Anthony Horowitz Adopts Ian Fleming's Voice For James Bond Continuation Novel, 'Trigger Mortis'

Rosemary Neill at the Australian offers a piece on Anthony Horowitz, the author of the next James Bond continuation novel.

He may have been entrusted with writing the latest James Bond novel, but Anthony Horowitz has some pretty strong opinions about the blockbusting 007 films. Remember Jaws, the assassin with the bone-crushing iron teeth from The Spy Who Loved Me? “Straight out of children’s books,’’ scoffs the British author and screenwriter, who knows a thing or two about fiction for kids, having sold 19 million copies of his Alex Rider teenage adventure series.

Sean Connery’s Bond was “spot on’’, Horowitz says, but Roger Moore’s films “get progressively sillier and sillier and almost kill the format’’. He mentions Pierce Brosnan’s widely mocked invisible car in Die Another Day. “An invisible car in a James Bond film? You just want to cry, really. I wouldn’t put one in an Alex Rider book, let alone Bond.’’

The latest incarnation of the MI6 agent, played with sexy, melancholic intensity by Daniel Craig, gets it in the neck for, among other crimes, drinking Heineken, although Horowitz loved the actor’s first Bond film, Casino Royale. “It was Bond heaven back again,’’ he enthuses.

The praise doesn’t last. It’s midmorning on a clear, cool autumn day in Sydney, but the temperature isn’t as bracing as Horowitz’s opinions of the liberties recent films have taken with Ian Fleming’s characterisation of the British spy with an eye for the ladies and a licence to kill.

Horowitz is holding court at a harbourside hotel to discuss his eagerly awaited Bond novel, Trigger Mortis, which is due out next month. In his sharp, uncompromising way, he notes how Casino Royale “was followed by Quantum of Solace, which was a disaster, a dog’s dinner. And then you’ve got Skyfall … I didn’t like it.

“I know I’m in a minority and it’s been a hugely successful film, but it seems to me that the character Daniel Craig portrays in Skyfall is not James Bond. James Bond does not drink Heineken beer. He doesn’t get worn out when he’s trying to do press-ups. He isn’t conflicted. He isn’t in love with M, not with Judi Dench anyway ... for the purist, it wasn’t Bond.’’  

... Interestingly, Horowitz has incorporated about 500 words written by Fleming into the new novel, which also sees the return of Goldfinger heroine Pussy Galore, a lesbian and sometime Bond lover, as well as SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence agency that features in the early novels. Fleming’s description and dialogue are drawn from his work for a television series that was set aside after the first Bond film, Dr No, stormed the box office in 1962. One of those stories, titled Murder on Wheels, “leapt out’’ at Horowitz, even though “I knew nothing about Grand Prix”.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/james-bond-novelist-horowitz-adopts-flemings-voice-for-trigger-mortis/story-fn9n8gph-1227491426184 

You can also visit Anthony Horowtiz's website via the below link:

http://www.anthonyhorowitz.com/