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

Written with terse precision and touches of cruel poetry, this 007 revival makes seamless use of a previously unpublished story by Fleming, but problems arise when Horowitz deviates from the model

James Bond seems to have become a problem. Obviously, a literary character that generates billions of dollars over more than six decades is not the worst sort of problem to have, but he presents a problem all the same. Since the death of Ian Fleming in 1964, Bond has passed through the hands of numerous authors – four of them since 2008. Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and William Boyd wrote a single novel each, and now we get Trigger Mortis, Anthony Horowitz’s attempt at reviving the cold war relic. The truth is that, payday aside, stepping into Fleming’s blade-heeled brogues seems a thankless business. It’s not that Fleming is exactly inimitable, but the parts of his style that are easy to pastiche are also intolerably obnoxious, while the things that are worth copying are as elusive as they are distinctive.

It’s a literary cliche to acknowledge that Fleming was a sadist, a racist and a misogynist, and there is nothing covert about the viciousness that infuses Bond’s world. Women are bitches, anyone non-white and non-anglophone is definitively subhuman, and torture is lingering and explicitly erotic. A modern Bond-chronicler could copy these things and create a distinctively Flemingish fiction, but also one that would repulse all but the most unapologetic Ukipper. Yet even with all his brutishness, Fleming was a gifted and striking prose stylist. Within the first three pages of Casino Royale, you know everything you need to know about Bond and his universe, a headrush-inducing gasp of smoke and sleaze and ambiguity that makes you long for another poisoned drag.

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