REVIEW OF DEVIL MAY CARE

"Just as every small boy once wanted to be Bond, every fortysomething novelist must, surely, want to have been asked to create him. So in book-writing circles, there must have been little angry hisses when literary lion Sebastian Faulks was given the dream job of resurrecting James Bond, after so many hack writers have failed abysmally down the years.

Full backing of the Bond estate, to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming's birth, and the biggest marketing push since the last Harry Potter; yet Faulks says he wrote it in six weeks. Had to be persuaded to do it, had to be begged. Over long lunches. And now can't wait to get back to 'real' writing. Goodness, how some jealous souls must have wanted him to fail with a clatter.

He doesn't. Not even close. Daggers should be withdrawn. It's good. Which is to say it's better than it could have been. It is not, however, that good. Faulks has done in some ways an absolutely sterling job. He has resisted pastiche. (And surely no pastiche could ever match the simple opening brilliance of Alan Coren's parody about elderly spies: 'Bond tensed in the darkness and reached for his teeth.')"