“Double-Oh-Three” was released in the UK in 1967 and the US in `68 under the pseudonym “R.D. Mascott”. A few names have been kicked around about the true identity of the mystery writer for this book. Roald Dahl (“James and the Giant Peach”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and the screenplays for “You Only Live Twice” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”) and Kingsley Amis (Colonel Sun) to name two. Probably not these fellows. But the “Jr.” could be a clue.

The plot: James Bond`s nephew foils bank robbers who hijack an armoured van containing over two million pounds in gold bullion. James Bond himself never appears, but is mentioned several times:

–“Tell me, what`s it like, James being overshadowed by 007? And why ever did that father of yours call you James, knowing the trouble it`d cause you?”

James told her that he`d never met James Bond. His parents never saw him – he was always away on some mission or other.

–“But I wrote to him once. You know, as man to man. I thought, well, we had something in common.”

“And…?”

“He sent me a sheath knife. But he didn`t really say much – not like he realized, I mean.”

The author`s identity was never revealed. He couldn`t have been Kingsley Amis or Roald Dahl as the writing style is nothing like them. Possibilities include William Plomer, Alan Ross, Nichol Fleming. We assume that whoever wrote it was known to either Glidrose or the Fleming family; the mystery author also wrote extremely well and the story moves along fast.

Possible theories. 1) William Plomer. Plomer (whose surname rhymes with “rumour”) was an accomplished novelist and also Ian Fleming`s friend and editor, who wrote and delivered the memorial address for Mr. Fleming`s funeral. Passages in the book do suggest Plomer; though several specifics in the book refute this argument. Plomer would have been sensitive enough to want his identity kept secret–even after death (he died in 1973).

2)Nichol Fleming. The character is Bond`s nephew, and Nichol was Ian`s nephew. Furthermore, Nichol got started with his own writing career in the mid 60`s, turning out Bond-ish spy thrillers such as “Counter Paradise”, “Czech Point”, (ha-ha!)”Hash” and “Takeover”. (See related question on Takeover elsewhere.) Nichol, also known as Nicholas, died May 9, 1995 at age 56. This is the most likely possibility.

3) Alan Ross. Ross was a poet and a close friend of Ian Fleming, who wrote four childrens` novels during the late 1950s through the mid 60s. This might explain why Ross wrote a children`s novel instead of a Bond novel as with 003. Ross`s 1965 children`s novel “The Wreck Of Moni” has many story elements in common with 003: gold, poisoning dogs, dog attacks, German villains, children having council of war sessions, planning what their next step will be, disputing property with adults. Both books have a brief denouement explaining that the villains were convicted and incarcerated, etc. Even the differences have parallels! 003 begins with a father and his spouse going on vacation, “Moni” begins with father and family arriving on their vacation.

It`s seems likely that whoever wrote the book was known to Glidrose and possibly Ann Fleming. **UPDATE: Our story reveals the authorship of 003! Read the “Search For R.D. Mascott” story in our Investigative Reports section!

Fleming once told an interviewer that his favorites included Graham Greene, Georges Simenon, and his personal friend and book editor William Plomer.

His favourite novel was supposedly “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann (author of “Death In Venice”). “All Night At Mr Stanyhurst`s”, by Hugh Edwards, was another fave. Fleming convinced his British publisher, Jonathan Cape, to reprint it; Fleming wrote an introduction to the novel.

Fleming may have read “Appointment in Samarra” before including it as a chapter title to “You Only Live Twice”. “Samarra” in its first edition fetches $5,000 a copy today.

In either late 1996 or early 1997 Ian Fleming`s nieces Kate and Lucy bought controlling interest in Glidrose from Booker McConnell.

Back in March 1964, Ian Fleming sold 51% of Glidrose to his golfing friend the late Lord Jock Campbell (a socialist, Campbell was also a patron of literature; England`s most famous literary prize is named after his company – Kingsley Amis won the Booker in 1986). Fleming did this to minimize his “supertax” losses.

Kate and Lucy Fleming`s father was Ian`s brother Peter Fleming (1907-1971); their mother was actress Celia Johnson (1908-1982), best known for her Academy Award nominated performance in David Lean`s film “Brief Encounter” (co-written by the Fleming family friend Noel Coward).

Kate Grimond (nee Fleming) was born May 24th, 1946. Her father once wrote about her: “Kate, 11, tall and rather beautiful”. She studied Russian at Oxford (St Anne`s House) and travelled with her father during his trip to the Caucasus during the summer of 1966, where her Russian came in handy. She was an assistant to Alan Ross on his “London Magazine” (Ross was friends with Ian and Ann Fleming; he appears in “The Man With The Golden Gun” as Commander Ross), and was also Martin Gilbert`s researcher on his official biography of Winston Churchill.

In 1973 she married the journalist John (“Johnnie”) Grimond, who is now foreign editor of the British magazine “Economist”; they have three children. She has written at least two books [and writes well – NK]: the first, “The Churchills” (pub 1975), is a history of the famous family. Also, “Celia Johnson” (pub 1991), a biography of her actress mother.

Lucy Williams (nee Fleming) was born May 15th, 1947. Her father remarked that by age 10, she was a “good horsewoman”, and by age 14, a “keen and talented shot”: “She began by hitting a woodock and a driven cock pheasant – never having handled a shotgun before – the first time I took her out, and went on to shoot consistently well. I suppose I enjoyed her prowess and her companionship as much as I have enjoyed anything in the way of shooting.”

However, Lucy Fleming followed in her mother`s footsteps and became an actress – she had wanted to be one ever since she saw her mother perform in the Robert Bolt play “The Flowering Cherry”. She began with the Farnham repertory company and subsequently went on to the Royal Court Theatre. She even appeared with her mother in several productions including a revival of the Noel Coward play “Hay Fever”, and the 1968 BBC production (co-starring Charles Gray; Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever”).

Wellbeing specontinue reading content viagra onlinets have been evaluated that one out of ten men who took viagra in, had fully restored their sexual function – an erection. If analyzed, this generic form of sildenafil citrate is available in the United States with the name cialis price brand and Revatio and was originally developed by British scientists. The use of a care taker plan will help their parents and caretakers to identify goals, build strategy plans, implement plans, and maintain records for CP child’s. He order cheap cialis click this page will provides you with a thorough review for dominate down physical aids just for melancholy in addition to a basic some medical problems. She married Joe Laycock (son of Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, an old Peter Fleming friend) in 1971 and they had several children. After a family tragedy in the early 1980s, she married actor Simon Williams (who played the role of Nigel Pennington-Smythe in the 1983 tv movie “The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.”). Lucy Fleming`s step-children Tam and Amy Williams are also actors.These are his screen credits:

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Williams,+Tam

Kate Fleming once wrote that “Lucy and I […] were on the wild side; Lucy was a tomboy and was always at the top of a tree or racing about on a pony. I was very shy and shot upstairs whenever anyone visited the house. Neither of us would put on a dress if we could possibly help it. Our manners left a lot to be desired.” Moreover their childhood home, “Merrimoles”, was intentionally overrun by many unorthodox pets: labradors, a poodle, a cat, ponies, at least one horse, owls, a dormouse, two fox cubs, a raven and a grey squirrel named “Nutto”.

