Anthony Horowitz’s Bond-ing experience at Sydney Writers Fest

One of the pleasures of the recent Sydney Writers Festival was meeting English novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz.

English novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

One of the pleasures of the recent Sydney Writers Festival was meeting English novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, a charming man.

I wanted to talk about (and thank him for) Foyle’s War, one of the greatest television series, which suited him well because he was not allowed to say much about his new project, a James Bond continuation novel due in September. Oh that Foyle’s War also would continue, but Horowitz was sure the eighth season, which screened here in January, was also the last. Since then, an advance copy of the Bond novel has landed on my desk. Published by Hachette, it’s called Trigger Mortis, which seems a bit of an obvious pun, but then life can’t be all Pussy Galore I suppose.

Speaking of whom, she returns in this new novel, which is set in 1957, hard on the heels of Goldfinger in the 007 chronology. We meet her in the opening chapter, in a not altogether unexpected place: Bond’s bed. Trigger Mortis is under embargo until publication, so I can’t say much about it beyond the fact Horowitz was granted access to unpublished Ian Fleming writings and drew on one particular story, Murder on Wheels, for the novel, which involves Formula One car racing and the
US-Soviet space race. At the time of writing I was only 50 pages in but keen to continue. Horowitz, who has written two excellent Sherlock Holmes novels, House of Silk (2011) and Moriarty (2014), is the fourth contemporary author chosen to continue the Bond story, after Sebastian Faulks (Devil May Care, 2008), Jeffery Deaver (Carte Blanche, 2011) and William Boyd (Solo, 2013). But it’s worth remembering who first slipped into Fleming’s shoes, back in 1968: Kingsley Amis, writing as Robert Markham, with Colonel Sun.

I wrote last week about The Killing Lessons, the terrific new crime novel by Saul Black aka Glen Duncan. After finishing it, I wanted more of the same. Duncan emailed to say he was in fact working on a sequel — but I wasn’t about to wait. So it was that I dusted off a book that has been on my to-read list for a couple of years, Adrian McKinty’s The Cold, Cold Ground, the first instalment of what is now the Belfast-born Melburnian’s Sean Duffy series. It did the trick: a top-shelf literary crime thriller. I now want to read the following three Sean Duffy novels, but this week’s mailbag means putting them on hold.

As well as Trigger Mortis, I received advance copies of Geraldine Brooks’s King David novel The Secret Chord (Hachette, October), John Banville’s The Blue Guitar (Penguin, late August), Milan Kundera’s The Festival of Insignificance (Faber & Faber, June 24) and Jonathan Franzen’s Purity (Fourth Estate, September). Then there’s Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, which we won’t see until the eve of publication on July 14, and Salman Rushdie’s first novel in seven years, the New York-set fable Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, due from Jonathan Cape in mid-September. And that’s not to forget looming local releases to catch the eye, which I may talk about next week. It’s going to be a busy winter.

Here’s a twist on the continuation novel. EL James announced this week she has written a new version of her global megaseller Fifty Shades of Grey, with the story this time seen from kinky Christian Grey’s point of view (the 2011 original is told from Anastasia Steele’s perspective). James said she had received thousands of letters from readers who wanted to know Christian’s version of events. Grey will be published by Random House on June 18.

Quote of the week: “Just saw Mad Max Fury Road. Fascinating look at Tony Abbott’s Australia.” American novelist Gary Shteyngart, on Twitter. Shteyngart is a satirist, but whether he was joking only he knows.