Trigger Mortis, the new James Bond Novel from Anthony Horowitz

From The Telegraph: 28.05.15

The Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders creator unveiled the title and a plot outline for the forthcoming James Bond thriller on Thursday morning, to mark what would have been Fleming’s 107th birthday. Trigger Mortis will be set in 1957, two weeks after the events of Goldfinger, placing Bond in the middle of the Soviet-American Space Race as the US prepares for a critical rocket launch.

As well as bringing back Pussy, who was played in the film adaptation by Honor Blackman, Horowitz will introduce another Bond girl, Jeopardy Lane, as well as a “sadistic, scheming Korean adversary hell-bent on vengeance” named Jai Seung Sin.

The plot also includes Fleming’s own treatment for an unfilmed episode of a television series, Murder on Wheels, in which Bond gets involved in a Formula One race in Nürburgring in Germany. This will kick off the action in Trigger Mortis.

Lucy Fleming, the niece of Ian Fleming, said “it was almost as if Ian had written [Trigger Mortis] himself”.

“It does feel like a Fleming book,” she said. “It takes place a couple of weeks after Goldfinger – Pussy’s back, which is fantastic, and we’ve got a particularly good villain in Sin – he’s absolutely horrible, a megalomaniac type, but fascinating as well … Pussy Galore is one of the iconic characters from the films and the books … It will be interesting to see what the public make of that.”

Although novelists including Jeffrey Deaver, Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd have all written authorised new Bond novels, Horowitz is the first to place his work directly within Fleming’s original canon, to continue the adventures of one of the Bond girls created by the novelist, and to work with previously unpublished Fleming material.

“Each writer has their own style, but I think Anthony is closest to Ian’s style,” said Lucy Fleming. “And he has the page-turning effect of making you think ‘what the hell is going to happen next?’ … He’s worked Murder on Wheels in brilliantly – it’s woven into the whole thing. It was just a treatment, really, with the idea for the plot.”

Orion Publishing will release Trigger Mortis on 8 September.