Anniversary BONDS for 2025

HAPPY NEW YEAR and welcome to another year of The Book Bond. Here's a rundown of the Bond novels that will be celebrating notable anniversaries this year. Break out the bookmarks and champagne!

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70th Anniversary

Ian Fleming's third Bond novel finds 007 tangling with the megalomanic Elon Musk. I mean Hugo Drax! Moonraker was published by Jonathan Cape on April 5, 1955 in the UK, and in the U.S. by Macmillian on September 20, 1955.

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60th Anniversary

Ian Fleming's final James Bond novel was published posthumously by Jonathan Cape in the UK on April 1, 1965. It was released in the U.S. in August 1965, by New American Library.

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40th Anniversary

John Gardner took 1985 off, but that didn't mean there wasn't a 007 novel that year...if you knew Jim Hatfield. CLICK HERE for the strange tale of this first unofficial James Bond novel, which turns 40 this year.

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30th Anniversary

John Gardner's novelization of the great comeback James Bond film GoldenEye released in November 1995. A rare hardcover edition was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton.

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25th Anniversary

Raymond Benson's fourth original James Bond novel, Doubleshot, turns 25. The book was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton on May 4, 2000. The U.S. edition from Putnam was published on June 5, 2000. 

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20th Anniversary

The terrific Young Bond series by Charlie Higson was launched 20 years ago with the first book, SilverFin. Published in the UK by Puffin on March 3, 2005. The U.S. edition from Hyperion was published on April 27, 2005. 

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10th Anniversary

Anthony Horowitz's excellent debut continuation novel Trigger Mortis turns ten this year. Released simultaneously in the UK and U.S. on September 8, 2015.

Happy reading!

The mystery of THE KILLING ZONE

I first posted this in 2007, but as The Book Bond now has a larger readership, I thought this was worth a re-post for those who have never heard of this literary Bond curiosity. Enjoy.

One of the more mysterious stories in the world of the literary James Bond is that of the little-known 007 novel The Killing Zone by Jim Hatfield. The 251 page novel tells the story of 007 going after a drug lord in Mexico after he murders Bond’s friend and colleague, Bill Tanner. It's a plotline strikingly similar to the film Licence To Kill (still four years away when The Killing Zone was "published"), and includes the surprise reappearance of Major Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me. It also includes the even more surprising death of James Bond in its final pages!

The Killing Zone appeared in 1985 -- the year official continuation novelist John Gardner had off -- and claims on its copyright page to be officially licensed by Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications). But this book is far from official.

The Killing Zone was the creation of Jim Hatfield, a legitimate author of several books, most notably of the infamous George W. Bush biography, Fortunate Son, which claimed the former U.S. president was once arrested for cocaine possession. He was also a man who had his fair share of problems with the law.

The story (as uncovered by the now defunct 007Forever website) is that Hatfield told co-workers he had been named the new James Bond continuation author. In order to keep his ruse alive, he wrote and self-published The Killing Zone, which on close examination is a bizarre patchwork of original material mixed with plagiarized passages from the Bond novels by John Pearson and John Gardner and other spy novels.

Even the cover art is a patchwork forgery. Despite the claim on the back of the book that it was designed and hand lettered by David Gatti, the "James Bond" was lifted from the U.S. paperback edition of James Bond The Authorized Biography and the title design was taken from a novel of the same name by William Crawford Woods (I've yet to discover the source of the blood spots).

Despite all this, The Killing Zone is not entirely without Bondian merit. It features some clever action scenes, good use of Mexican locales (Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Sierra Madre), and a strong villain in Klaus Dobermann. The return of Triple X is fun in a fan fiction sort of way, but Hatfield does go a step too far with the name of his Bond Girl: Lotta Head.

Precisely how many copies of The Killing Zone were printed is not known. There have been rumors of large stashes tucked away, but like so much with Hatfield, the truth is elusive. Thus far, only two copies of The Killing Zone have ever surfaced, both signed by Hatfield to female co-workers. (I own one of these two copies, which I purchased from a mysterious seller, "A. Smith," on eBay in 2000.)

Plagued by problems with alcohol and facing arrest for credit card fraud, Jim Hatfield committed suicide in an Arkansas motel in 2001. Near the end, Hatfield believed he was under surveillance by the Bush administration, and there are those who suggest he was actually murdered by the minions of George W. Bush.

It all sounds like something out of a James Bond novel.