The title’s an unforgivable car-crash of a pun, which is a shame, because in Trigger Mortis Anthony Horowitz has managed to write the best Bond novel in years.
Taking place two weeks after the events of Goldfinger (the novel), Trigger Mortis begins with Bond in a strange and strained domestication with Pussy Galore, the lesbian crime boss who Fleming, without a flicker of incredulity, had succumb to Bond through a mix of the sheer force of Bond’s testosterone and the overwhelming terror of certain death.
In reality, Pussy is a shoehorn to help Bond fans into the text, allay fears that Horowitz is straying too far from the familiar, and make them feel like this is Fleming’s original world of 3am casinos, Bentley Mk VIs, and Morland cigarettes.
Gone in the first 70 pages (running off with Bond’s female racing instructor – a minor plot convenience which the sweaty-palmed Press were quick to seize on), her entire presence in the book is one big, sexually-provocative non sequitur.
She’s not the only anchor to Bond’s past adventures. Horowitz has clearly pored over Fleming’s books, popping in fan-pleasing references to the previous 7 novels here and there. Only once does it jar, as Bond has an unusual moment of circumspection about killing henchmen. It’s presumably meant to give our hero more depth, but ends up reminding you of Austin Powers.
Moonraker seems to have made the biggest impact on Horowitz, and in the same vein as that novel, it’s an apparent triviality that kicks-off Bond’s mission, as 007 is sent to protect a popular British racing driver from being murdered by SMERSH on Germany’s Nürburgring.
If that sounds like a waste of a 00-agent’s talents, you’d be correct, but it’s actually an idea based on an old episode treatment written by Ian Fleming, ‘Murder on Wheels’, which was to part of a Bond TV series that was subsequently never picked up.
Horowitz writes that flimsy adventure particularly well, especially the race sequence, but wisely uses it as a springboard into the main plot, as Bond discovers a plan for catastrophe on US soil. Again, the shadow of Moonraker looms large over the villain’s plot. The rocket schematics on the front cover might give that away.
That man with the plan is Jason Sin, cut from the same cloth as Fleming’s other megalomaniacs – foreign, wealthy, smart, egomaniacal enough to outline his entire plan to Bond over dinner – but due to a curious anhedonia (that he’s all too willing to expound on) he lacks the bite and threat of characters such as Sir Hugo Drax or Dr. No. In compensation for this he does have a rather terrifying deck of cards: a clever prop to up the dramatic tension. It deserves to be used in a film at some point.
It’s no surprise that as a veteran screenwriter Horowitz’s action sequences and scene-setting make you feel like you’re reading the novelization of a film that’s not yet been made. Like Fleming, there’s a clarity and intensity to even the fastest of moments, and also a dramatic terseness, honed through writing the Alex Rider spy series rather than attempting to imitate the author. Fleming’s style is easy to copy badly, hard to master.
Not since John Gardner’s excellent series back in the 1980s has a Fleming Estate-sanctioned Bond novel been so true to the formula and faithful to the spirit of the original character, even if Horowitz has sanded down Bond’s less 21st century friendly tendencies and opinions.
The racism and homophobia are all gone, the drinking has been toned down a little, but this more culturally aware Bond is still the Bond of literature; a patriotic, fallible, cruel.
Most importantly, it is the first book to embrace the fact that Fleming’s work is not high-literature but rather a Boy’s Own’ adventure for a readership who grew up but never grew out of imagining adventure.
It’s a shame Horowitz doesn’t seem interested in writing another Bond novel. After William Boyd’s ponderous Solo, Trigger Mortis is a thrilling return to a formula that, like the films, continues to keep the audience coming back for more across the decades.
Published on 8 September 2015 by Orion Books.
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