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Comments
1. Christopher Wood (great)
2. Kingsley Amis (mediocre)
3. John Gardner (same)
4. Sebastian Faulks/Anthony Horowitz (awful)
1. Amis
2. Higson
3. Horowitz
4. Boyd
5. Gardner
6. Deaver
7. Faulks
8. Wood
9. Benson
The top three are all really very good, the next four are pretty much fine, the last two should never have been writing novels.
I'm not sure I really count Pearson as such, but I do remember enjoying his book.
Ian Fleming-Richard Maibaum, Terence Young, Sean Connery. They defined James Bond forever, and the role models for all of the people who make James Bond materials.
Kingsley Amis-Peter Hunt, George Lazenby. They learned from the best, and it showed. It’s a bit sad that they didn’t get a second Bond adventure.
John Gardener-Lewis Gilbert, Guy Hamilton, Roger Moore, John Glen, Michael G. Wilson. They may have stayed on the series too long. They also made the series too silly. However, they deserve credit for helping keeping the series alive.
Raymond Benson-Judi Dench, Roger Spottiswoode, Pierce Brosnan, Barbara Broccoli, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Sam Mendes. They helped modernize Bond, but their styles and themes could be a bit cringe-worthy at times.
Sebastian Faulks-Lee Tamahori, Marc Forster. They didn’t get or even like James Bond. What were the higher level people thinking of hiring these overdramatic art-house hacks? Thankfully, we got a better follow up because of them.
Jeffery Deaver-Michael Apted, Bruce Feirstein. They gave a more humanized Bond, with feelings and emotion about others. They also gave us some great female villains. I’m personally biased towards them as TWINE was the first Bond movie I watched, and CB was the first Bond novel I read.
William Boyd-Timothy Dalton. Solo could have been TD’s final film. Their portrayals of Bond are very similar. Flawed, but could be seen as aging well for everyone to look at in more ways than one.
Anthony Horowitz-Martin Campbell, Daniel Craig. The true successors to their original people who started the series: Novelists, directors, and actors. They get Ian Fleming and James Bond more than anyone working (and alive). As of now, they have ended on a high note in their time with James Bond.
1. Christopher Wood (great)
2. William Boyd (mediocre)
3. Kingsley Amis (mediocre)
4. John Gardner (even more mediocre)
5. Sebastian Faulks/Anthony Horowitz (can t decide who is more awful)
Boyd
Wood
Horowitz
Deaver
Gardner
Faulks
Benson
And Deaver, I just realized.
2. Wood (1st book is great it reads like a Fleming novel written in 1977, 2nd good too)
3. Boyd (it seems to get better with each read and is a truly decent effort, wonderful use of imagery and well crafted dialogue)
4. Gardner (1st three quite good, then tails off a little)
5. Faulks (I quite like the 1st 3rd of DMC but the detail falls off in the rest, SIS changing its cover name back to Universal seems jarring to me and Bond nibbling cheese on a Moscow park bench and then robbing a money van wasn't brilliant...but there are good parts to this novel such as the descriptions of Paris .. if only it had had some further refinement maybe tweaked to be slightly darker and more realistic)
Welcome aboard, @HoagyCarmichael. Good to see Amis, Wood and Gardner ranked so highly in your list of Bond continuation authors. You are obviously someone of consummate good taste. :)
Martin Amis would be great but he pretty much ruled himself out of the Bond continuation authorship back in 2007 on Amis, Amis and Bond (BBC Radio 4). On that programme I think he told the host Charlie Higson that he'd only do the job if he had a brain aneurysm!
Same question as above.
I'd put her pretty high. Below Horowitz; not as good a writer as Amis but who is?; level with Boyd and Deaver for readability, characterisation and excitement.
Good to hear! I trust her with writing future stories. I do like both Deaver and Boyd writing about Bond as well.
2. Amis
The rest are just... bad. (NOTE: I have not read Higson or Boyd.) Faulks' abomination was definitely the worst.
https://baos.pub/five-non-fleming-james-bond-novels-worth-your-time-5d517137f719
https://gamerant.com/best-james-bond-books-no-movie-adaptation/
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a41210611/best-james-bond-books-anthony-horowitz/
https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/bond-books-anthony-horowitz-ian-fleming
Have these articles aged well with us? Next week, we can officially add Charlie Higson! If Kim Sherwood adds Bond in person to her Double 0 sequels, we can add her officially!