Peter Fleming wrote the following in his diary: “Woken early by the patter of tiny feet. Yaks, if stampeded, would make more noise, but not much more noise, than Kate (three) and Lucy (two), who constitute a knockabout turn known to our guests as the Reveille Girls.” [He goes on to say about his dogs, “Wonder what Pavlov would have made of Toby and Trigger, who never budge from the bed in my dressing-room until I start brushing my hair. Have tried going downstairs without brushing my hair. Sticklers for protocol, they stayed where they were.” He also left his family the following arrangements for his own funeral: “If there is a memorial service, I would like it to be at the Guards Chapel; the parking facilities are unrivalled.” His final instruction was, “No mourning.”] However, after they were sent off to Cranborne Chase school in Dorset (Kate in 1959, Lucy in 1960), Peter Fleming remarked that “the patter of your tiny feet is sadly missed.”

Though not part of the Fleming family, Peter Janson-Smith is responsible for day-to-day administration at Glidrose. He originally handled Eric Ambler`s foreign sales at Curtis Brown. Ambler helped set him up as an agent, and Janson-Smith`s agency was established in September 1956. Within a month, he had sold the Dutch rights to Fleming`s first four novels. Janson-Smith began handling Fleming`s serialization rights in the early sixties and was appointed to the Glidrose board of directors in 1964. In 1966, he argued successfully in favour of reprinting “The Spy Who Loved Me”, which had been pulled from distribution.

Janson-Smith`s other clients included Gavin Maxwell, Northcote Parkinson, and briefly Anthony Burgess (“A Clockwork Orange”) and Shena Mackey. His lady friend Lily Pohlmann is the widow of Eric Pohlmann, the actor who “voiced” the part of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Bond film “From Russia With Love”. Patrick Janson-Smith, an executive at “Transworld” publishing might be a relative (his son?)

Sources: “Peter Fleming” by Duff Hart-Davis; “Celia Johnson” by Kate Fleming; “Coastwise Lights” by Alan Ross; “You`ve Had Your Time” by Anthony Burgess; “Ian Fleming: The Man Behind The Mask” by Andrew Lycett

The name of James Bond was lifted from the author of a book on ornithology called Birds of the West Indies (1936). Ian Fleming once said: “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest sounding name I could think of. James Bond seemed perfect.” Fleming claimed he liked the masculinity of the name “Bond” and never envisioned his character becoming so popular that it could create problems for the real life man who bore that name. But it did.

Fleming later wrote a note to Mary Wickham Bond apologizing for the theft of her husband`s name, saying, “Perhaps one day your husband will discover a particularly horrible species of bird which he would like to christen in an insulting fashion by calling it Ian Fleming.”
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Mary Wickham Bond authored several autobiographies such as How 007 Got His Name (1966) and To James Bond With Love (1980) well as a book on ornithology entitled Far Afield In The Caribbean: Migratory Flights of a Naturalist`s Wife (1971). In To James Bond With Love she recalls how her husband would get suspcious looks while going through customs at international airports during the height of the cold war. At times, he was suspected of spying for the United States of America, though in reality, all he wanted to do was bird watch. She also wrote about the affair with his next door neighbor he had while at Goldeneye, his Jamaican home. His next door neighbor planted many roses and flowers along a hedge the two properties shared. Anne Fleming, who knew of Ian`s affair, would go dig up the flowers and trample them as a means of payback towards her husband`s mistress.

Lucy Williams (nee Fleming) was born May 15th, 1947. Her father
remarked that by age 10, she was a “good horsewoman”, and by age 14, a
“keen and talented shot”: “She began by hitting a woodcock and a driven cock pheasant – never having handled a shotgun before – the first time I took her out, and went on to shoot consistently well. I suppose I enjoyed her prowess and her companionship as much as I have enjoyed anything in the way of shooting.”

However, Lucy Fleming followed in her mother`s footsteps and became an actress – she wanted to be one ever since she had seen her mother
perform in the Robert Bolt play “The Flowering Cherry”. She began with
the Farnham repertory company and subsequently went on to the Royal
Court Theatre. She even appeared with her mother in several productions including a revival of the Noel Coward play “Hay Fever”, and the 1968 BBC production (co-starring Charles Gray; Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Bond film “Diamonds Are Forever”).

These are her screen credits:

http://us.imdb.com/Name?Fleming,+Lucy

(So why don`t the Bond producers give her a cameo in a film?)

She married Joe Laycock (son of Major-General Sir Robert Laycock, an
old Peter Fleming friend) in 1971 and they had several children. After
a family tragedy in the early 1980s, she married actor/writer Simon
Williams, who portrayed Nigel Pennington-Smythe in the 1983 tv movie
*The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.*, and wrote the novels *Talking
Oscars* (pub 1988) and *Kill The Lights* (pub 1991). Lucy Fleming`s
step-children, Tam and Amy Williams also act.

Kate Fleming writes that “Lucy and I […] were on the wild side; Lucy
was a tomboy and was always at the top of a tree or racing about on a
pony. I was very shy and shot upstairs whenever anyone visited the
house. Neither of us would put on a dress if we could possibly help it.Our manners left a lot to be desired.” Moreover their childhood home, “Merrimoles”, was intentionally overrun by many unorthodox pets:
labradors, a poodle, a cat, ponies, at least one horse, owls, a
dormouse, two fox cubs, a raven and a grey squirrel named “Nutto”.

Peter Fleming also once wrote in his diary: “Woken early by the patter
of tiny feet. Yaks, if stampeded, would make more noise, but not much
more noise, than Kate (three) and Lucy (two), who constitute a
knockabout turn known as the Reveille Girls.” [He goes on to say about
his dogs, “Wonder what Pavlov would have made of Toby and Trigger, who never budge from the bed in my dressing-room until I start brushing my hair. Have tried going downstairs without brushing my hair. Sticklers
for protocol, they stayed where they were.” He also left his family the following arrangements for his own funeral: “If there is a memorial service, I would like it to be at the Guards Chapel; the parking facilities are unrivalled.” His final instruction was, “No mourning.”] However, after they were sent off to Cranborne Chase school in Dorset (Kate in 1959, Lucy in 1960), Peter Fleming remarked that “the patter of your tiny feet is sadly missed.”

Kate and Lucy Fleming`s father – Ian`s brother – was writer/author
Peter Fleming (1907-1971); their mother was actress Celia Johnson
(1908-1982), best known for her Academy Award nominated performance in
David Lean`s film “Brief Encounter” (co-written by the Fleming family
friend Noel Coward).

Kate Grimond (nee Fleming) was born May 24th, 1946. Her father once
wrote about her: “Kate, 11, tall and rather beautiful”. She studied
Russian at Oxford (St Anne`s House) and travelled with her father
during his trip to the Caucasus during the summer of 1966, where her
Russian came in handy. She was an assistant to Alan Ross on his “London Magazine” (Ross was friends with Ian and Ann Fleming, and is mentioned in “The Man With The Golden Gun” as Commander Ross), and was also Martin Gilbert`s researcher on his official biography of Winston Churchill.

In 1973 she married the journalist John (“Johnnie”) Grimond, who is now foreign editor of the British magazine “Economist” (his father, the late Jo Grimond, led Britain`s moribound Liberal party during the
1960`s); they have three children. She wrote two books: the first, “The Churchills” (pub 1975), is a history of the famous family. Also, “Celia Johnson” (pub 1991), a biography of her actress mother.

It`s possible that the actress and journalist Rose Grimond is her daughter.

Even the titles are different between the UK and US versions. The British title of the original hardback is just plain “Cold”.

The American edition clearly states that Part I takes place in 1990, and Part II in 1994. The British edition doesn`t, moreover, it removes most dates (i.e. Sukie supposedly dying March 21, 1990; “Never Send Flowers” taking place in 1993; “SeaFire” in the spring of 1994; etc).

The UK edition is missing the entire “Tiny Dancer” and Elton John discussion from Chapter 14 (see the Cold Fall book review at 007Forever for these and other passages).

