Spy Vs. Spy

Is this a historic moment?

Former James Bond continuation author Raymond Benson met current Young Bond author Charlie Higson in Naperville Illinois during Higson’s Blood Fever U.S. book tour on Monday.

Between 1997 and 2002, Raymond Benson penned six original Bond novels (Zero Minus Ten, The Facts of Death, High Time to Kill, Doubleshot, Never Dream of Dying, The Man With The Red Tattoo), three 007 short stories (Blast From The Past, Midsummer Night’s Doom, Live At Five) and three movie novelizations (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day).

Raymond went on to write (under the pen-name of David Michaels) two bestselling novels of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell series. His most recent novel is the acclaimed Sweetie’s Diamonds.

To keep up with Raymond Benson’s latest work and appearances visit www.raymondbenson.com.

CHARLIE HIGSON reveals Young Bond 3 working titles & details

In an exclusive Q&A with fans on www.youngbond.com, author Charlie Higson has provided loads of info on Young Bond Book 3, including working titles, plot details, locations, and his ambition to make this third Young Bond novel a “Da Vinci Code for kids.”

Here’s the scoop from the man himself:

“The third book in the series will be out in January 2007 (just realised there’s a 007 theme to the year! Hope that’s a good omen). The working title for the book is ‘Shoot The Moon,’ but as we never stuck with the working title on the first two books it’s unlikely we’ll end up calling it that. Another working title is ‘The Big Smoke’ (which is the nickname for London – where most of the book is set).

I wanted to send James to a big city, as the first two books had mostly taken place in the countryside. I chose London because I live in London, I know it well and I love it. There are some fascinating unknown corners, and I wanted to do a sort of Da Vinci Code about the city, in which James has to follow a series of cryptic clues, to find out what’s going on and save the day.

As usual the book didn't end up anything like I imagined it was going to be, but there is still more of a mystery/clue solving element to this book than the first two. It’s as different to Blood Fever as that book was to SilverFin.

The background of the story is that an Eton master (Alexis Fairburn) has been kidnapped. He manages to send a coded message explaining what’s happened to him, and it falls into our hero’s hands. James then has 5 days to find out what’s happened to him before time runs out.

As I say, the story takes place over the course of one week in December, just before Christmas. (Another working title is ‘Six Days In December’.)

The missing master is a crossword fan (so he is good at making up clues) and a mathematician and the story is also about an early attempt to build a computer.

There’s lots of action, several nasty deaths, a car chase, a couple of explosions, a set of evil villains, a beautiful girl, and a climax in the old London docklands (when it was still full of ships).”

Later in the Q&A, Charlie spoke at length about this climatic location...

“In the 1930s the London docks were the biggest and busiest in the world. Docklands was known as the City Of Ships. People used to say there were so many ships in the Thames you could walk across their decks from one side of the Thames to the other without getting your feet wet. Now the whole area has been developed into a modern city (it’s where Canary Wharf and the City Airport are). The area used to be the heart of the old East End - The working class, cockney part of London. It was a really fascinating place with some very colourful characters, and I thought it would be a great setting for the climax of book 3.

Other parts of London in the books are the amazing Highgate cemetery in North London, the Hunterian museum at the Royal College Of Surgeons and Regent’s Park (Bond fans will know the significance of the park).”

The author also related how he got the ideas for each Young Bond novel, including Book 3...

“As I say, my initial idea was to do a sort of Da Vinci Code for kids. I wanted to have James solving some weird clues to find out what was going on. But as Bond is an action hero rather than a Sherlock Holmes type, I have put in more action and less clues. But I do still think that kids like the idea of clues and codes and secrets so there is quite a lot of that stuff still in there. I also wanted to write about some of the lesser-known corners of London. I got some of this in, but, again, the adventure story took over - I didn't want it to be guidebook, after all. I wanted to write about computers and code-breaking, so this is at the heart of the book. Proper computers weren’t built until the Second World War, but people were thinking about them in the thirties. I also wanted to bring back a character from an earlier book.”

Finally, Charlie teased that we will see the first Bondian “gadgets” of the series...

“...in book 3 there is an early computer, a pneumatic railway under London (driven by air pressure rather than electricity) and one of the villains has a combination weapon called an Apache – look it up on the internet and you’ll see what it is. Maybe one of you could e-mail in a picture if you find one.”

Fantastic stuff! And this is just a small sampling of what else is in this interview. To read the entire Q&A, head on over to www.youngbond.com and click on James’ trunk to enter the forums where the complete interview is posted.

YOUNG BOND heads to Mexico in Book 4

In February we learned that the location for Young Bond Book 4 -- which had been announced as being set in The Alps -- had been changed to somewhere “hot and exotic.”