They are promoting it as a 'story' so I guess it's a little unfair to compare with those guys, who did all produce considered full-length novels. Hopefully it will whet ours and Higson's appetites for more though.
I generally agree with their ranking, but putting Faulks at the top is the main misstep for me too. His was a pastiche and felt hollow to me. I'd probably replace him there with Horowitz now, as I thought he did a very good job.
A great short interview. I consider The Authorized Biography canon with Fleming/Horowitz. He should be considered a continuation novel author.
I'm with you on that.
I really need to give Wood a go--I have a really beat-up version of TSWLM.
Beyond that I like Amis (although CS is a bit overrated), and I read all the Gardners back in the day. I will say this about Gardner: he wasn't afraid to go his own way, with both interesting and awful results. I'm not sure he ever had a great Bond novel, though.
I don't rate Benson as more than fanfic, and I haven't tried all the flavor-of-the-month authors since him. I'm mildly interested in Horowitz. I watched the Alex Ryder TV show, didn't care for it (he basically riffs on OHMSS like Nolan) and wonder if he is yet more Fleming-pastiche.
I don't despise Benson's work. I have a certain amount of appreciation for the respect he paid to certain details. He seemed to have a keen understanding of what Fleming would and would not have done. But all of his original work has the feel of a movie tie-in or a screen play. Benson lives and dies by Fleming old line that Bond's stories should be "improbable, but not impossible."
Reading both Faulks and Boyd's novels, they seem to be written with Daniel Craig's Bond in mind. The sort of macho, man-of-action-and-few-words type of portrayal.
I am planning on reading Colonel Sun very soon and I have yet to read any of Horowitz's entries. So I will have to wait until I submit my rankings. Deaver will probably be on the bottom, though. The idea of letting him write a Bond novel had to be based entirely on name recognition and profit. He is a great author, he just had no business writing a Bond novel. It's rare when I can't finish reading a book after I start one, but I had to force myself to make if halfway thru Carte Blanche before I gave up lol.
Even though U.S. dollars have contributed signifigantly to the massive profits Bond books and films have raked in, it is important that 007 remains a British-penned character.
He was also concerned about continuity, as he had just written SeaFire at the time and included Felix Leiter in the story, with all of his previous injuries and amputations. Gardner wanted to write LTK so it would fit in with his continuation series and not be a stand alone, so he insisted on adding Leiter with his previous shark attack injuries lol. I don't think he was happy with the outcome but he thought it would be ridiculous to write the story and give Felix all of his appendages.
Afterwards, he swore he wouldn't write another movie tie-in but he did come back for GoldenEye.
Another interesting tidbit from that interview is that Gardner said he stopped watching the new Bond movies after he took over the continuation series in 1981. He said he didn't want them to distract him from what he was writing.
I remember a couple of years back I read the then-latest Horowitz, which put me in a good mood, and because I was in Cyprus I decided to pick up Benson's Cyprus-set Facts of Death many years since I first read it: however the difference in literary skill is rather shocking when you read them back to back like that. Basically Horowitz is a very experienced, professional and skilled author, and Benson just reads like a fanfic writer, as you say. I just find him to be appalling.
Just the descriptions and dialogue feel fake and tacky, and Bond winks and quips in unfunny ways, almost in a way worse than a Roger Moore movie more as a sitcom.
Mind you Gardner's not immune to this: there are a couple of times where Bond randomly winks in what is supposed to be a charming scenario but his missteps are much more forgettable and paired with at least description and characterisation that is satisfactory
Looking greatly forward to this!
Same!
What is this book about, specifically? The small blurb really doesn't say. Amazon has no listing for a title due out in ten days or so. What is the cost? Hardback or paperback? Kindle version?
So I'm looking forward to see how he would tackle the subject of continuation novels. He already interviewed Benson before, so I guess it would be the case again. I'm only speculating but, based on Edlitz's previous book, I assume it will delve into how each author was chosen, their original ideas, how they wrote their books, etc. The Kindle version of The Lost Adventures of James Bond cost me $10 if I remember well.
I see the Bentley is on the cover; which continuations was that in? Young Bond?