Monday, June 13, 2011

CARTE BLANCHE - The new James Bond novel

In 2004, best-selling thriller writer Jeffery Deaver won the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for his book Garden of Beasts,  and spoke in his acceptance speech about his life-long admiration of Fleming's writing and the influence that the Bond books had had on his own career.
Corinne Turner, Managing Director of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, was in the audience and explained, "It was at that point that I first thought James Bond could have an interesting adventure in Jeffery Deaver's hand."

Well all you James Bond fans out there I am happy to tell you that that is exactly what Bond has had, an interesting adventure, although that is a significant understatement. It is more of an epic adventure I'd say and I am sure Ian Fleming would be delighted with Deaver's handling of his great creation, 007.

This is a ripper of an adventure running to 432 pages which I enjoyed enormously. Bond is still in his early 30's, six foot tall and weighing in at 170lb.A three inch scar runs down his right cheek.He is a veteran of the Afghan War, has been recruited to a new organization. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of MI5, MI6 and the Ministry of Defence, its very existence deniable. Its aim: To protect the Realm, by any means necessary.
He still has his Bentley and Jaguar cars, is enormously attractive to women, is an expert marksman and highly skilled in unarmed combat. He is in other words the James Bond we know of old but the difference is that this new title is set in contemporary times, in a post-9/11 world. It is also the digital age and the gadgets that he now has available to him are quite remarkable.
Set in London, Serbia and Cape Town.

Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche has been released in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, France the Netherlands, Russia, the Czech Republic and Korea. It will also be available in France on June 1; in the Czech Republic and this week it will be published in the USA and Canada and Israel on June 15 with Spain to follow on June 26; and Poland on June 29.
James Bond it would see is alive and well.


Carte Blanche - Jeffrey Deaver - Hodder & Stoughton - NZ$39.99


www.jeffreydeaver.com
www.ianfleming.com

No comments: