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Author interview: Anthony Horowitz presents a Bond who’s on the cusp of becoming 007
In his second James Bond novel, titled Forever and a Day, author Anthony Horowitz gives us a young spy on the verge of inheriting the most famous three digits in the world of pop culture.
About four-fifths of the way into his novel, Forever and a Day, author Anthony Horowitz takes a little dig at the world’s most famous spy — as seen in the movies. James Bond, newly minted Agent 007, has been captured by the villains and given a shot of heroin. As it races through his veins, in that moment, Bond has this drug-fuelled revelation: “For the first time in his life, he understood what it meant to be himself — and it was clearer, simpler, more certain than anything he could have imagined or been told. He was the greatest spy who had ever lived. He was the world’s most successful killer… He was the man every woman wanted to sleep with... He skied. He swam. He drove the fastest cars. He was invulnerable. He would live forever.”
“Yes, I was quietly joking about the James Bond of the films in that sequence. There’s even an oblique reference to Carly Simon: ‘no-one better’. (She sang the theme song, Nobody Does It Better, in the 1997 Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me.) I liked the idea that the more down-to-earth character from the books took a trip into the world of the films when he had been injected with heroin,” says Horowitz in an e-mail interview with Hindustan Times.
While 007 in cinema arrives as a fully formed character — not until the 2012 film Skyfall do we see any real background of Bond — in this book he isn’t the unfailingly confident special agent who wears the mantle like he was born to it. This Bond is on the verge of inheriting the most famous three digits in the world of popular culture, and he craves it, maybe needs it. And that’s the interesting part: Bond isn’t the first 007; he takes the number after the murder of the agent who had it before him.
We ask Horowitz about this emotional contrast with the screen Bond, who doesn’t appear to actually need anything ever, apart from his phenomenal gadgets. Does the author feel that the complexity of Bond’s feelings has never been explored properly? In his first Bond book, Trigger Mortis (2015), Horowitz gave his hero a slight reluctance to kill. And even in Forever and a Day, while earning his entry into the elite club of spies by eliminating an enemy of Britain, Bond gives his prey at least the knowledge of why he’d be killed a moment before the killing. It’s a gesture that later draws a rebuke from the taciturn M, the head of Secret Intelligence Service aka MI6.
“You can’t really discuss the films and the books in the same breath — and I speak as a huge fan of both. (The character’s creator) Ian Fleming certainly explored, at least to an extent, the emotional intensity of Bond — look at the end of Casino Royale and, in the same book, the chapter entitled ‘The Nature of Evil’. (This is a chapter in which Bond reflects, rather philosophically, on good and bad.) But actually, it’s implicit in the thriller. The Bond novels were never intended to be profound psychological thrillers,” says Horowitz.
Returning to the question of Bond earning the number, the author explains his thoughts: “The number 007 has an incredible potency, it’s true — it’s deeper and more resonant than a superhero costume. To be honest, when I started writing the book, the first line popped into my head. I liked it and used it but then had to explain it and it did occur to me that as the numbers (assigned to top agents) were fairly arbitrary (there was never a 001 or a 002), Bond might decide to take 007 for himself.”
And we have to talk about Bond’s woman, of course; though we shouldn’t say Bond’s woman, since she’s her own woman and a decade older than double-o. In this book, he isn’t the one always in charge; Sixtine often is. She even saves him from the worst of the heroin injection, a complete contrast to all the Bond stories, in which no matter how tough the woman, eventually Bond has to come and rescue her from the villains. It makes us wonder if Horowitz enjoyed making him be dominated by her a little. It also makes us ask if he thinks the Bond films could do with more of that.
“I can’t make any comments about the Bond films — what they ought or ought not to do — but, in fact, the character of Sixtine was partly inspired by the character played by Monica Bellucci in Spectre (2015). A lot was made of the idea that Bond might have an older love interest, and I was disappointed that she was on the screen for such a short time (and much of it in bed),” replies Horowitz.
Also, this story may be set in a period only five years after WWII, but it’s meant for 21st century readers. Therefore, “I have to be careful what sort of woman I create to be the love interest, and I really enjoyed writing about Sixtine”, says the author.
Another point of interest is: where does this new 007 go from here? The original Bond has been to outer space and back, so in which decade might Horowitz place his next story? “It’s too early to say if I’ll write a third Bond novel, although I will admit that I do have half an idea up my sleeve,” he says. “But first I have to be invited by both the Ian Fleming estate and by my publisher!”
If there’s one thing he’s certain of, it’s that his Bond books would never be filmed. “As I’ve explained, the worlds of the books and the films are far apart,” says Horowitz, whose top pick among the screen Bonds is actor Sean Connery, closely followed by actor Daniel Craig.
