My Washington Times Review Of 'The Sentence Is Death'

The Washington Times published my review of Anthony Horowitz’s The Sentence Is Death.

In Anthony Horowitz’s previous novel, “The Word Is Murder,” readers were introduced to a character named Anthony Horowitz.

The fictional Anthony Horowitz shares the British writer’s background as a screenwriter and novelist who has written the Alex Rider mystery series for children, several British TV mystery series, including “Foyle’s War” (a favorite of mine), and two James Bond continuation novels and two Sherlock Holmes continuation novels.

In “The Word Is Murder” the fictional Anthony Horowitz acted as a modern-day Watson to a modern-day Holmes, a former Scotland Yard detective-turned private detective named Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, unconventional and immensely unlikable investigator.

Like Doctor John Watson, who was Sherlock Holmes’ assistant and biographer, fictional Anthony Horowitz became a somewhat reluctant chronicler and assistant to Daniel Hawthorne when he agreed to write a biography of the detective.       

In “The Sentence Is Death,” Mr. Horowitz once again follows the detective as he investigates another unusual murder in London.

The novel opens with Anthony Horowitz on the set of “Foyle’s War” as the TV mystery series is filming on a London Street. This season of the program was set in 1947 and Mr. Horowitz explains to the readers the difficulties of filming a period piece on the streets of London.

“Shooting in London is always a horrible business, prohibitively expensive and fraught with difficulties. It often seems that the entire city is deliberately doing everything in its power to stop the cameras turning. Planes will fly overhead. Pneumatic drills and car alarms will burst into angry life. Police cars and ambulances will race past with their sirens blaring,” writes Mr. Horowitz.

Despite these difficulties, the TV crew was filming when a 21st century taxi rolled onto the set with a Justin Timberlake song blasting from the vehicle. Cut!

A man stepped out of the taxi, seemingly unconcerned by the crowd of people around him, many of whom where in period dress.

“He had a sort of cheerful self-confidence that was actually quite cold-blooded, utterly focused on his own needs at the expense of everyone else’s. He was not tall or well built but he gave the impression that, by whatever means necessary, he would never lose a fight. His hair, somewhere between brown and gray, was cut very short, particularly around the ears. His eyes, a darker brown, gazed innocently out of a pale, slightly unhealthy face. This was not someone who spent a lot of time in the sun,” Mr. Horowitz writes. “He was dressed in a dark suit, a white shirt and a narrow tie, clothes that might have been deliberately chosen to say nothing about him. His shoes were brightly polished. As he moved forward, he was already searching for me and I had to ask myself — how had he even known I was here?”

The man called out to Anthony Horowitz and the director asked the writer if he knew the man.

“Yes, I admitted. His name is Daniel Hawthorne, He’s a detective.”

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

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/sep/4/book-review-sentence-death/ 

My Washington Times Review Of The James Bond Continuation Novel, 'Forever And A Day'

The Washington Times ran my review of Anthony Horowtiz’s James Bond continuation novel, Forever and a Day.

I’m not fond of continuation novels, as some writers, like Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, have a unique style that truly can’t be imitated. But I understand that the authors' iconic characters, Philip Marlowe, James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, are so popular that their many loyal readers want to read more about them, just as they enjoy watching the characters portrayed on TV and on film.

Anthony Horowitz, the author of 40 novels, including two Sherlock Holmes continuation novels, and the creator of the TV series “Foyle’s War,” which I liked very much, is the latest writer to offer a James Bond continuation novel, following Kingsley Amis, John Pearson, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, William Boyd and Sebastian Faulks.

The late Kingsley Amis, author of “Lucky Jim,” wrote the James Bond continuation novel “Colonel Sun” in 1968. Mr. Amis was an admirer of Ian Fleming and he wrote of the “Fleming Effect,” which he called the fusion of a vivid imagination with an air of authority that swiftly carries the reader along on fantastic stories that Ian Fleming himself called “improbable but not impossible.”

I don’t believe Mr. Horowitz captured the Fleming Effect, but he comes close.

I was weaned on Ian Fleming as a preteen and teenager. I devoured his novels about the British secret agent with the license to kill. I loved Mr. Fleming’s description of exotic places, people and products. I also loved his unforgettable characters, such as villains like Goldfinger and Blofeld, women like Domino and Honeychile, and James Bond’s friends, like Felix Leiter and Darko Kerim. James Bond fought the good fight against Soviet killers, international criminals and malicious madmen. Ian Fleming’s novels are far darker and much more complicated than the films and I’ve reread the thrillers a good number of times over the years.