Now during an appearance at Foyles bookstore in London, author Charlie Higson has revealed the exact locations; Mexico and the Caribbean.

While James Bond has certainly spent a fair amount of time in the Caribbean, Mexico has received little attention from 007. In Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger Bond reflects on a mission in Mexico (but we do not see it), and while 1989’s Licence To Kill was filmed largely in Mexico, the country doubled for the fictitious Isthmus in South America.

Mexico did feature in two 007 comic strips, The Torch-Time Affair and Death Wing, and in the 1980s role playing game, Goldfinger II: The Man With The Midas Touch. Mexico was also the primary location in Jim Hatfield’s infamous unlicensed 007 novel, The Killing Zone.

Where exactly in Mexico young James will be traveling is not yet known.

If IFP sticks with the current schedule of one book per year, Young Bond Book 4 will be released in 2008.

Thanks to Matt Weston of www.commanderbond.net for sharing this scoop.

Problems with Titans 'Cars of the Gardner Era' extra

First off, I love these Titan reprints and I'm thrilled they are now doing the original Bond stories. For a Bond fan, this is a dream come true -- original 007 stories not seen since the 70s collected together for the first time. Okay, some of these tales get a little Sci-Fi, but that was the era and they are still fun as heck.

These books also include nice extras. In this latest edition, The Golden Ghost, we get a look at Bonds cars with a fine article about the cars of the Ian Fleming novels by David Leigh. But then there's a retrospective of the cars of the Gardner era. Now, being a Gardner fan, I was excited about a definitive look at the Gardner cars. Unfortunately, this particular article by James Page is seriously deficient and, for me personally, a little disconcerting.

The article is basically a rehash (i.e., a pretty blatant lift) of my own article about Saabs in the Gardner era first published on CBn in 2004 and later in 007 Magazine. Now, I guess there's nothing wrong with using some of the facts from my article (even though it’s totally unsourced and I was not contacted by the author or Titan about this), but isn't this supposed to be an article about the CARS of the Gardner era? Why so much focus on Saabs? Unless, of course, the only source here was my own article.

For example, reading this article one gets the impression the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo appeared in just one novel, Role of Honor. This isn't true. The Bentley is the car that appears more than any other in the Gardner canon, and plays a major role in Nobody Lives Forever and No Deals Mr. Bond. Yet all the author says about these two books is that "Gardner put Bond back into a Saab." Sure, Bond rented a Saab for two brief sections of these books (which, of course, I noted in my Saab article), but he primarily drove the Bentley. He also rented a BMW in No Deals Mr. Bond. Why no mention of that if rental cars are part of this examination? Maybe because I didn't mention it in my article?

And if we're including rentals cars (and aren't all Bonds cars rentals in a sense), where's the BMW 528i and the Lancia from Win Lose or Die? Or the Toyota Previa from Death is Forever; the BMW from Never Send Flowers; the VW Corrado from SeaFire; and the Ford Taurus from COLD? Not one of these cars gets a mention, yet we do learn M drove a Saab 9000 in The Man From Barbarossa. Again, something that's nice to know when talking about Saabs in the Gardner era (and that's why I noted it in my article), but, again, is this article about Saabs in the Gardner era or the cars? Certainly this valuable space could have been used to talk about even one of the many other cars that Bond drove instead of the one obscure Saab appearance noted in my article (notice a pattern here?).

And what about Bond's second Bentley? Gardner upgraded Bond's Bentley to a Turbo R in a later book. For an article that's supposed to be a definitive look at the Gardner "cars," this is a pretty shocking omission! I've always wondered if this second Bentley was actually a new Bentley or a mistake in name. Raymond Benson carried it over into his books as new car. This would have been something interesting to at least note or, better yet, do a little research and solve the mystery. Of course, I didn't tackle this in my Saab article because it wasn't relevant. Mr. Page doesn't mention the existence of the second Bentley in his "cars of the Gardner era" because...well...I think we can now figure that one out.

Let's hope Titan is a little more careful with future contributions (and contributors).

SILVERFIN paperback "Special Edition"

As the SilverFin paperback slithers onto store shelves in the U.S., the Young Bond Dossier and CommanderBond.net have uncovered something that will be of great interest to Young Bond fans and Bond book collectors in general.

A reported earlier this month, a few copies of the U.S. SilverFin paperback slipped out early and were spotted on eBay. It was noted these copies included a 5-page preview of Blood Fever. Well, it now appears these mysterious eBay copies were actually a rare "Special Edition" and only these Special Editions contain the Blood Fever preview!

This SilverFin “Special Edition” is also slightly smaller than the standard issue, it has a different price ($4.99), and a different ISBN. In addition, the words "Special Edition" appear in red below the barcode on the back of the book and the inside flap.

