Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz review – James Bond, but not as we know him

James Bond seems to have become a problem. Obviously, a literary character that generates billions of dollars for more than six decades is not the worst kind of problem you have, but presents a problem anyway. Since the death of Ian Fleming in 1964, Bond has passed through the hands of many writers - four of them since 2008. Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and William Boyd wrote one novel each, and now we are Trigger Mortis, the attempt to Anthony Horowitz in reviving the relic of the Cold War. The truth is that, payday aside, entering blade heel sandals Fleming seems a thankless business. Not that Fleming is exactly inimitable, but parts of his style pastiche that are easy are also intolerably unpleasant, while the things that are worth copying are as elusive as they are distinctive.

Is a literary cliche recognize that Fleming was a sadist, a racist and misogynist, and there is nothing hidden about the cruelty that infuses the world of Bond. Women are bitches, any non-English-speaking white person and is definitely not subhuman, and torture is persistent and explicitly erotic. A modern Bond-chronicler could copy these things and create a distinctively Flemingish fiction but also one that reject all but the most Ukipper not apologized. However, even with all its brutality, Fleming was a gifted prose stylist and striking. Within the first three pages of Casino Royale, you know everything you need to know about Bond and his universe, a gasp-inducing headrush smoke and squalor and ambiguity that makes you crave other poisonous puff.

Horowitz's work, then, is both simple and borderline impossible Bond do exactly the same, and that is different. There are two things that give a leg up Trigger Mortis. First, Horowitz has already demonstrated his idea of ​​Fleming with the Alex Rider series, which updates the myth consciously Bond for the 21st century (Occasionally, it tests the line between tribute and straight debt: Stormbreaker, for example, it is a Moonraker-ish tour with inferiority complex villain Hugo Drax and Le Chiffre's eyes, crowned with a last-second hero for salvation. which coincides with deferred Bond of Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH in Casino Royale) Secondly, Trigger Mortis makes use of unreleased material by Fleming (a treatment for an episode of a series of television Bonds never did), and as a direct continuation of Goldfinger - we get a continuation of the relationship Bond with Pussy Galore.


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When it comes, the Fleming chapter slips almost perfectly, a testament to how attentive Horowitz was the style of his teacher. He offers precise concise prose that makes it so compelling Bond, but more than that, it also provides hints of ruthless poetry Fleming: a Maserati engine sounds as "a vast sheet of muslin endlessly torn", the scene burned a murder is " one ugly ad black for hatred, violence and despair ", and the Nürburgring race track (the plot has Bond go undercover as a playboy racing driver) is" a long green scream ". I suspect the latter is an original Flemingism, but it is notable that does not stand out, but unfortunately the game does lumpen words of the title. Horowitz also shared the pleasure of Fleming in detail in the real world engine specifications, models of firearms and contemporary news are incorporated everything with love. And Jason sin is a worthy entry into the pantheon of villains Bond, with his evil inclination to play with the lives of others.

While Trigger Mortis follows the contours established by Fleming, it is a brisk and efficient way. Problems arise when model deviates Horowitz. For example, the return of Pussy Galore can be a banker for the dust jacket, but rarely Bond was for long-term relationships and she is also a profoundly difficult to revive character for a modern audience: a head of a gang of lesbians turned to Bond (never having seen a "real man" before), which is revealed in the pillow talk that she is a victim of incestuous child sexual abuse. Horowitz's credit that he brings back as something like a woman in three dimensions, giving an arc that exceeds trite Freudian Bond masculinity. On the other hand, that arc fully occupies the first quarter of the book, it feels like a long time to postpone the excitement of a thriller in order to make a joke at the expense of the hero, however gratifying the auction.

And then there's the Bond himself, who is not quite interestingly Bond. Still a sexist and xenophobic, but the narrator no longer supports this chauvinism. But this Bond is unusually cultured: it has a habit of literary allusion that suggests a personality change suddenly, and when he sees the likeness of a young woman Jean Seberg, the implicit view of Bond taking the time to double-rights Or to catch a screening of Otto Preminger's Saint Joan, the only film he had made in 1957, when the book is set, it is almost unbearable fun. Even stranger, this Bond has no qualms about killing - not the ruefulness after the events in the program early in Goldfinger, but a genuine respect for human life to intercede in violence. As disgusting as Fleming's hero he is he squirts prefer the Bond Oddjob for an airplane window as toothpaste this merciful shade interior monologue. Horowitz undoubtedly closer than most to solve the riddle of Bond, but Trigger Mortis is lower than many riders as Alex Fleming senses fan service. The insoluble problem with Bond in the end, is Bond.