The return of Bond....James Bond

The literary Bond not the movie one.

LONDON - The next author for 007? It's a secret. A new James Bond novel by a mystery writer will be published next year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bond creator Ian Fleming, the late author's family announced Friday.

The family-owned Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. announced it had struck a contract with a "very well known and highly respected" author whose identity "will be a closely guarded secret until publication."

"We are delighted to have secured this particular author who we have had in mind for some time now," said Corinne Turner, managing director of the company.

Fleming, a British spy-turned-novelist, wrote 14 Bond books before his death in 1964.

The last Bond novel, The Man with the Red Tatoo came out in 2002. It was written by American Raymond Benson. BTW I met Benson at a book signing in May 2001.

I read all of Ian Fleming's novels as a youth. Obviously his work was the best. My favorite being On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The movie version of which is the hidden gem of the screen James Bond. With the exception of Colonel Sun(An excellent read but almost impossible to find book today), no Bond novels came out for over 15 years after Fleming's death.

John Gardner took over the literary Bond in the 80's. His books were interesting in the beginning but with few exceptions began to get repetitive. His best was Nobody Lives For Ever. After 14 novels, Gardner quit in 1996. I read each and every one of Gardner's Bond novels.

The same can't be said for Raymond Benson. I don't know but with the exception of High Time to Kill, none of Benson's books grabbed me. I only read two of them from cover to cover and tried reading three others but put them down.

As you can see I'm a Bond fan. I love the movies, all of which I have seen multiple times. Here's a previous blog post where I listed my all-time favorite lines from the films. Today's news makes me very interested to know who the new author is. After the Benson experiment, I got to guess it will be a British author.

The upcoming new Bond film doesn't have me excited at all. Die Another Day soured me on the films that badly. Computer generated effects turn me off. Give me the days of the ski jump off the Asgard any day.

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