So what’s the story with these? Beats me, but this is the kind of thing that makes collecting fun (or frustrating, depending on your point of view).

Happy hunting!

UPDATE: Mystery solved? I contacted the original eBay seller who said she got her copies from the Scholastic warehouse. Check out THIS PAGE on the Scholastic website. It looks like SilverFin was a special "Scholastic book fair" selection. Note the "special price." Sounds like this could be our Special Edition.

This means the book would only be available to schools (the eBay seller probably got the unsold stock). But how many were printed? Only time will tell how rare this particular SilverFin paperback will become.

YOUNG BOND 5 to reveal "the maid incident"

Young Bond author Charlie Higson has dropped a few clues about what’s in store for young James in his fifth and final installment of the Young Bond series.

“The fifth book involves elements of a fairly major nature. Basically, it is decided that things need to be hushed up, kept out of the way and swept under the carpet, official secrets, the government and the establishment closing ranks and all that, trying not to let out what has really happened, and that Bond is never allowed to speak about it ever again. Which is why he never mentions it when he's an adult! He does leave [Eton] early. It does involve an incident with the boys' maid.”

In Bond’s obituary, published in the Ian Fleming novel You Only Live Twice, it’s stated that Bond was thrown out of Eton for “trouble with one of the boy’s maid.” Many Bond fans have assumed this incident was of a sexual nature, yet Fleming established in the short story From A View To A Kill that Bond’s first sexual experience was at the age of 16 in Paris. Higson’s Bond will only be 14 when the Young Bond series ends. Therefore, “the maid incident” may be something quite different than current expectations.

“I hope to have fun with the maid incident and show that it was a lot bigger and more complex than what was presented in the obituary, and that the obituary is a deliberate attempt to cover the truth up. And I hope it will also help explain some of his attitude towards women in later life.”

Higson also added the provocative clue that the Royal Family will play a role in the Young Bond series at some point, although he did not specify in exactly which book the family would appear.

If IFP sticks with the current schedule of one book per year, Young Bond Book 5 will be released in 2009.

Past character to return in YOUNG BOND 3

The Young Bond Dossier has scored its first EXCLUSIVE with new details of Charlie Higson's third Young Bond novel.

As previously reported, the yet untitled Young Bond Book 3 will be set almost entirely in the darkest corners of 1930s London where young Bond battles Russian spies who are attempting to build an early computer. Now we have the additional plot details that part of the climax will be set on the old London docks, and that the book will take place over the course of only two days.

But what will most intrigue Young Bond fans is news that a character from an earlier Young Bond novel will be making a return appearance. The identity of that character is, for the moment, classified.

Who could this mystery character be? Wilder Lawless? George Hellebore? Vendetta (I hope)? Young Bond fans will just have to wait until the book is released in January 2007 to find out.

Author Higson has completed Book 3 and is now starting work on Book 4. Check back here next week for an exclusive bit of news about THAT novel as well.

U.S. BLOOD FEVER to be unedited

Good news today for U.S. Young Bond fans. The U.S. edition of Charlie Higson’s second Young Bond novel, Blood Fever, will NOT be edited for content.

Aside from some UK to U.S. grammatical changes, the full text of the U.S. edition, which will be released by Miramax/Hyperion on June 1, 2006, will match the UK edition released by Puffin Books earlier this year.

Fans complained that the U.S. hardcover edition of SilverFin was somewhat prudishly edited by Disney-owned publisher Miramax/Hyperion. Some scenes of violence were trimmed, as was a mention of smoking and even a reference to Wilder Lawless’ “powerful thighs.” Most U.S. fans opted to purchase the Puffin edition over the Hyperion book for this reason.

There was a fear that Blood Fever -- a far more violent book -- might be edited down to just its chapter titles and punctuation marks. But it looks like the good folks at Miramax/Hyperion are giving the people what they want, and both sides of the Atlantic will get to enjoy the novel just as author Higson wrote it.

Bravo!

BOOK BOND REVIEW: A more mature Young Bond

For this old 007 fan, Charlie Higson's first Young Bond novel, SilverFin, was a mixed bag. Clearly a book written for a preteen target audience, it too often seemed to mimic a Harry Potter adventure. A risky concept this Young Bond idea, and in SilverFin, author Higson and the 007 copyright holders showed signs of understandable uncertainty.

This is NOT the case with Young Bond Book 2: Blood Fever, which takes a confident quantum leap into maturity and gives Bond fans of all ages one of the best James Bond novels yet written. Notice I didn't qualify this by saying "Young Bond" or "continuation" novel. I said JAMES BOND novel because this is a book that could have come from the pen of Ian Fleming.

The key difference seems to be that SilverFin was written as a children's book (that could still be appreciated by adults) while Blood Fever appears to have been written with a more adult readership in mind. This is a tougher, darker, much more violent book than SilverFin. It even includes a classic Bondian torture scene (but don't panic, parents, the torture is more about endurance than person-to-person sadism). Not only is the content of the book much more adult, but so is the form. Words like "hell" and "damn" flow freely in descriptive passages as the tension mounts. But because Blood Fever chronicles the adventures of a 13 year old, it's still a novel young readers will find thrilling. However, with its surprisingly high body count, Blood Fever might not meet with a chorus of approval from parents and grade school teachers, as did its predecessor. This book is bloody and dangerous, just as a James Bond novel should be, and it may need to be read beneath the sheets at night by flashlight or smuggled into the back bleachers of the schoolyard. Good! This is exactly where a James Bond book should be read. Ian Fleming would be proud.

Plotwise, Blood Fever spends far less time at Eton than did SilverFin, getting Bond quickly to Sardinia where the bulk of the novel is set. The exotic setting clearly inspired author Higson, who infuses his story with a terrific sense of location -- its history, culture, its sights and smells. This is something that was always a highlight of the best Bond novels by Fleming and later Raymond Benson, and it's great to see the tradition continue in the Young Bond series.

As with SilverFin, Blood Fever's narrative is driven by the slow unpeeling of mystery and the discovery of character rather than nonstop action one might expect (or dread) from something bearing the James Bond name. But make no mistake. Blood Fever does contain action. Clues to the subterranean caper simmer until it all boils over into a series of action-packed climatic set pieces, culminating with a scene of destruction as spectacular as anything in a big-budget James Bond film.

The villain in Blood Fever, Count Ugo Carnifex, is a true Bond baddie in the most classic sense, with a lair and scheme reflecting every inch of his megalomania. This is the best drawn Bond villain, book or film, we've encountered in some time, even if his plot isn't of the "ticking clock" variety. Secondary characters are also marvelously conceived, particularly the pirate Zoltan the Magyar and the delicious Vendetta. Amy Goodenough, who exists largely in a parallel storyline, is a true Bond Girl in the best literary sense and carries her part of the narrative so authoritatively, her passages could have been plucked from her own novel.

But it's the character of young Bond who stands head and shoulders above all others. The timid, apologetic youngster of SilverFin is long gone. Here, we have a teenage James with all the confidence, athletic skill, and luck of Ian Fleming's secret agent. He coolly defies the villain, finds kinship with bandits, and derives visceral excitement by diving off high cliffs and driving fast cars. When forced into a gladiatorial boxing match with a much larger boy, Bond relishes the opportunity to "get his fight on." This Bond is no Harry Potter clone or Alex Rider wannabe. This is the boy who will become 007 and who could kick the pixy dust out of any character in the Potter universe.

One thing that is still not a part of the Young Bond universe, even in this more mature version, is sex. However, there is some simmering eroticism in how Ugo's decrepit sister leers at handsome young James, and clearly, the animalistic Vendetta has some carnal curiosity. Bond even delivers his first "hard kiss on the mouth" in Blood Fever. But that's as far as Higson takes it. Bond's resistance to his female admirers seems more rooted in chivalry than nervous preadolescence (as in SilverFin), and besides, danger is always too close for such "distractions." However, with Higson's writing abilities and IFP's willingness to push the boundaries, one wonders if the series may take a chance down the road. But, for now, Higson and the copyright holders are keeping the series "child safe" in this regard.

Some Bond fans have resisted the Young Bond series based on concept alone. Even I admitted that SilverFin wouldn't change the minds of the most entrenched fans. However, with Blood Fever, that resistance is now foolish. Bond fans are denying themselves a better Bond adventure than most of the recent James Bond films with their overblown action and under drawn characters. Here, that formula is reversed. There has been much talk lately about bringing Bond "back to basics." Well, those basics are being practiced right here in the Young Bond series.

So for you holdouts, my advice would be to take the plunge with Blood Fever. Young or old, this is James Bond at his very best!

Young Bond Book 3 FIRST DETAILS

As Charlie Higson's first Young Bond novel, SilverFin, continues to fly off store shelves and anticipation grows for the January release of Book 2, Blood Fever, we have uncovered the first details of Charlie Higson's third Young Bond novel.

The yet untitled Young Bond Book 3 will be set almost entirely in the darkest corners of 1930s London where young Bond battles Russian spies who are attempting to build an early computer. The release date is currently set for January 2007.

Some fans speculated that Ian Fleming Publications might release Book 3 in late 2006 to take advantage of the onslaught of James Bond publicity surrounding the release of Daniel Craig's debut as 007 in Casino Royale. However, it appears IFP is sticking with their plans to release a Young Bond book every year -- which means the series will continue until 2009, overlapping the adult centennial Bond novel due in 2008.