In Kim Sherwood’s expansion of Ian Fleming’s world, Double 0 agents have received either a Twenty-First Century update or rebranding, depending on which reviewers you read online. (One Goodreads reviewer even accused her of being a self-confessed feminist, but I wonder why anyone should ‘confess’ to being a feminist.)
James Bond has been missing for seventeen months and Double 0 agents are falling in action at a rate of knots. Much loved characters from the Bond novels appear: Bill Tanner, Moneypenny, who now heads up the Double 0 department, M and Felix Leiter, but Q has definitely received an innovative update.
Double 0 agents have been diversified to reflect modern Britain, with female, black and Muslim agents all receiving their Licenses to Kill. All of which is beside the point, because these books are a lot of fun. I enjoyed reading them, and while at times following multiple agents across different strands could get a bit confusing, it did provide for a very cinematic reading experience. One thing the author did brilliantly through various action set pieces was to show how lethal Double 0 agents are. In Double 0s 0, 3 and 4 in particular, we also receive a sense of the love of expensive brands that Bond gloried in. While I slightly preferred A Spy Like Me, because I felt Kim Sherwood had really got into her stride by then, the villains in Double or Nothing were very reminiscent of the type Fleming created, and I loved the tiger.
The first novel, Double or Nothing, ends with a great teaser, and the second, A Spy Like Me, finishes on such an exciting cliffhanger that I’m impatient to read the third book in the trilogy, which is unavailable until 2026. Still, with such a long wait, I have plenty of time to read all the Ian Fleming Bond novels, which is surely the aim of expanding the Double 0 world in the first place.
Leave a Reply