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Comments
I was hoping it would get some reactions but I didn't expect this one.
A great review. Also, I really wish EON would give Horowitz a chance at either adapting one of his books or writing his own screenplay. I’d say he’s earned it.
That's rather lovely.
That's great!
Congratulations, @Revelator! That's gotta feel real good to have him comment on it. I'm happy for you.
Congratulations on a well-deserved compliment to one of our finest Fleming and Bond scholars! :)
I wish I liked Horowitz I really do but god this is awful and depressing
I thought Horowitz did a good job of channeling Fleming's voice in the early chapters and I thought the meeting and knife fight in the abandoned subway was particularly well written, but I agree, the book as a whole was far too somber and joyless for a Bond adventure. There was little of the excitement or escapism of Fleming's Bond to be found here. I suppose there was the Tower Bridge shootout, but strangely enough that felt more like it belonged in a modern-day Mission: Impossible movie than in a 1960s-set spy thriller.
Horowitz has his strengths as a writer, but I wasn't the biggest fan of any one of his three entries and am looking forward to someone new taking over literary Bond.
The spy novelist Greg Mosse also listed the book: "It was with a tinge of sadness that I read the brilliant With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz (Vintage)--sadness because it's the last James Bond novel he's going to write."
Paperback trailer.
I like this book but it is has only one bigger "action scene". Non-stop action is completely misleading.
It's a great read though.
I wonder if
Steel Hand
would have been a better/more suitable title for the novel? Personally, I'd have gone with that title. It's the name of the criminal organisation. Sounds sinster. With A Mind To Kill sounds a bit generic. Likewise, Forever And A Day title was rather bland.
Perhaps The Steel Hand would work better, but a good alternative title suggestion nonetheless. However, if they ever came to film it people would probably think it was a Dr. No remake...yet again. :)
I didn't like the title at first, but like Trigger Mortis, it did at least have a bearing on the book's contents, and sounded less clunky once I'd read the book.
In the interview, Horowitz says he hasn't been approached about a fourth. I think he should end with a trilogy, he had 3 general well received hits. He probably wants to go on a high note. And he honestly should. We don’t need another John Gardner, writing for too long, when he was clearly creatively drained. Anthony Horowitz and even Raymond Benson did the right amount, just too spaced out, Horowitz at least. A Bond book every other year is good enough. For now, it seems that Kim Sherwood is the official Bond author, more or less.
I noticed that Horowitz says in the interview that he liked Carte Blanche of the recent books. Ironically, apparently, when he started writing Bond, The Evening Standard reported that Horowitz wanted to do a Bond novel for a while. He also heartily disliked Faulks and Deaver’s efforts and in any case wasn’t sure he would as the other two had mucked about with it too much. He wasn’t wrong, Devil May Care plays it too safe, Carte Blanche is too unique in more ways than one. In the meantime, IFP needs to bring Bond to the modern day for two reasons: Horowitz left Fleming’s timeline on a high note, and it would seem like IFP is desperate to get back to Fleming, without taking some creative chances.
Horrowitz blatantly lifted the subplot of Russia With Love too. Russians (SMERSH) use their female agent to fall in love/get intimate with Bond to reveal his true intentions. Katya Leonova is Hororwitz's Tatiana Romanova.
200 pages in to the story Bond should know/be part of the mission. This would be half way through a Bond film by now so it's poor writing to have Bond literally clueless about any threat to England.
Also Bond is so passive in the story. He is pretending to be a Russian spy under the mind power of Colonel Boris (Boris Johnson 😆)... but he feels a bit I dunno.. not like a 00 agent. He goes to museums and restaurants like some tourist visiting Russia. Okay, whatever, Anthony, can we now see the real 007 in action!
Despite my comment in my previous post about the "plodding plot" - I enjoyed the novel. Hororwitz description of Russia and the cold war period is very good.
In order of preference I'd rate the trilogy:
1 - Trigger Mortis
2 - Forever And A Day
3 - With A Mind To Kill
My slightly negative thoughts about WAMTK...
1) Plodding plot (second act). Bond is reactive rather than proactive. You don't get much sense he's a 00 on a mission. He's undercover so to speak, pretending to be a double agent working for the Russians, but he feels more like a bored tourist in Russia ;)) than James Bond 007!
2) Katya is killed off in a lazy way. She is killed in an instant without much narrative sense. Given she was the daughter of Colonel Boris, I've no idea who would have given the order or why to execute her. Killing off Katya saved Hororwitz's having to waste time writing her defection to the west. My guess is that's why she was killed.
3) Katya revealed as Boris' daughter didn't have any dramatic weight. Seemed a perfunctory addition to the story. We never got to see her confronting Boris and denouncing his evil scheme.
4) Anti-climax/subdued ending. Bond goes to the concert, breaks the mind control and kills Boris instead of Khrushchev. He escapes across the east German border. No shootout, no big action scene. We're told Steel Hand is "finished" (page 319) but there's no sense of any conflict. There's no tangible sense of resolution. Likewise, there's no explanation how M will return? If he's assumed dead how he return to his job? And of course we don't see Bond arrive in west Germany nor do we know if he will retire from the service. The ending felt like Horowitz keeping his options open for a fourth book.
Personally I'd have preferred a part 4 to the novel. Bond goes back to London and recovers from his mission. A few weeks later Bond and some other 00s or CIA agents trace Steel Hand to a hidden base in South America. They launch an attack and destroy the base. All members of Steel Hand are killed.
'Operation Steel Hand' file closed.
;)
Overall it was an enjoyable read. :)
I have softened on it a little but I agree it's clearly the weakest of the Horowitz's, the plotting is very flimsy and not terribly engaging. It also doesn't help he has to contort the story around YOLT and TMWTGG. It just doesn't feel particularly Bondian, and that's sort of the point but it made for a hard read. I was annoyed about the ambiguous ending on first reading but I concede it does fit with Bond's apathy towards the job.
Katya's death still infuriates me though. It's not only cheap but senselessly graphic in a way that modern Bond stories have made great efforts to move away from. There are ways to do it well, Horowitz did it last time with Sixtine after all. It doesn't help that Katya is a far weaker character but it just sat really uncomfortably with me.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/james-bond-author-anthony-horowitz-160000528.html
I think that NTTD is the main reason that we got an abrupt (Sopranos type ending) because Horowitz wasn’t happy with Bond dying. He was right in his way, and that’s fair. I know he likes Colonel Sun above some of Fleming’s novels. I kind of wish WAMTK would have followed CS, as there was some material that could have worked after it. Not to mention, get the bad after taste of Devil May Care out of Bond fans’ minds. He clearly overwrote it. However, I think that Horowitz wanted to go out on a high note. I feel that he generally succeeded both for himself and for the average Bond fan. I think he and IFP wanted to move forward. I’m thankful that Anthony Horowitz wrote Bond, and I feel IFP feels that way as well. Modern day Bond adventures for the future, for now please. Also, I’m happy that he is giving Kim Sherwood and her Double-00 trilogy support.