Forever and a Day

When is a Bond novel not a Bond novel? It's a interesting question. Fleming's original Bond stories have been “continued” by various authors over the years, from Kingsley Amis to John Gardner to Sebastian Faulks. Forever and a Day is Horowitz's second continuation novel (after the awfully titled Trigger Mortis, which was set after Goldfinger) and is the first continuation novel I have read. So, what do we have?

This is Horowitz's take on the Bond “origin” story. It's Bond's first mission as a newly promoted 00 agent. Sent into the South of France to investigate the death of the previous 007, Bond finds himself embroiled with the heroin trade, monstrous Corsican gangster Scipio and American millionaire Irwin Wolfe. Along the way he runs into CIA operative Reade Griffiths and, by far the most interesting character, Joanne Brochet who is known as Sixtine. Older than Bond, she has been a secret operative during the war and now works for herself. Can she be trusted? Strong and resourceful with a great back story, she is an excellent foil for Bond. And the inevitable love interest, although this is no typical Bond conquest. Everything is on her terms, which is a nice twist.

My problems with the book start with the villains. There are two of them. Jean-Paul Scipio is a hulking monster of a man, bloated and vicious and head of the Marseille heroin syndicate. He only speaks a Corsican dialect and so needs a translator at all time. This seems to me to be a needless affectation and really adds little to the story. Scipio, apart from a brutal scene towards the end, seems underused. The second villain is embittered, quite possibly insane, millionaire Irwin Wolfe who wants to set America on the “right path” with a harebrained scheme involving a luxury cruise liner and a vast amount of pure heroin, produced on an industrial scale. Wolfe is something less than the sum of his parts, a bit colourless. Rich and mad, but somehow less than threatening. Why Horowitz needed two villains when he could have combined the best of both characters and come up with a truly memorable villain makes for a flawed novel, in my opinion.

The story itself is slightly episodic but builds towards an exciting climax on Wolfe's liner, although Bond has to put up with a superhuman amount of punishment which slightly strains credulity.

Did we need a Bond origin story? Much like the Han Solo Star Wars movie, where literally everything gets explained, here we find out why Bond became 007 (and not 008, 009 or 0011), why he smokes a particular brand of cigarettes, why he drinks vodka martinis....etc etc. I'm not sure we needed to know. Bond appearing fully formed as a ruthless agent in Casino Royale is a good enough start for me.

So, an efficient enough thriller, an entertaining read. Is it Fleming's Bond? Not really. No continuation novel can ever truly be that. But it passes the time.