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Please, please don't make suggestions like this in these threads.
IFP will do it!
Sadly that's all too true! :))
Yes of course, I understand now. Only top Mi6 officials know of Bond's present whereabouts.
And yes, of course its all real. Pearson and Weinberg were only disguising their truth as fiction.
Bond lives off the coast of England. He will be 90 on Nov 11th.
Those of you in GB should really pay a visit on his birthday. I am sure he would be eager to greet loyal fans, who are in on the secret of his existence.
Give Weinberg a call, have her track down Westbrook, and ask Kate to arrange for the party.
<:-P
==
Bond's toddler years? :)) I see potential here. Bravest kid in the sandbox. Sticking up for toddler girls, bullied by future thug toddlers. Mi6 recruiter taking early notice. Monitoring Bond's diaper days.
10 volumes at least. I nominate either Faulks or Deaver to write.
I am confused, however about whether you are saying Batman is a good or bad example of creators sticking to the original vision for a character, in this case from Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Care to elaborate?
It seems that the show-runners behind Gotham are also going for the angle that
It would be nice to meet Bond ;) but Weinberg/Westbrook gave a false address when writing the novel. It's not off the coast of England, where he actually lives. Maybe somewhere similar though - a nice coastal cottage. You would need to get a hold of the MP diaries to know the true address. Bond deserves his privacy though, so personally, I would advise against pursuing that avenue. ;)
In fact didn't Weinberg/Westbrook say that Bond's real name wasn't actually James Bond?
There's a good chance that I won't even read these comics. Or maybe only after a series of books have been written about Bond's war/pre Casino Royale days.
Slim chance of me extracting more at the upcoming London launch of 'Moriarty' but I'll try!
He also went on to make the following points and drew some comparrisons between his Bond and Holmes work:
Firstly and surprisingly for me, he said that he found Bond much more difficult than Holmes.
He attributed that to Conan Doyle having a defined style than can be emulated whilst he considered Fleming to be more the master of "the set piece" which he found more difficult to get to grips with.
He spoke of the challenge of evoking the '50s atmosphere as he felt that the decade was "less defined" than Victorian England and more difficult to make relevant and exciting to a modern audience. He also referenced the fact that his Bond is Fleming's Bond. A relatively gadget free zone.
The hoary old chestnut of Bond's homophobic, mysoginist tendencies and their possible impact on a contemporary audience was brought up by Anthony and he claimed to have found a unique way around the issue?
He also revieled that he physically visits and researchers his locations (evidently part of his 007 epic is set in Hawaii) and had gone around the Nurenburg ring at racing speed with a professional driver.
All in all, he said he is nearly finished the book and is very happy with it. His next step will be to give it to his family and gauge their reaction!
The subject of Bond came up again during the Q&A when I asked him if he'd read and been influenced by the late John Gardner's 'Moriarty Journals' ? He said that he'd been unaware of them until quite recently - despite the fact that the third one shares the same title 'Moriarty' - but that he knew about Gardner's Oakes books and that he'd written some Bond although he claimed not to have read them and didn't really know what type of writer Gardner was. When I initially posed the question, he jokingly enquired if I was John Gardner!
He went on to say that he'd read Deaver's book and that he considered his decision to update the character to be a mistake. He also said that he'd read 'Colonel Sun' and liked it a lot albeit he considered that the torture scene went way too fare and that he'd felt slightly dirty after reading it.
During the signing I told him that some of us had been rooting for him to get the Bond gig. He shared some private thoughts about Boyd's Bond contribution and I wished him well.
All in all, a great evening and Anthony Horowitz was a complete delight and great fun.
I'm looking forward to reading Moriarty. It's next on my list after I've finished Stuart Neville's latest.
And as an aside, agents that are captured and tortured are usually killed. The torture is a prelude to death.
I don't think its realistic, even in a fictional dramatized Bond setting, for Bond to be captured and tortured and survive, several times.
Fleming did it once with CR, and Bond only escaped that scenario because of the intervention of the Smersh agent.
Yes, but you will recall that after the carpet-beater testicle battering Bond endured Le Chiffre was just about to cut off Bond's privy member with a knife (while he was still conscious) in Casino Royale before the intervention of the SMERSH assassin and that the eponymous Colonel Sun was going to break Bond's legs and then give him a final injection to send his body into convulsions. So therefore both torture scenes were indeed at least intended to be preludes to Bond's agonising death even if the villains that were inflicting the torture were on both occasions interrupted by a deus ex machina of some sort or other. And it is James Bond we're talking about here of course, so we know he will not be killed though he may be tortured to within an inch of his life...
