With a Mind to Kill (2022) by Anthony Horowitz

This review requires a bit of context and backstory. Apologies for my long-windedness as this unexpectedly turned into an essay on my love affair with Ian Fleming’s gift to espionage fiction literature. If you prefer, scroll down for the review proper without enjoying my trip down memory lane. It's marked where to start reading...

I was raised on James Bond and I don’t mean that in a loose, metaphorical sense. My father was a bona fide 007 aficionado who went out of his way to proselytize me into the ranks while still a very young boy. I’m told I was taken to the theater to see Thunderball on its first theatrical run at the age of 3; I have zero memory of this, of course. I have a slight memory of seeing You Only Live Twice as a 5-year old. However, seeing a double-feature rerelease of those two films as a 6-year old is vividly in my memory, as is a double-feature of Dr. No and From Russia With Love the next year. But seeing On Her Majesty’s Secret Service on opening weekend later that same year cemented something into my young psyche that has remained emblazoned into my DNA ever since.

I was 9-years old when I first attempted diving into my Dad’s Book Club editions of the original Ian Fleming books. I was understandably upset to learn how much the films diverged from their source material. While I remained a die-hard fan of the films, seeing each subsequent movie upon release in the theater, it wasn’t until the big gap in film releases from the late 80s into the mid-90s that I finally, out of desperation and in need of a Bond fix, delved back into the Fleming novels. I suddenly ‘got them’ and ate them up one after another and moved immediately into the continuation novels by other authors, starting with Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis’ (under the name of Robert Markham), then into the John Gardner series, and the Raymond Benson series. 

I was saddened to discover that outside of Colonel Sun, I really didn’t personally care for the vast majority of any continuation author’s books. Despite a handful of decent entries, Gardner’s tenure reeked of a writer fulfilling an obligation with little to no passion for his subject. Benson’s run seemed like a writer checking off boxes while breaking a sweat to straddle the line between the books and the film series. His entries more often than not had interesting plots, but he unfortunately lacked the prose skill to effectively bring them to life. One-off attempts by established authors like Sebastian Faulks, Jeffrey Deaver, and William Boyd proved mainly fruitless to me, lacking the touches that have caused Fleming’s books to retain their classic status to this day, more than a half century after their original publication.

It looked like the best we could do was a Young Adult series based on the concept of a pubescent Bond by Charlie Higson and a tertiary series of Moneypenny cold war-era adventures by Samantha Weinberg, both of which I thought justified their existence more than the primary 007-based books being published. In fact, the only negative I can level at Higson’s Young Bond series is that it stretches credulity that this character was experiencing megalomaniacal villains throughout his entire life, even before he became Her Majesty’s number one spy with a license to kill.

And that brings us to Anthony Horowitz, who had already established himself quite well with his own equivalent of Young Bond through his Alex Rider book series which are clearly based on the general concept of a teenage Bond-like spy. In fact, I feel the Alex Ryder book series more successfully bridged the literary and film world of James Bond than any official continuation author to date has accomplished. So, I was genuinely excited when Horowitz was announced as the newest continuation author for a trilogy of books that would take place entirely within the original Fleming timeline of first publication.

ACTUAL REVIEW:

I enjoyed both of Horowitz’s initial novels in his new 007 trilogy, Trigger Mortis and Forever and a Day, books which not only exist within Fleming’s original cold war timeline, but occur between very specific books in the official canon (the beginning of his career, the middle of it, and now, the end). These first two even incorporate previously unpublished Fleming prose seamlessly into the new narrative. They both feel properly like Fleming without coming across as an exercise in pastiche.

Flash forward to the release of With a Mind to Kill, the final book in Horowitz’s 007 trilogy and the first to not use the gimmick of incorporating unused Fleming material into the mix. Canonically, this book fits in immediately following The Man with the Golden Gun and details events that begin that book with a bang—a brainwashed 007’s attempted assassination of M, his superior at MI-6. Using that as his catalyst, Horowitz devises a plan wherein the KGB are kept unaware that Bond has failed in his mission, allowing them to believe that Her Majesty’s top spy’s mind is still under their control. MI-6 even go so far as to arrest Bond and hold a mock funeral for M.

What follows is an excellent sequence in which KGB operatives succeed in attacking a convoy transporting the disgraced 007 when he is in route to prison, facilitating his breakout and escape. It’s a crackerjack scene full of action, suspense, and emotion. Bond is spirited away to Moscow where he is repeatedly tested to determine his loyalty and placed under the care of Katya Leonova, a subordinate to Colonel Boris, the primary villain and mastermind behind Russia’s mind control program who harbors a deep hatred for Bond.

There is a melancholy atmosphere that hangs over the entire book and though it never fully veers into John le Carré territory, there is an air of realism that permeates everything that seems to have been influenced possibly by Daniel Craig’s tenure as Fleming’s celebrated secret agent. Ultimately, With a Mind to Kill comes down to an assassination mission for James Bond, but not without unexpected twists and turns along the way. By the end characters will die, and others will forever be changed.

This is without a doubt my personal favorite of Horowitz’s 007 adventures and I find it ironic that it’s the first to not include any actual Fleming prose as it’s the most Fleming-like of the three he’s written. It is smooth and elegant while still being brutal and efficient, just like James Bond himself. I will even say that for this 007 fanatic, it’s the best continuation novel since Colonel Sun back in 1968. The highest recommendation I can give it is to say I am sad that Anthony Horowitz will not be writing more of them.

Review by Steve Carroll