Here`s another example (from Chapter 14):

US edition:

“Bond found his own cab, which soon delivered him to a hotel overlooking National Airport. He checked in, then called FBI Headquarters in the J Edgar Hoover Building to see if Eddie Rhabb had arrived. The special agents had planned to make the journey from the Coeur d`Alene area on the previous evening but the call was a waste of time. Special Agent Rhabb was out of town on assignment, according to a secretary.

“Oh, he was in this morning,” the woman said.

UK edition:

“Crystal City was so called because the many buildings appeared to be made out of glass. It sounded exotic but was, in fact, bizarre and ugly. Bond took a cab over and checked into a room which literally overlooked Washington National Airport. He unpacked only the things necessary for the rest of the afternoon and evening, then called FBI Headquarters in The J Edgar Hoover building to see if Eddie Rhabb had arrived back yet. The Special Agents had planned to make the journey from the Coeur d`Alene area on the previous evening but the call was a waste of time. Special Agent Rhabb was out of town on assignment, according to the secretary he managed to speak with.

“Oh, he was in this morning,” the somewhat crabby girl said.

The US edition also cuts the following from Chapter 25:

“Getting that crazy General for one thing.” “He isn`t crazy. In fact, he`s very effective: good planner; sound strategist; has an excellent tactical mind…” “Had.” Rhabb raised an eyebrow. “I thought the launches picked him up.” “Well, they kinda did, but they threw him back in again. There would have been a lot of paperwork. You can understand that.” “Ah,” Bond nodded. “Anyway, it was Beatrice who really got him.”

The new M is dubbed “Lady Precious Stream” in only the US edition.

There are actually two versions of “Nobody Lives Forever”: the British and the American edition – they even have different titles; the British title is “Nobody Lives For Ever”. Those interested in the technical aspects of writing and book-editing should own both editions, as they virtually amount to two separate novels.

The UK edition is notably shorter than the US edition (note how many words difference there is between the two main passages below). The British edition seems to have been a later, revised book. It also appears to have been badly edited down from the more interesting American edition. Some of the changes do correct numerous literary errors in the sloppily written American edition, the finale in the British edition is much tighter and better written, and many others changes only damage the book. Whoever made these changes (perhaps Gardner corrected the galleys as an afterthought) did a number on the book. The final result is listless, underwritten, and desultory. Many changes needlessly break passages up into short disjointed paragraphs. Sentences have been cut, rearranged, or even rewritten. Dialogue has been cut, changed, or added. Minor incidents are somewhat different. Here is one example from Chapter 17:

(US edition – 327 words)

“With great care, James Bond began to climb the open zigzagging stairs to the first level, his feet noiselessly touching the fretted metal, his body to the left to leave his right hand, and the ASP, ready for instant use. At the top, standing on the first terrace, he waited, head cocked. Just ahead of him there was a large sliding picture window, the curtains only partially drawn and one section of the window open.”

“Moving so that he covered all points of the compass around him, Bond crossed to the window, peering in. he could not believe what he saw, almost speaking his thoughts out loud – “First time lucky.”

“The room was white and splendidly decorated, with glass tables, white soft armchairs, and what appeared to be excellent original paintings on its walls, a deep pile white carpet covering the floor. But the central feature was a large, comfortable, customized bed – a king-sized sickbed, with controls on a panel at the head, switches and buttons that could, obviously, adjust any part of the bed, from head to foot, to suit the patient who now lay in it, propped up with silk pillows, his eyes closed in sleep and his head turned to one side.”

“In spite of the now shrunken face, the skin a parchment pallor, Bond recognized the man immediately. On their previous meetings, Tamil Rahani had been smooth, short, dapper and attractive, in a military fashion. Now he was a shadow of his former self – the heir to the Blofeld fortune, and the organization, SPECTRE, reduced to this human doll, swamped by the seductive luxury of a high-tech bed.”

“Bond slid the window open and stepped inside, moving like a cat to the end of the bed, gazing down on the man who controlled his greatest enemies.” … “He began to squeeze the trigger, and as he did so thought he felt a small gust of air on the back of his head.”

Compare to the UK edition (251 words):

“Bond began to climb the open zig-zagging stairs to the first level, his feet touching the fretted metal noiselessly, his body held to the left so that his right hand, clutching the ASP, was instantly ready. Standing on the first terrace, he waited, his head cocked. Just ahead of him there was a large sliding picture window, the curtains only partially drawn, and one section open. He crossed to the window and peered in.”

“The room was white, furnished with glass tables, soft white armchairs, and valuable modern paintings. A deep pile white carpet covered the floor. In the centre was a large bed, with electronic controls that could adjust any section to any angle, to improve the comfort of the patient who now lay in it.”

“Tamil Rahani was propped up with silk-covered pillows, his eyes closed, and his head turned to one side. Despite the shrunken face with skin the colour of parchment, Bond recognized him immediately. On their previous meetings, Rahani had been smooth, short, and dapper, attractive in a military kind of way. Now the heir to the Blofeld fortune was reduced to a human doll, dwarfed by the seductive luxury of the high-tech bed.”

“Bond slid open the window, and stepped inside. Moving like a cat to the end of the bed, he gazed down on the man who controlled SPECTRE.” … “As he began to squeeze the trigger, he thought he felt a small gust of air on the back of his head.”

The following line also appears earlier in the US edition, Chapter 17, but not the UK edition: “They passed along the wooden walkway running alongside the hotel`s crowded eating places – the pier House Restaurant, the Beach Club Bar and Pete`s Raw bar (“Doing a raw-ring trade,” Sukie said, and they all groaned). Likewise the following line appears in the US edition, Chapter 10, but not (sensibly) in the UK edition: “A vamPIRE BAT?” Her voice rose to a screech. “James! Jee-rusalem!”

Chapter 17 in the UK edition suggests that Bond had booked reservations at the restaurant, while the US edition makes it clear that he hadn`t: “Bond kept up the fantasy, and prayed that the girls would not let him down by giggling.”

From Chapter 13:

(US edition)

“James?” Sukie sounded almost wheedling, as they left the hotel, lugging their suitcases. “James, you`re going the wrong way. You left the Bentley in the car park to the left.”

“Yes,” Bond spoke quietly. “Don`t tell the whole world, Sukie. We`re not using the Bentley.”

(UK edition)

“James. James, you`re going the wrong way. You left the Bentley in the car park to the left. Remember?”

“Don`t tell the whole world, Sukie. We`re not using the Bentley.”

Also from Chapter 17:

(US edition)

“The tablecloths were made of paper, and there were packets of crayons besides each plate, so that guests could create their own art – perhaps the restaurant`s owners were still hoping Picasso would arrive and pay the bill with a tablecloth.”

(UK edition)

“They were shown to a corner table in a pleasant white room. Bond took a seat with his back to the wall and a good view of the entrance. The tablecloths were paper, and there were packets of crayons besides each plate. Bond doodled, drawing a skull and crossbones. Nannie had sketched something vaguely obscene, in red. She leaned forward.”

Gardner`s other Bond novels also have differences between the US and UK editions. Some of these changes are stylistic (i.e. Gardner frequently confuses “which” for “that”; his American editors fix this in the US editions); some of them are more substantial; Role Of Honour`s last paragraph does not appear in the UK version:

“Bond went into the airport bar to wait for his flight to be called, passing the time with a large brandy, and musing on time past, and future. Percy had been right. It had been the best of times with her, but now his work called, and James Bond knew it would forever entice him back to new dangers – and new sweetness.”

The UK version`s second last paragraph is different from the US version`s third last paragraph:

“The next morning they rebooked tickets, and Bond saw her off, watching her aeroplane climb over the little hillock at the end of the runway, then turn to set course for Athens, where she would make her connection for Paris.”

The US edition is different after “runway”: “then turning to set course for the west.”

Changes, changes…what will they think of next?

Glidrose (Fleming’s book publishers) has never divulged this information. It seems likely that Elleston Trevor (aka Adam Hall, the Quiller novels), James Leasor (Dr. Jason Love novels), and Christopher Nicole (aka Andrew York, the Jonas Wilde novels) were on that list.

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She once said that Bond was her late husband`s creation and shouldn`t be commercialized as such. She asked her brother-in-law Peter Fleming, “Are you sure that Glidrose should not pay a capital sum to the estate for the right to continue Bond? It seems roses all the way for Campbell and taxed income for the family.”

According to “The Letters Of Ann Fleming” edited by Mark Amory (published in 1985), she wrote this about Amis:

In an April 13th, 1967 letter to Lord Campbell, “Since Peter Fleming agrees to the counterfeit Bond, I am prepared to accept his judgment. Though my distaste for the project is in no way altered I think Amis should publish under his own name and show the world that his left-wing intellectual pretensions were easily turned to money grubbing – like everyone else.”

She also wrote this in her never published review of “Colonel Sun” for the Sunday Telegraph (they didn`t print it for fear of libel):

“Since the exploiters hope “Colonel Sun” will be the first of a new and successful series, they may find themselves exploited. Amis will slip “Lucky Jim” into Bond`s clothing, we shall have a petite bourgeois red brick Bond, he will resent the authority of M, then the discipline of the Secret Service, and end as a Philby Bond selling his country to Spectre. James to Jim to Kim.”

She wasn`t much kinder about John Pearson:

“The London Sunday Times are being most kind to me for helping an unknown called John Pearson to write Ian`s life. Alas, cautious speech is not for me, Mr Pearson thrives on nervous giggles and floods of indiscretion, he leaves me to tears and dreadful exhaustion and goes home well pleased.” {John Pearson (1930- ). Worked on the Atticus column of The Sunday Times, as did Fleming. He had written a novel[,] and a book about Donald Campbell breaking the world speed record before [writing] “The Life of Ian Fleming”, 1966.}

“J. Pearson`s book revolts me, and I am distressed that I played any part in it – but it will soon be over and forgotten, though one day I would like a very short appraisal of Ian to be written, though heaven knows who by – the truth is immediately forgotten. I am grateful for letters from Alan Ross and Frankie Donaldson saying the letters to me were not a breach of taste but added [they] proved Ian capable of real feeling, and not a bit like the rest of the book, a bit of Bond fantasy. I have had guilt in showing them to the rabbit Pearson, who became a ferret.”

John Pearson writes: `I`m sorry Ann found me such a “ferret” although I suppose it`s what a biographer has to be, and sorrier still to have been the cause of such distress of which I was genuinely ignorant. Odd I was so “unknown” to her, as I was originally hired by Ian for The Sunday Times and worked as his assistant there for several years. As for my *Life of Ian Fleming*, the reader will soon discover that far from being just `a bit of Bond fantasy` it was a solidly researched account of the whole of his extraordinary life and career. Re-reading my references to Ann I find it quite incomprehensible why she found them so objectionable. Presumably remorse, which I hadn`t thought afflicted her. And of course she found everything to do with poor old Bond vulgar and more or less contemptible.`

There is no record of her having said anything about RD Mascott, Geoffrey Jenkins, Christopher Wood or John Gardner. However, she enjoyed and laughed at her friend Cyril Connolly`s short story “Bond Strikes Camp”. Ann Fleming died of cancer in July 1981.

So who is RD Mascott? (And yes, I say who it is, but you`ll have to be patient. If you can`t, then jump to the middle of the article.)

I`m not the only one to have asked – and it was a frustrating and perplexing question. For a Bond fan, it was like asking, Who killed JFK?

This remarkable novel, now a cult-classic, was first published in 1967, back when Glidrose (a.k.a. the Ian Fleming Estate) still had standards. A beautiful novel, far better than Fleming`s work, it was – and still is – an intelligently observed, highly literate (and literary) not to mention fairly violent novel; the UK edition claims that it`s `a story for boys and girls aged 8-14`, but adults would do just as well to read it. It`s also better than most literary novels I read nowadays (and not just this novel: I had read Salman Rushdie`s Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Ian Fleming`s The Hildebrand Rarity back-to-back and had no qualms judging Fleming`s work the better of the two – Fleming`s prose was craftsman-like; Rushdie`s was slipshod and indulgent).

When compared to the entire Bond output, only Amis`s Colonel Sun, and Christopher Wood`s James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me could be considered more accomplished, though in some ways, James Bond Junior is the most literate and three-dimensional of the series. The novel`s humanity and even its ambiguities are remarkable: did Commander Conningtower know what Merck was up to or did James Bond Junior really save the day? Was Commander Conningtower cheating on his wife with Audrey Wedderburn? (James Bond Junior naively tells Commander Conningtower`s wife that he saw her husband in Breakneck Lane late at night, without fully understanding the implications. When James Bond Junior tells Mrs Raggles that Commander Conningtower was with a young woman, she grimaces knowingly and says, `Which is why `e couldn`t`ve been there. An` don`t you go tellin` anyone `e was, my lad. Lady C`s got enough to put up with the way it is, without a lot more Marsham tongue-wag!`) Claire Tomalin, a distinguished author herself, admired the book: `Ignore the reference to Bond; the story is a small perfect triumph in the hands of a master. This is probably the best bet for Christmas if you want to hand out spinal rather than moral chills.`

The book was shrouded in mystery from the start and Mascott`s identity was – and still is – a closely guarded secret. Neither Glidrose or Eon would tell. I interviewed Jonathan Cape publicity director Tony Colwell several weeks before he died and diplomatically, though rather unconvincingly, he claimed not to know: `Well [faint nervous chuckle], if I ever did know, I`ve completely forgotten, and I have a feeling that I did never know; it was safer not to tell anybody. Tom Maschler [Cape managing director and whiz-kid of the 1960`s British publishing scene] took it along. I just don`t know without looking at the files, and it`s unlikely to be in the files [laughed]. One doesn`t commit things like that to paper, does one?` I then asked fellow Cape managing director Graham Carleton Greene, who also remembered the book surprisingly well. When I put the $64,000 dollar question to him, he laughed and said, `You`re not going to get me to break my oath of loyalty to Cape`s that easily!` What`s odd is how well both remembered the book, as though it had just been published recently and not 34 years ago.

For four years I wondered who wrote it and even occasionally dabbled in `literary investigation`. With no luck. It wasn`t until 2000, when I came across a copy of Vassar Professor Don Foster`s book Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous, that I took the plunge. Foster, whose name should be familiar, was the literary scholar who exposed Newsweek`s Joe Klein as the `Anonymous` author of the Bill Clinton roman a clef Primary Colors. The FBI subsequently hired Foster to use his `literary forensics` technique to prove that Theodore Kaczynski was indeed the Unabomber. Foster also analyzed the infamous `Talking Points` documents in the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and crucial evidence in the Jon Benet Ramsey murder case, evidence which is still publicly unavailable. Foster explains, `Study of an anonymous text does not always produce a decisive attribution, but I can usually narrow the field of suspects by isolating the geographic, ethnic, socioeconomic, corporate, or professional milieu to which the unknown writer belongs. […] Sentence construction in the anonymous document may be conditioned by such factors as the age, gender, education, or community of the writer, but the writer`s syntax will usually remain fairly constant from one type of writing to another.`

I read and re-read Foster`s book, absorbed his useful advice and took the plunge.

