Yes I hope this will tempt him for more.
And frankly I am super excited for at least one novel but I want more darn it
So I have a question is this Bond going to have the same loose continuity as Fleming’s bond (like Gardner and Benson) or will he be a fresh bond (like deaver and Sherwood)