… Mr. Horowitz penned an earlier James Bond continuation novel called “Trigger Mortis.” Like that novel, “Forever and a Day” was commissioned by the Ian Fleming estate and contains original material from the late Mr. Fleming. Utilizing his ideas and unpublished story notes is a good idea and a good hook.

A portion of “Forever and a Day” is based on an outline Ian Fleming wrote for an American TV series that never came to be. I wish that he had expanded more on the outline, but most of the novel is an original story crafted by Mr. Horowitz.

In this novel, which takes place in the 1950s in a prequel to Ian Fleming’s “Casino Royale,” 007 is killed right off. No, not James Bond. The man killed is the holder of the 007 code name that James Bond takes on as he is ordered to investigate the murder of the previous 007 in Marseille, France. 

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

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/dec/13/book-review-forever-and-a-day-by-anthony-horowitz/  

Anthony Horowitz: James Bond and Me – Reading and Writing in 007’s Shoes

I’m not big on continuation novels, as some writers, like Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming, have a unique style that truly can’t be imitated. But I understand that their iconic characters, Philip Marlowe and James Bond, are so popular that their loyal readers want to read more about them, just as they enjoy watching the characters on TV and at the movies   

Anthony Horowitz, creator of the TV series Foyle’s War, which I liked very much, perhaps comes closest to Ian Fleming. 

He’s a huge Fleming aficionado, like me, and he knows a good bit about Ian Fleming and James Bond. So, having read his previous Bond continuation novel, Trigger Mortis, I plan to read the new one, Forever and a Day, and review the book for the Washington Times.

Anthony Horowitz explains his fondness for Ian Fleming and his attempt to honor the late, great thriller writer in a piece at criminalelement.com.

Some books really do change your life. For me, it was Dr. No, not the first James Bond novel but the first to be turned into a movie in 1962. I read it when I was ten years old, stuck in an all-boys boarding school in North London, the sort of grim institution that the British do so well (Ian Fleming himself had a pretty rough time at Eton College).

The book opened up a whole world to me: tropical islands, exotic food, adventure, excitement…and, of course, beautiful women. That famous scene, when Ursula Andress emerges from the ocean in a white bikini, seemed like a fabulous dream and her character, Honeychile Ryder, would stay in my mind for the next thirty years. 

… I'm in awe of Fleming's writing style. Look at the opening chapter - Reflections in a Double Bourbon (nobody has ever done better chapter headings). Bond is at Miami Airport, in a contemplative mood, remembering a recent mission.   

“Below the indigo sky the flare paths twinkled green and yellow and threw tiny reflections off the oily skin of the tarmac.” 

Even when he’s not writing action, Fleming captures mood and atmosphere in a way that is much more sophisticated than it seems.

I know because, twice now, I’ve tried to imitate him.

I was thrilled when the Ian Fleming estate contacted me back in 2014 and asked me to be the fourth modern author – after Sebastian Faulks, Jeffrey Deaver and William Boyd – to write a James Bond novel. It really was like being handed the keys to the candy store, and although I was thrilled to grab hold of them, I was also nervous. People go a little bit mad when it’s Bond. The scrutiny you get as a writer, the press interest, the sense of expectation…it’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

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

https://www.criminalelement.com/james-bond-and-me-reading-and-writing-in-007s-shoes/?image&utm_source=criminalelementnewsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_

term=criminalelementaudience&utm_content=-na_read_blogpost&utm_campaign=110618 

Becoming Bond, James Bond: Author Anthony Horowitz Begins Work On Official Casino Royale Prequel Showing How The Superspy Became 007

Although I’m not fond of continuation novels featuring the characters of authors who passed on,  I’ll probably read Anthony Horowitz’s upcoming James Bond continuation novel.

The British writer knows a good bit about Ian Fleming and his iconic character James Bond (portrayed to perfection by actor Sean Connery in Dr No and later films). 

I also like Horowitz’s TV series Foyle’s War.

Stewart Paterson at the Daily Mail offers a piece on Anthony Horowitz and the upcoming Bond novel.

A prequel for the first ever James Bond novel based on material left behind by Bond creator Ian Fleming is in the works.

Novelist Anthony Horowitz is working on a Forever and a Day, which has been authorised by the Fleming Estate.  

The story will find Horowitz, 62, 'exploring what might have been Bond's first missions and imagining some of the forces that might have turned him into the iconic figure that the whole world knows'.

The novel will begin with the discovery of the previous 007's body, which is found floating in the sea off Marseille and 'killed by an unknown hand', according to publisher Jonathan Cape.

Anthony Horowitz said he 'couldn't have been happier' to have been invited to write Forever and a Day

The new novel, which will be published in May, centres on how James Bond becomes 007 following the death of his predecessor, who is killed by an 'unknown hand'.