Before I go any further, I should mention that one rival website owner claimed to know someone with access to the Glidrose archives. The lucky researcher supposedly saw the original typescript and jotted the name down. Their response, if I remember correctly, was Who? Famous writer, I think not! (Apparently they expected the publishers to predict the author`s name recognition value thirty years down the road. `Well known British writer` means well known in 1967.)

The website owner originally suspected Roald Dahl, which is an interesting choice. Dahl`s 1975 novel Danny – The Champion of the World seemingly retreads ideas from the James Bond Junior novel. Rural hunting scenes are surprisingly quite common in Dahl`s work: The Magic Finger, The Princess and the Poacher, and especially Danny – The Champion of the World. Dahl also wrote an unpublished children`s novel in the late 1960`s called The Fox, which his usual publishers felt glamorized shoplifting – something the James Bond Junior book does via Sheelagh. (One of Dahl`s own daughters also had a problem with shoplifting.)

Both Mascott and Dahl describe unsympathetic people as having eyes like currants, and both use the `Misses Sippy` gag (Dahl in The BFG), though spelt differently. Unfortunately even a quick examination showed just how different Dahl`s and Mascott`s writing styles were. Dahl had a very `talking-down` quality in his writing, even his adult writing, as though he had an audience of children sitting around him and therefore over-enunciated everything so they would understand. Dahl`s prose was also noticeably more stylish.

Others were inexplicably convinced that it had to be Kingsley Amis, which it obviously isn`t. The writing styles couldn`t be more different (I find it amusing to speculate whether certain Amis advocates have read any of his non-Bond work, let alone much else.) If it was Amis, why the secrecy? He published a children`s novel under his own name. Mascott had a very `pastoral` writing style, which certainly wasn`t true of Kingsley Amis. It`s also wrong to claim that Kingsley Amis duplicated Ian Fleming`s exact writing style in Colonel Sun. Anybody reasonably well-read knows better and can tell that even though Amis managed to capture Fleming`s milieu, the writing styles remained distinct. Amis was a stylish, droll and occasionally torpid stylist… unlike Mascott (or Fleming). Whenever I threw this fact at the Amis-is-Mascott advocates, they would contradict themselves and argue that even though it reads like Amis, Amis could have disguised his writing style so that you wouldn`t know it was him. `Writers can do that, you know,` they`d add lamely. In law we call this issue estoppel.

In Author Unknown, Don Foster writes that, `Anonymous, like any anonymous writer, revealed a good deal about his way of viewing the world, and about himself, and about his purpose for writing. […] For six nail-biting months, I searched for an alternative candidate or plausible collaborator, and came up empty-handed. I could never find another writer whose language habits matched those of Anonymous and Joe Klein.` For four years I couldn`t find another writer that resembled Mascott. Mascott was an unusual writer, judging by my initial notes: he (she?) was/is literary, pastoral, not a stylist, impish sense of humour, excellent ear for dialogue and characterizations. Other details: disliked journalists; draws; lives/raised in/near Kent/Sussex environs… and kept hitting that imaginary wall. Few writers could fit this profile.

I scratched most authors off my list just by glancing at several pages of their writing. It was like listening to two pieces of music and recognizing that not only were they in different keys, but that they were tonal opposites. (For those of you who are musically inclined, play a C Major scale followed by an F# Major scale. See what I mean?)

I had read the James Bond Junior novel many times – probably several hundred times – and had a fairly good idea of what, or more correctly, whom I was looking for:

-an intelligent, highly literate writer, but not a stylist

-an older writer because of his archaic, almost scattershot, punctuation but also because of the numerous, adult philosophical observations:

As he washed himself under the shower, James thought about those three words, which had sprung out of his mouth. `I`m mine.` As the shower freshened him, he realized that this was what happened when you grew up: you became yours, nobody else`s. So did your problems. [The Adventures of James Bond Junior, Chapter 10]
James found it strange to walk again in Hazeley; how Adam and Eve might have felt, going back to the Garden of Eden, after tasting the tree of knowledge. Hazeley had been always where he played, free from the nuisance of grown-ups; a Paradise. [ The Adventures of James Bond Junior, Chapter 12]
James got up. He had won a fight, but lost a friend. He looked down at Squirrel. He wanted to say, `I`m sorry, too.` But he couldn`t. / He turned and began to run up the path towards Monkshill. He was alone. He would always be alone. [The Adventures of James Bond Junior, Chapter 19]
Mrs Raggles looked at James as he had seen his parents, schoolmasters and others look at him on dozens of accusing occasions, when they were trying to find ways of not telling the truth without telling downright lies. [The Adventures of James Bond Junior, Chapter 24]
-someone gifted at characterization, especially rustics and provincials, and therefore a rural person, not an urban dweller; Mascott is familiar with farms and animals – these details can`t be faked:

Auntie Mo might have been good-looking when she was a girl. Now she had a thin, beaky face and flabby neck, like the chickens they were plucking. Not bad-tempered by nature, James guessed, but `put upon`. Life had tautened her like violin catgut till she twanged. She twanged at any and everything; a wasp (which she astonishingly swatted with the swinging head of the chicken and flattened with her rubber-soled shoe), the sound of a shotgun (coming, James thought, from Undercote – somebody shooting pigeons) and the telephone, which she leapt to answer. [The Adventures of James Bond Junior Chapter 15]
-somebody familiar with the Kentish Weald, or thereabouts (e.g. the Home Counties, the South Downs); the novel is partially set in the fictional town of Marsham. So far as I know that town appeared in only one other story: Arthur Conan-Doyle`s Sherlock Holmes story Abbey Grange. I wouldn`t put this down to coincidence since both stories take place in the British county of Kent, which is south-east of London. Of course it could also have been an in-joke: Ann Fleming`s second married named was Rothermere.

-somebody comfortable writing about the young

-someone who could draw, or was closely related to somebody who could (wife or child, or perhaps a parent or sibling), or knew many artists

Kingsley Amis fit few of these points. His writing is considerably more stylish than Mascott`s. So far as I know, in none of Amis`s works does he show any affinity for farm life. The novel lacks the type of satirical touches that Amis was famous for – even Colonel Sun features them. James Bond Junior`s satirical touches are less acerbic and more human than Amis would have made them:

The police case was very simple, because the robbers had been caught in the act of shifting the bullion; and as gold bars are more valuable than human lives, the robbers were given longer sentences than if they had been murderers. [The Adventures of James Bond Junior, Chapter 26]
My eventual suspect, however, fit most of these check-points. His daughter, Anna, also draws and paints; his other daughter, Clare, runs an art gallery. He knew many painters, especially the Fitzrovians, and even briefly lived with the painters Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines. My suspect`s paternal grandfather, William, was a famous sculptor.

I myself focused on authors known to, and, in some cases, quite close to the Flemings for very good reasons. James Bond Junior seems to have been born the same year as Caspar Fleming (though elsewhere the book suggests that James Bond Junior was born in 1953 or 1954). Sheelagh owns a dog named Satan. So did Ian Fleming. (Peter Fleming also owned a three-legged fox named Satan; it lost its leg to a trap, rather like one of the dogs in the James Bond Junior novel.) James Bond Junior`s grandfather died three years before the story occurs, which I assume is set in the year it was published: 1967. Caspar Fleming`s grandmother died in 1964 (and also his father, but you already knew that). A three year difference. (My eventual suspect shared several acquaintances with Ann Fleming: Stephen Spender, Evelyn Waugh, Isaiah Berlin.)

