During his appearance at the Edinburgh Book Festival, author Charlie Higson dropped an intriguing bit of news about Young Bond Book 4...The main villain will be female.
Charlie pointed out that the villain of Book 4 (which he is still writing) started off as a man, but then changed into a woman. “Not during the book,” quipped the author. “Although perhaps he should. It’s about time we had a sex-changing Bond villain.”
While Bond books and films abound with female henchmen, main female villains are rare. Fleming only once featured a female lead villain; Rosa Klebb in From Russian With Love. A main female villain didn’t appear again until John Gardner had Bond tangle with the daughter of Blofeld in 1982s For Special Services.
While early press reports trumpeted Maud Adams’s Octopussy as the first female villain of the film series, in the end she turned out to be Bond’s ally. It wasn’t until 1999’s The World Is Not Enough that Electra King became the first female villain of the series in a twist strikingly similar to John Gardner’s For Special Services.
Charlie also said because Book 3 features no “evil creature” to grace the cover, he’d rectify that in Book 4. “I’ll make up for it in the fourth book and put in as many as I can. We’ll have a whole zoo-worth of them.”
If IFP sticks with the current schedule of one book per year, Young Bond Book 4 will be released in 2008.
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