Horowitz writes: 'M laid down his pipe and stared at it tetchily. "We have no choice. We're just going to bring forward this other chap you've been preparing. But you didn't tell me his name". "It's Bond, sir," the Chief of Staff replied. "James Bond."'

Horowitz previous wrote the Bond novel Trigger Mortis in 2015, using Fleming's treatment for an unmade TV series in which the Secret Service agent becomes involved with a Formula One race.

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

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5371265/Anthony-Horowitz-working-new-James-Bond-novel.html 

Note: The top photo is of Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr No. The middle photo is of Anthony Horowitz and the bottom photo is of Sean Connery and Ian Fleming on the set of Dr No. 

Writers To Debate Whether Ian Fleming Or John Le Carre Is The Better Spy Novelist

Some years ago actor George C. Scott refused to accept an Oscar for his great portrayal of General Patton in the film Patton.

I agreed with what he said at the time, which was that art should not a competition. You simply can not hold up two great paintings and say, "And the winner is..."

So I can't say I like the idea of a debate on whether the late Ian Fleming (seen in the above photo) or John le Carre (seen in the below photo) is the better spy novelist, which, as the The Spy Command noted, will soon take place.

Intelligence Squared, which stages debates and presentations on various topics, will hold a debate this month whether Ian Fleming or John Le Carre is the better spy novelist.

Representing Fleming (1908-64) will be Anthony Horowitz, author of the James Bond continuation novel Trigger Mortis, according to the group’s website.

Advocating for LeCarre (real name David Cornwell, b. 1931) will be David Farr, who adapted LeCarre’s The Night Manager for the BBC. The debate is scheduled for Nov. 29 at Emmanuel Centre in London.

And yet...

Ian Fleming served as a British naval intelligence officer and assistant to the Royal Navy's Director of Naval Intelligence in WWII. He later wrote admittedly highly romanticized novels that featured a character by the name of Bond, James Bond. He said he wrote the books unabashedly for his own and the public's entertainment.

The novels are highly entertaining and they are far darker and more complex than the films, and some of them, like From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, are first-rate thrillers.

John le Carre, who, like Fleming, was a British intelligence officer, having served in both MI5 and MI6 as a young man, considers himself to be a much more serious novelist than Fleming, which means he is a much duller thriller writer.

As I wrote in my Philadelphia Inquirer review of le Carre's novel Our Kind of Traitor, le Carre wrote a talky thriller that unfolds mostly through dialogue. And he offers some very good, smart writing.

Le Carre has written, in my view, some fine spy novels, such as the "Karla" trilogy that featured a character by the name of George Smiley; Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Smiley's People, and The Honorable Schoolboy. I can't say I care much for his later novels, which are marred, as I wrote in my Washington Times review of John le Carre: The Biography, with his shrill leftist and anti-American views.      

The two novelists are very different, and I like them both, and they should not, like Scott said, be compared or be in competition.

And yet, I'm interested in this debate, because le Carre is often presented as the "realistic" antidote to Fleming's "fantasies," and le Carre has been highly critical of Fleming in the past.

You can read about the upcoming debate via the below link:

https://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/writers-to-debate-whether-fleming-lecarre-is-better/

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of le Carre's Our Kind of Traitor via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/10/russian-crooks-corrupt-brits-at-large.html

And you can read my Washington Times review of John le Carre: The Biography via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/12/my-washington-times-review-of-john-le.html

And you can read my Crime Beat column, Spy Writer Vs. Spy Writer, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/08/spy-writer-vs-spy-writer-john-le-carre.html

Note: Below are photos of Sean Connery as James Bond and Alec Guinness as George Smiley:

New Bond Author Anthony Horowitz Shoots Down Fellow 007 Writers Over Too Many Plot Twists Which 'Fleming Would Never Have Done'

Jack Crone at the Daily Mail offers a piece on Anthony Horowitz's comments about his fellow James Bond continuation writers.

Author Anthony Horowitz has criticised fellow writers' recent attempts at James Bond novels - just days before releasing his own book on the British spy.

The prominent author, whose Bond novel Trigger Mortis is published on Tuesday, has suggested his rivals failed to immerse themselves in Ian Fleming's world like he has done.

His controversial comments come just days after he was forced to apologise for claiming black actor Idris Elba was 'too street' to play Bond.

Horowitz, a dedicated fan of Ian Fleming's spy novels, told The Sunday Times: 'They brought Bond into their worlds whereas I have immersed myself into Bond's.'