I originally suspected the South African born author William Plomer. Neither Mascott or Plomer could be called stylish writers, yet both were highly literate – Plomer remains one of this last century`s most notable writers. Plomer drew and his novels feature detailed descriptions of people`s sketches, quite similar to Mascott`s descriptions in the James Bond Junior novel. Both could write in the third person, casually jump into the first person, and then back into the third – all within the same book. More interesting, though, were the sentences that seemed copied from one another:

`You like drawing?` (she pronounced it `draw-rin`.`) [James Bond Junior, Chapter 6]
`We will not hold a seance to-day,` (He pronounced the word sea-ants). [Plomer`s 1932 novel, The Case Is Altered, Chapter 10]
`I see you`re a sceptic,` said Mrs Trubshore clairvoyantly, but with a slight Australian accent. (She pronounced the word `septic`.)` [The Case Is Altered, Chapter 18]
The lady of Hazeley Hall was a Mrs Frame, a large *tottery*, grand woman, who kept herself up with a silver-handled ebony stick. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 1]
When she went out, Miss Haymer used a stick with a rubber end, and *tottered* along on heels that were rather too high, supporting, like some caryatid, a large, old-fashioned hat, decorated with a bird or two and some fruit, as in her heyday. [The Case Is Altered, Chapter 2]
She had long light lashes, like a cow`s. But her greeny-yellow eyes were like a cat`s. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 2]
The eyes, between dark lids and pouches, seemed as cold as a parrot`s and as malicious as a crocodile`s; [The Case Is Altered, Chapter 2]
Plomer and Mascott also shared the same impish humour. In Plomer`s 1952 novel Museum Pieces, a character describes chattering Indians as `much Urdu about nothing.` Plomer also described `a near miss` in a Naval blockade during WWII as `une demi-vierge` (`a half virgin`). Compare these to:

This made them giggle even more, as they explained it all to James, each trying to outdo the other in reproducing parodies of the Head`s exact words about `the riggers of Justice` and `Law an` Dorder.` (Someone suggested that it was really a girl friend of Old Hignett`s, Loren d`Auder.) [James Bond Junior, Chapter 7]
In James Bond Junior, Les Bottome (try pronouncing it in French) writes for the Daily Clarion. At one point James Bond Junior has to wipe himself with back issues of the Daily Clarion because there`s no toilet paper.

Both Mascott and Plomer would insert parenthetical comments. Also, but probably irrelevant, the French word `ardu`, pronounced `ar-dee` – RD – means hard work, an uphill battle. Plomer once used the pseudonym William D`Arfey. Fleming, in a way, considered Plomer his mascot. Plomer`s first novel was Turbott Wolfe. Both `Turbott` and `Mascott` are normally spelt with one `t`. All reasonable guesses, but numerous differences still separated the two authors. Back to the drawing board.

Alan Ross was another possibility; a published poet and literary editor, he also wrote children`s novels. His 1965 children`s novel The Wreck Of Moni covered similar ground as James Bond Junior: gold, German villains, poisoned dogs, children having council of war sessions, disputing property with adults, violent dogs; both books have quick conclusions explaining that the villains were convicted, etc. In fact, the two stories have much in common. Even when there are differences, there are parallels. James Bond Junior begins with a father and his wife going on vacation; Moni begins with father and family arriving on their vacation. Like Plomer, Ross even lived in the South Downs which is a stone`s throw from where the James Bond Junior novel is set. Ross`s writing however was much drier than Mascott`s. Noticeably so.

Somebody on a newsgroup said that `James Bond Junior` himself was supposedly a clue, which automatically suggested Ian Fleming`s nephew Nichol Fleming (Peter`s son and also a writer), though his prose was slicker and somewhat glib. There was also sufficient reason to believe that Mascott was considerably older than the twenty-eight year old Nichol Fleming. Ian Fleming`s brother Peter would have seemed a likely choice except that his writing style is so clearly unlike Mascott`s. What about Hugo Charteris? (Ann Fleming`s brother and Ian Fleming`s brother-in-law.) The writing styles weren`t particularly close – Charteris could never be called a light-hearted writer – but it wasn`t as bad a match as some other possibilities. Alas, I spoke to his widow Virginia and she knew nothing about the book. There`s no reason to believe that he would have written such a book and not told her. (Incidentally, this exercise has given me the chance to read many of the writers in the Fleming family and circle of acquaintance. I`d strongly recommend those wishing to expand their reading do the same.)

I had what seemed to be a major breakthrough one night. When drowsily glancing at the book, I noticed this paragraph:

She had given James the run of the bothy for his own place. She was the one person who hadn`t made fun of his being James Bond`s nephew. (James`s housemaster insisted on the joke of calling him 003 1/2, ha! ha!)
-and wondered, Who was Caspar Fleming`s housemaster?

Caspar Fleming`s housemaster at Eton was the Rev Robert David Fergusson Wild, also known as RD Wild who, by the way, was a published author. Going from `Wild` to `Mascott` isn`t too great a leap. One of my colleagues, Matt Sherman, found this a particularly striking coincidence and said that the word mascott automatically suggested a school. I tracked down the Rev Wild`s widow, but alas, it was a red herring (or, if you like bad puns, a wild goose chase). Mary Wild was quite forthcoming; her husband considered Caspar Fleming a very unusual boy, but no, she had never heard of the book. Those who`ve read his one published book – I haven`t – Prisoner of Hope say the writing styles are too dissimilar. Strikingly so.

And there it remained until I happened upon an old copy of the British book trade magazine The Bookseller (July 22nd, 1967, to be precise) while researching something else. In a typical publisher`s advertisement (hundreds litter each issue) Jonathan Cape announced the October 24th release of The Adventures of James Bond Junior – 003 1/2, by R.D. Mascott. What made the ad particularly interesting was the blurb that mentioned that `Harry Saltzman plans to make a series of television films based on the book.` Did Saltzman buy the rights before the book was published, or had he been given them? Was Albert R Broccoli involved?

John Parkinson, EON Vice-President, told me that `Glidrose made the initial agreement for the writing of the book as a work-for-hire and there was [an] undertaking at that time [that] the name of the author would be kept secret. That continues to the present day. The film rights and all other rights to The Adventures of James Bond Junior – 003 1/2 are held by Eon Productions Ltd. The animated series of James Bond Junior produced in 1991 was based on that book.`

Broccoli and Saltzman had just finished making You Only Live Twice and Broccoli was then filming Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Roald Dahl wrote both films. Is it possible that Saltzman, worried that Broccoli was onto another money-making scheme without him thought he`d get his own Dahl-Fleming project off the ground that would outdo Broccoli?

Sharp readers will remember that I said at the outset that Dahl didn`t seem a likely author. That was until I read his short story The Swan, which appeared in his `Henry Sugar` collection. The writing is much closer than in Dahl`s other works. So is the sadism. Dahl and Mascott share certain habits, ways of describing things, and both even imitate `lower-class` accents. Peter Watson`s way of thinking things through in the Dahl story is not unlike James Bond Junior`s. Both authors clearly love animals, yet describe violent acts against animals in loving detail. I`ve not read that many children`s books, but both works seem unusually and almost sadistically violent. What other writer could get away with this? Other details blend in with Dahl`s life: Dahl was a pilot, so is David Bond. The Bond parents fly to Dar-es-Salaam, which is where Dahl lived and worked shortly before WWII.

Yet once again I came against the `secrecy veil`. He wrote a James Bond film. Why wouldn`t he want it known that he wrote a James Bond children`s book? Why would his estate still conceal his identity 11 years after his death if it were him? (Mind you, his estate doesn`t have the copyright or presumably the profits. Glidrose would.) However, neither his estate or his family had ever heard of the book.

