SOLO by William Boyd
(Jonathan Cape)
William Boyd will be pleased to have the successful launch of Solo behind him. Few of 007's missions against those sinister megacrooks – Dr No, Goldfinger, et al – could be as fraught with jeopardy as the invitation to pick up the dangerous mantle of Ian Fleming.
As in the best classical quests, the rewards are mouth-watering but the penalties for failure excruciating.
Consider the perils he faces: we know Bond was born in 1924, which would have him pushing 90. Contemporary writers need to put him back into his prime – but do that, and you encounter another set of snares.
Fleming and Bond are inextricably linked in many ways – xenophobia, male chauvinism, a taste for sadomasochism – that may give the contemporary reader pause, while Bond's world – the late imperial Britain of the 1950s – is now irrelevant and irretrievably lost.
So it's good to report that Boyd has immersed himself in the character, the author and his oeuvre and come up with an Afro-American adventure that's triumphantly the equal of the great Bond adventures, Casino Royale and From Russia, with Love.
In Boyd's novel, Bond is dispatched to a fictional West African state to track down its warlord, the Scorpion, nearly dies, and then pursues a score-settling mission to the United States where he reconnects with his old chum and CIA man, Felix Leiter.
It's not the real thing –how could it be? – but, dare one say, a brilliant imitation that's occasionally superior to the prototype. Boyd IS Bond. – © Guardian News & Media 2013