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

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3224029/Author-latest-Bond-book-dismissed-fellow-007-writers-adding-plot-twists-setting-action-wrong-country-Fleming-never-done.html  

Act, Kill, Win: Anthony Horowitz, The Author Of The James Bond Continuation Novel, 'Trigger Mortis,' Wants The Old Blunt Instrument Back: Says Recent Bond Movies Portray 007 As Weak

John Binham at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on Anthony Horowitz, the author of the new James Bond continuation novel, on how the recent Bond films have portrayed 007 as weak.

For more than 50 years, James Bond films have been feted as the ultimate action movies, with ever more spectacular special effects, sinister villains and an endless stream of glamourous love interests.

But, according to the author officially anointed as successor to 007’s creator Ian Fleming, modern James Bond films have lost their way because they make the fictional secret agent appear too soft.

Anthony Horowitz, who was chosen by the Fleming estate to write the latest James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis, said Skyfall – the first Bond film to smash through the $1 billion mark in global box office takings – just makes him “angry” because of the way it portrays 0007 as “weak”. 

And he voiced dismay at signs that the upcoming film Spectre will delve into Bond’s “doubts” and “insecurities” instead of concentrating on defeating villains.

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11833706/Modern-James-Bond-films-too-soft-says-Flemings-successor.html

Simon Schama Reviews Anthony Horowitz's James Bond Continuation Novel, 'Trigger Mortis'

Noted British historian and Financial Times contributor Simon Schama offers an interesting review of Anthony Horowitz's James Bond continuation novel Trigger Mortis in the Financial Times.

Scanning the dim interior of Le Caprice, the writer failed to see anyone answering the description of the man he was looking for. There were the prosperous bald lunching with the dangerously chic. A scented cloud of Guerlain hung over the room. “You would be . . . ?” asked the girl at the desk, looking steadily at the writer from beneath heavy mascara. “The reservation should be under . . . ” He tailed off, wondering if 007 had booked under his real name. Unlikely, he surmised. He was already feeling uncomfortable. It was unseasonably warm for April. Normally he would have lunched tieless but 007 was Old School, so he had suited up and knotted a dark red silk tie at the strangling collar.

A light tap on the shoulder. The writer spun round to find himself faced by a feral smile set in a lightly bronzed face. The writer took mental notes: chin, cleft; eyes, chestnut with little specks of gold in the iris; black hair thickly swept back; sardonic eyebrows. “Mr Horowitz, if I’m not mistaken?” The voice was low, studiously charming, a burr as soft as Scottish heather. Bond separated the syllables as if the writer’s name was a private joke: Mister Horror-Wits. “Shall we?”

Perspiring freely, Horowitz followed the dove-grey silk and wool suit to a corner table. “Now tell me, Mr Horowitz, what makes you think you will succeed where others have stumbled? Not quite your usual line of work is it?” The cat smile again. “And the stakes are so high, aren’t they? Mind you, I like a man with a taste for risk.” The writer felt a bead of sweat form on his brow and prayed it would not run down his nose. All appetite lost, he wondered for the first time if this had really been a good idea.

Oh yes, it was! Anthony Horowitz has written a humdinger of a Bond story, so cunningly crafted and thrillingly paced that 007’s creator would have been happy to have owned it. The screenwriter and novelist, a life-long fan, knows that, when he wanted to, Ian Fleming could turn on the literary juice with the best of them. The French beach scene that opens On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a brilliant piece of atmospheric writing, at once innocent and sinister like Fleming’s whole project, and the ending of You Only Live Twice, with its debt to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fable “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, is so unexpectedly off-kilter that, in the film, producers Saltzman and Broccoli had to replace it with the psycho-ferret Donald Pleasence version of Blofeld whizzing through his fake volcano on — the latest thing! — a monorail. But from his brilliant first chapter on, Horowitz is a pitch-perfect mimic of the Fleming one-line punch: “Rain swept into London like an angry bride.” “Silence sat in the room, an uninvited guest.” He even gets the clichés spot on. “Just he and the Maserati, plunging into the green hell.”

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

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c22564d0-4a66-11e5-9b5d-89a026fda5c9.html

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/

Pussy Galore Returns in New James Bond Continuation Novel, 'Trigger Mortis'

BBC.com reports that Anthony Horowitz, creator of Foyle's War, has authored a James Bond continuation novel called Trigger Mortis, which will feature Ian Fleming's character Pussy Galore.

Pussy Galore is to be reunited with James Bond in the superspy's latest literary outing.

 

Ian Fleming's famous femme fatale is back in Anthony Horowitz's new official Bond novel, Trigger Mortis.

