Forever and a Day: A James Bond Novel

There’s a dead spy. He’s known as 007, only it’s not what you think; since there’s a job opening, a young guy named James Bond takes his place. Because I guess we needed a James Bond year one story. Why not?

But Forever and a Day came out pretty good. It’s got everything you want in a James Bond novel. He drinks, he smokes, he beds beautiful women, and he fights ridiculous bad guys.

M dispatches Bond to Marseilles to investigate the first 007’s death. Once there, Bond hangs out at casinos, drives fast cars, gets into fist fights, navigates plot twists, drinks martinis — here we get a new explanation of the preference for shaken — and tangles with a vicious Corsican gangster.

And of course he meets a woman. Is she an ally? Is she a femme fatal? American millionaires, luxury cruise liners, and bizarre schemes all crop up as Bond stumbles along looking for the answer.

But there’s one thing that keeps this novel from befalling the same fate as nearly every Eon film post-Goldeneye. The spy thriller died with the Cold War, and writers have struggled to resurrect the genre in the framework of the twenty first century.

Anthony Horowitz and the Fleming Estate realized this, so Forever and a Day has Bond back in the fifties. Original continuity, baby.