All vices very much intact then.Ībove: 007 copies of Solo, ready to be dispatched throughout the world.īut - and it's a big but - 'Solo' is less satisfying in two critical areas: the locations and the literary Bond's glamour/ surreality. And, rest assured, there's also much attention paid to Bond's delectations: food and drink (among them Boyd's own recipes for a vodka Martini and a salad dressing) cars (here Jensens) cigarettes, clothes and weaponry. Moreover, the minutiae of Bond's London home life are given the full treatment, which is rather unexpectedly refreshing. Not only is Bond replete with those wiles and that wit, that danger and that brutality, and that classiness and that stubbornness which so delight Fleming fans, but the author also builds on the 007 of the later Fleming novels by showing flashes of him starting to reflect on and accept middle-age - not only that well publicised 45th-birthday breakfast at The Dorchester in the first chapter, but also a grown-up mutual attraction with an equally confident, mature woman.Ībove: Solo on display at the star-studded launch party.īoyd too delivers the requisite thrills, spills and violence, as well as pitch-perfectly Bond's ex-CIA agent chum Felix Leiter and curmudgeon boss M. Firstly, to this reader's mind, Boyd gets right both that Fleming-esque terse but vibrant, journalistic writing style and the Bond character. Indeed, owing to his hearty stab at 'Fleming faithfulness', there's much to like about Boyd's novel. Is that the best thing that can be said of 'Solo', though? Probably, yes but coming after Faulks' and Deaver's efforts, it's certainly not something to be scoffed at either. Credit where it's due, of this modern trio of Fleming-successors, Boyd has definitely managed in 'Solo' to bring readers the closest to the original Bond. In fact, IFP have a new torchbearer, acclaimed author William Boyd, and he's given us ' Solo', an adventure that sees 007 trying to end 'a dirty little' African civil war in the whirlwind of change that was the late 1960s. Since the publication of ' Devil May Care' (2008) and ' Carte Blanche' (2011), both Sebastian Faulks and Jeffrey Deaver have received their fair share of flak from Fleming die-hards for their respective novels - and noticeably neither's received the call-back for a sequel from Ian Fleming Publications, purveyors of the literary Bond brand.

Not to say that the mantle of 'new James Bond continuation author' is a poisoned chalice, but it's certainly not been as snug a fit for its recent owners as that iconic shoulder holster always has been for 007.

William boyd solo review