The bestselling author has revealed his new 007 adventure begins in 1957, two weeks after the end of Fleming's original novel Goldfinger.

The book, out on 8 September, is set against the backdrop of the Soviet-American space race.

As well as Pussy Galore - played by Honor Blackman in 1964's Goldfinger film - the new book features a new Bond girl called Jeopardy Lane and Jai Seung Sin, a "sadistic, scheming" Korean adversary.   

Trigger Mortis will begin with an original Fleming idea - a motor racing scene written for an unmade TV series.

Horowitz said: "It was always my intention to go back to the true Bond, which is to say, the Bond that Fleming created and it was a fantastic bonus having some original, unseen material from the master to launch my story."

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

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32899911

The Napoleon Of Crime: Sherlock Holmes And Professor James Moriarty Are Perfect Foes

Anthony Horowitz, author the Sherlock Holmes continuation novel Moriarty, offers a piece in the British newspaper the Telegraph on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional villian.

“He is the Napoleon of Crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows every quiver of each of them.”

Who else could it be but Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls and quite simply the greatest villain in literature ever created? Thanks to the artist, Sidney Paget, we know exactly what he looked like although Conan Doyle certainly helped with a memorable description: “…extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head.” A great many master criminals have caught the public imagination – Hannibal Lecter, Fu Manchu and any one of the James Bond villains spring to mind – but none have done so quite so successful as Professor James Moriarty.

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11167631/Sherlock-v-Moriarty-perfect-foes.html 

Fleming, Bond And Fast Cars: Anthony Horowitz Is Writing New James Bond Novel From Ian Fleming Idea

Alison Ford at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on Anthony Worowitz penning a new novel with Ian Fleming's iconic character James Bond.

“Bond liked fast cars and he liked driving them,” Ian Fleming, a man similarly inclined, wrote in 1954’s Live and Let Die.

Now, 60 years on, an unpublished story by the late author in which James Bond takes on the Russians and gets involved in a Formula One race, is to form the basis for a new 007 novel by Anthony Horowitz.

Murder on Wheels was written by Fleming in the 50s, as one of several episode treatments for a Bond TV series which fell through because the films took over. Many of the plots were turned into short stories including Octopussy, The Living Daylights and For Your Eyes Only, but a few outlines were never published, says Fleming’s great-niece Jessie Grimond.

Now, 50 years since the author’s death, the Fleming estate has shown the material to Horowitz as the basis for a new novel.

Horowitz, the screenwriter of series including Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War as well as the author of the hit teenage spy series Alex Rider and authorised takes on Sherlock Holmes, is the latest in a line of writers to don the mantle of Fleming with the estate’s blessing. Predecessors include Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and William Boyd, whose novels have variously seen Bond take on a heroin influx into Britain in the 60s, leap through time to the present day, and try to “single-handedly stop a civil war” in a small west African nation.

Horowitz, however, is the first writer to have been given unpublished material to work with. “Given that Anthony is as brilliant a screenwriter as he is a novelist, we thought it would be exciting to see what he would do with one [of the episodes],” said Grimond.

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

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/02/james-bond-new-novel-anthony-horowitz-murder-on-wheels

You can also read the Ian Fleming Publications Ltd., release about the new Bond novel via the below link:

http://www.ianfleming.com/anthony-horowitz-to-write-new-james-bond-novel/

And you can read my Crime Beat column and Q & A with Fergus Fleming, Ian Fleming's nephew and a director of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd., via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/10/through-thriller-writers-eyes-life-work.html    

Sherlock Holmes: The Great Detective Lives On - And On

As I've noted here before, I'm not fond of continuation novels. But Anthony Horowitz does a good job of explaining why he agreed to write a new novel about the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic character Sherlock Holmes in the British newspaper the Telegraph.

Although Holmes appears in just 56 short stories and four novels, he is famously the one character most often portrayed on television and film. He has recently been modernised by the BBC and bowdlerised by Hollywood – the second film with Robert Downey Jnr comes out at Christmas. There is currently a campaign (which I support) to give Jeremy Brett (seen in the above photo) a posthumous Bafta for his brilliant depiction of the character throughout the Eighties.

My own addition to the Sherlock canon – the first to be given the imprimatur of the Doyle estate – received extraordinary attention when I announced it last January in the House of Commons at a dinner hosted by the 1,000-strong Sherlock Holmes society. I found myself on the News at Ten. The Spectator ran an editorial as did the New York Times – although neither seemed to think the book would be much good. So why Holmes has endured – and, more to the point, how did I dare to take on the mantle of the world’s most successful detective?

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8856345/Sherlock-Holmes-The-great-detective-lives-on-and-on.html