Personaly I think it is because they are both, in a certain way, unnecessary to the stories and bring a level of darkness that is inconsistent with the overall pitch of what are otherwise escapist fictions.
Interestingly, Anthony's comment about his dislike for the scene in 'Colonel Sun' - a book he otherwise rated very highly- came out of an exhaustive answer he gave to a young reader when she enquired "if his books would always have gore in them?"
Incidentally, it was great to see so many young fans at the launch - clearly a consequence of the success of Horowitz's books for children and teenagers - they were all very articulate and well informed. A solid testimony to the power of reading.
No question, it's up to the writer but reader reaction will always be driven by context.
The only two Bond torture scenes that ever made me question their relevance were CR and CS and I think it was because they felt like unnecessary additions.
I'm currently reading Stuart Neville's 'The Final Silence' which is part of a series about post 'Good Friday' Belfast that is shot through with ultra realistic violence and terror. That said, it never feels gratuitous, simply because the context makes the action completely relevant and necessary.
Both Fleming and Neville's books are great thrillers but Fleming's Have always been 'grounded fantasy' whilst Neville's are 'pure noir.'
Well as I have mentioned before I'm working on and off on an article for my blog entitled 'The Strange Death of Colonel Sun and the Increased Level of Violence as a Factor in Kingsley Amis' 1968 James Bond Continuation Novel'. It will deal with what I regard as the upping of the violence and gore by Amis in Colonel Sun and the reasons for this as well as the strange death of Colonel Sun Liang-tan.
He's a genuinely nice guy who wants do do a quality job and one thing he did say that I omitted from my post was that he considered the trick with these homage gigs to be; "respect completely what made the originals great but give the stories the sleekness and pace that modern thriller readers expect."
That remark resonated with me.
Other good news (atleast for me) is that he is apparently writing more "Foyle's War".
I'll get to 'Moriarty' this week but I absolutely loved 'House Of Silk' and based on that alone my personal hopes for his Bond epic are very high.
I know that after everything we've been through with the celebrity trilogy that it's difficult to stay positive but this time I have a sneaking suspicion that we may well have it cracked.
I hope it won't be too fast paced though otherwise the little things that I love will be omitted such as Bond taking time out for a drink, his philosophical reflections and vivid descriptions of food and locations etc.
I don't suppose you'd like to PM his thoughts on SOLO to me? :) I have a feeling as to how he generally feels due to the fact that he wishes such sentiments to remain private. I'm not going to sit here and speculate though. :)
All of it sounds very promising and boy must he write quickly to be almost finished...he only started it a few weeks ago it seems.
Yes, it does seem quick but evidently he does 10 hours a day with few exceptions!
In any event, after the morose moods inflicted on me by recent efforts, I think I have reason to be cheerful!
Yeah, if he does do a good job then this is what I would like too. Sick of having different authors for each book but then again we've needed this as the last 3 books have ranged from disappointing to highly disappointing so I haven't been keen on any of them writing another.
Hopefully if all goes well, Anthony will be the man.
He is certainly quite pragmatic. When a Holmes fan asked him if he would be revisiting Sherlock he said that although he had no immediate plan, he wouldn't rule it out. Certainly his Ryder and Foyle's works suggest he is not adverse to serial characters.
Let's see what he brings. I have a feeling it will be quite glamorous as he appears to have been just as influenced by the early Connery movies as he was by Fleming's books.
I don't; the book will be out in a year, thus he's got all the time in the world to revise it.
The proof of the pudding will definitely be in the eating and for sure and if this one is a turkey, Villiers53 will definitely be resigning from this column.
That said, I have a strong feeling that we are onto a winner. I say this largely based on his Holmes work and also the tremendous humility he shows towards this project. Not a state of mind omnipresent with his more recent predecessors!
His total thrust seems to be geared towards giving us maximum Bond rather than some weird interpretation. Hopefully Boyd's alcoholic voyeur will be consigned to the dustbin of history in his BROWN Jensen!
Read both 'Collusion' and 'The Twelve' by Neville. Excellent books. Must find the one you're talking about.
@CraigMooreOHMSS, pleased you are enjoying Neville. I think he's absolutely the best of the new breed.
It's probably best to read 'Stolen Souls' before 'The Final Silence' because they are a series of a sort as they both feature Jack Lennon.