Running out of names (and patience), I needed a list of literary writers who couldn`t be considered stylists; those who also wrote children`s books; and those from the Kent/Sussex area (or neighbouring Home Counties). (It was either that or putting an ad in The Bookseller asking, `Did you or anybody you know write books during the 1960`s? If so you could be RD Mascott!`. The mind boggles at how many writers there are.) Luckily I hooked up with Chris Willis, a pre-graduate instructor and excellent professional researcher, who herself remembered and enjoyed the book.

I considered other possibilities. A rumour had circulated at the time that Mascott might have been Graham Greene, whose nephew, Graham Carleton Greene, published the James Bond Junior novel. Robert Liddell was born and raised in Tunbridge near where the story occurs; he subsequently lived in Africa (Mascott emphasizes people living in or travelling to Africa), and lived in Greece when Amis visited for Colonel Sun… yet the writing didn`t match. (My first thought – a politically incorrect one, though I didn`t know it at the time – while reading his 1987 novel The Aunts was, `What fruity sludge!` Just thinking about the book makes my mouth pucker like I`ve got an exorbitantly ripe sweet in there and can`t figure how to get it out discreetly. His novel Unreal City shows more restraint and is considered his best for good reason.)

Mascott wrote intelligent, yet unpolished prose. Was it William Golding? A subsequent Nobel Prize winner wouldn`t have gotten so far if the judges knew he`d written a children`s novel about James Bond`s nephew. But no. Golding`s reputation remains intact, which is more than I can say about his extraordinarily unpolished and prolix prose.

A news-cutting in Chapter 20 of Michael Underwood`s novel A Compelling Case resembles one in the James Bond Junior novel, but nothing else triggered my interest in what he wrote (either as a suspect or an author).

I considered Glidrose chairman Peter Janson-Smith`s other clients: Anthony Burgess, Cyril Northcote Parkinson (rather apprehensively; those truly awful Patrick O`Brien books have inoculated me against all historical sea adventures), Gavin Maxwell, Georgette Heyer, Bruce Marshall, Shena MacKay, though I drew the line at Jerzy Kosinski, best known for Being There, and some Latin American writer Janson-Smith represented (whose name and exact nationality escape me). I even considered Janson-Smith himself: he and his second wife Celina Wieniewska translated the Dutch novel Ciske the Rat (1958). I`m guessing that Janson-Smith would have known only a smattering of any foreign language and therefore presumably concentrated on the translation`s style, which is slick.

I considered, then rejected, other possibilities: Peter Quennell, Gerald Durrell, Melvyn Bragg, George MacBeth, C Day Lewis, Lionel Davidson, Simon Raven (who polished the OHMSS script), Len Deighton, Robert Gittings, Donald McCormick (a.k.a. Richard Deacon), Michael Howard, Ivar Bryce. I considered, then rejected, Joan Aiken and other established children`s writers from the 1950`s and 60`s.

Possibility-after-possibility fell off my list until I found myself staring at a copy of the now little-known author Arthur Calder-Marshall`s 1961 novel The Scarlet Boy. I opened the book at random to an early page and saw this:

As he stood there as patient as a Great Dane listening to the yapping of a Pomeranian, he gently lowered one eyelid in a slow motion wink at me. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 1]
An alarm went off in my head. Compare it to:

In the doorway stood a huge man. He towered over Nobby like a Great Dane over a Dachshund. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 5]
Coincidence? I considered RD Mascott`s pseudonym and groaned at what seems to be a truly awful pun:

RD = Artie = Arthur

I continued reading and found other similarities. By themselves, some mean little, but when viewed together…

Example 2:

Suddenly she looked round. She had long light lashes, like a cow`s. But her greeny-yellow eyes were like a cat`s. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 2]
I was conscious only of two greeny-yellow eyes which appeared to be focused at the back of my brain. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 3]
Her beauty, too, was like a gypsy`s, her unpainted face achieving beauty by the clear curve of the jaw, the arching nostrils, the high broad cheekbones and the sharp, catlike eyes. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
Blonde, gypsy-eyed Katharine Smith[.] [James Bond Junior, Chapter 26]
Example 3:

Three years before, Captain Bond had inherited Monkshill from his father. […] It was the first `home` that James had ever had. Before then they had lived in a succession of furnished flats, houses and hotels. […] But as Captain Bond said, `Beacon Hill is our bit of God`s earth.` He wanted the family to strike its roots there. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 1]
These are the most known medicine that will be found made by various reputed companies. Some of ayurvedic remedies are available to control high blood pressure) and some drugs that modify central nervous system response may inhibit erection by denying blood supply or by altering nerve activity. tadalafil online in uk Vitamin D – Another all-around important element of a healthy diet, meditation, mastercard cialis online find out this and exercise are among the essentials for managing chronic stress. Shopping for this pill without coupons may cost you 30$+, and if you are a regular consumer, your monthly expense must go beyond your budget. After years of wanderlustiness, the Evernesses (Nieves especially but me a furtive bit too), want to Strike Roots. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 1]
My father was possessed of a restless spirit which took him abroad for years at a time and sent his family posting from one furnished house to another. He was, he was fond of saying, a modern Ishmael; and in the fifteen years of my life before he bought my grandfather`s house at Steyning, we had lived in eleven different houses. It was an interesting experience, because the home life of our landlords, revealed by diaries, letters and even account-books, provided us with vicarious enjoyments denied to children in more settled homes. / My father`s decision to buy his own house marked a new phase in his development. The time had come to settle down. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
Example 4:

James knew what his father meant. He had wandered exploring for miles around. He discovered the world of nature, a pulsing, secret world ignored by people who sit in cars and planes. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 1]
I was very sorry to have left that particular part of the South Downs as it was the only part of the earth which I had ever come to know with intimacy. It had taught me what the love of countryside could mean to those who have always had one place which they can consider their own. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 10]
Example 5:

Beacon Hill, on the Kent-Sussex border, was not very convenient for Gatwick Airport from which Captain Bond flew his VC10s: and Monkshill itself was tiny, a cottage with a little garden. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 1]
But his choice of Steyning was unfortunate, because his business and my school were in London; and the seclusion which made it a heaven for week-ends and holidays made it hell for week-days. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
Example 6:

`For crying out loud, is there another boy in the whole of England, given the chance to spend a week in Dar-es-Salaam, who`d say `Don`t want to!` At James`s age I`d`ve leapt at it.` Captain Bond drew angrily on his pipe, which had gone out. Then looking for sympathy he turned his gaze from the ungrateful James to his wife. […] Mrs Bond said, `I think James means that it would be as boring playing with his young cousins in Dar-es-Salaam, as you found it with yours in Southampton.` [James Bond Junior, Chapter 1]
There were no Grantley relatives to succeed me, but on my mother`s side there was Harry Waybridge, the young cousin with whom I had played so unsuccessfully at Deal. […] He was married for a second time and was farming in Tanganyika [in East Africa where Dar-es-Salaam is located]. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 4]
`Well, next week I`m going out to East Africa to defend N`gozi. It`ll be in all the newspapers and the proper cretins will think that I`ve been given a whacking great fee.` [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 5]
Example 7:

Sir Cuthbert`s voice made James start. Grinning through the driver`s window was the foxy face with little tufts of hair high on the cheekbones, like a pair of spare eyebrows. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 14]
Behind the bar was a peroxide blonde who pulled beer dreamily as she conversed with a red foxy-faced man sitting on a stool. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
Example 8:

Donal ran over, pouring out torrents of foul abuse such as James had never heard in his life before. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 16]
Within the ring of spectators the women fought with self-absorption. There might have been no one within miles for all the notice they took. But when at last a large man, as burly as a policeman and as fumblingly officious, tried to separate them with an “Ere, `ere, you can`t do that, yer know!` they instantly stopped fighting one another and rounded on him for not minding his own business with a torrent of abuse that amounted almost to physical violence. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
Example 9:

`Don`t be an ass!` He ran down the stairs with Sheelagh some way behind him. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 18]
`Don`t be an ass.` [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 6]
Example 10:

He tripped and fell forward, throwing out his hands. […] As he turned to run, he saw the dog swerve in mid-air, then suddenly it was as if a hundred red-hot needles had been driven up his leg from his ankle. His foot was caught in a rabbit hole. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 21]
Then I tripped and fell face forward in the grass; and as I lay winded, testing my twisted ankle, a thought came to me which converted joy to terror. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 3]
Example 11:

There would be no chance that Squirrel Joram or any of the others whom Mrs Frame had allowed to play in Hazeley would discover it. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 2]
Tom Blaze the drove and Squirrel his son, hollering and belting their flanks with ash-sticks to bolt them up the cut[.] [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 1]
Example 12:

James`s housemaster insisted on the joke of calling him 003 1/2, ha! ha! [James Bond Junior, Chapter 1]
`I must make a notch on my recording stick, ha! ha!` [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 1]
As tea had already been laid outside, it was agreed that the loggia was a perfect idea and John Scarlet proposed that we should `make a tour of the estate, ha! ha!` while his sister made the tea. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 11]
Example 13:

There was furious barking. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 5]
Suddenly I heard a furious barking and saw hopping through the tangled grass and weeds a rat, so slow and clumsy that I thought it must be pregnant, as Frisk herself was. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 3]
Example 14:

It was Miss Hubbard`s Ford Anglia. [James Bond Junior, Chapter 9]
Punctually at five forty-five a new Ford Anglia stopped in front of the door and a couple of minutes later Mrs Ambrose showed in the Schroeders, Miriam advancing quickly first, her husband lagging sensitively behind. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 4]
(Characters in both novels also drive Jaguars.)

Example 15:

He pretended to strip off his mitt and thrust out his hand. `How de, pard. Good trappin`?` It was an old routine of theirs. James stamped on the ground, as if to get the circulation going in his frostbitten feet. `Mush!` he growled. `Mush too mush[.] Mush!` [James Bond Junior, Chapter 7]
[A]nd my mother declared that if it had been Alaska, he could have sported snowshoes, a parka and fur-mitts and cried `Mush! Mush!` to the porter. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 10]
(Calder-Marshall had just written a biography of Robert Flaherty, the filmmaker who shot Nanook of the North on location in Alaska and the Yukon.)

Example 16:

`An` I s`pose you`ve been wanderin` all over, with them Alsatians lickin` yer hands,` Squirrel said. `I s`pose the place isn`t surrounded with a whacking great fence and barbed wire on top.` [James Bond Junior, Chapter 19]
`People are very lonely. I s`pose, lonelier than they`ve ever been – with all this globe-trottin`. Ships that pass in the night, yer know.` [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 11]
There are also plot similarities: in James Bond Junior, Mrs Frame, an elderly woman, whose grandson was killed, gives gifts to James Bond Junior and stores them in her bothy, where he has the key to visit any time he chooses. In The Scarlet Boy, Helen Scarlet`s son is killed; she gives gifts to young George Grantley which she stores in her house, which he`s allowed to visit whenever he likes, and shows him where the key is kept. Scenes involving elderly housemaids – Mrs Ambrose in The Scarlet Boy, and Mrs Raggles in James Bond Junior – are fairly similar. Both books hinge on purchasing a nearby house and the strange goings-on there. Both books feature a troubled female child who draws, and moreover, what she draws is a crucial plot point that resolves each story`s central mystery. Both books feature scenes between children high up in trees; and in both books, the troubled girls` puppies are killed.

Mascott and Calder-Marshall were both natural talents at characterization, especially small-town life, which is one of the James Bond Junior novel`s strengths. Both shared the same impish sense of humour:

And yet the street in which we lived was, for the most part, as quiet as a country lane, being frequented at this hour by lap- and house-dogs taking their masters or their servants for an airing before putting them to bed. These silent men, like prisoners so long incarcerated that even the brief period of exercise no longer gave them pleasure, stood chained to their animals under street-lamps or at the base of plane trees, glancing listlessly once or twice at the carnival roistering past the far end of the street, but as if it was a world from which they were forever separated; at the least tug of the leash they would move eagerly on in the direction of their cells. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
Both men were philosophical:

Many children brought up in the atmosphere of immoderation long for restraint at an price. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
And I have learnt by now that these things never turn out as one anticipates. There is always some twist which makes even the expected strange, the dreaded welcome, the ambition fruitless and the weakness strength. [The Scarlet Boy, Chapter 18]
Passages even resemble James Bond Junior`s terse style:

Someone went in. Inside looked smoky and crowded. Someone came out. No one was singing or fighting. It was better to be snubbed by a stranger than laughed at by a brother. I pushed open the door. [The Magic of My Youth, Chapter 4]
When rating Mascott similarities on a scale from 0 to 100, Kingsley Amis, Mickey Spillane, Jack Kerouac, Virginia Woolf, and the author of `Penthouse Forum` rate a `0` while Mascott (obviously) scores `100`. Calder-Marshall`s novel The Scarlet Boy scores around 66% – which is approximately 20% higher than anybody else.

So who is Arthur-Calder Marshall?

He was born August 19th, 1908 in Surrey, and was raised in Sussex, near where the James Bond Junior novel is set.

He attended St Paul`s grammar school, and went on to Hertford College, where he eventually edited the undergraduate magazine Oxford Outlook. He was almost expelled after being falsely accused of celebrating a Black Mass. He graduated with a BA from Hertford College in 1930.

Reviewers praised Calder-Marshall`s first novel, Two of a Kind, citing his `talent for graphic description and understanding of the emotion underlying apparently irrational conduct,` though others have chosen to remember the novel for its supposedly hidden obscenity: `They came, together.` This novel, a love story, was about a honeymoon couple`s ordeal after they had been swept out to sea in a small boat. The early to mid 1930`s were a flurry of activity for Calder-Marshall as he published novels, stories and even criticism; in fact, it was Calder-Marshall who coined the term `Greeneland` to describe certain elements in Graham Greene`s novels. Calder-Marshall`s fifth novel, Pie in the Sky, established his reputation. The novel, set in a midlands mill town, involved a large cast of characters in a story about emotional and industrial conflict.

He married Violet Nancy Sale in 1934. They had two daughters, one of whom is the actress Anna Calder-Marshall, who co-starred with Timothy Dalton in the 1970 remake of Wuthering Heights; his other daughter, Clare, runs an Art Gallery.

Calder-Marshall moved to Hollywood and wrote scripts for MGM in the late 1930`s; he was to develop a love-hate relationship with the industry and often complained that the studios paid him more not to write. During the war he joined British Petroleum, and then served in the British Ministry of Information (film division).

Orson Welles had intended to direct and co-star (with Dolores Del Rio) in a film adaptation of Calder-Marshall`s political thriller The Way to Santiago. Welles had finished the script by February 1941, but RKO balked after Citizen Kane`s poor reception. In Welles`s version, an amnesiac resembling a charismatic fascist radio commentator/host becomes a pawn in a political power play. The amnesiac subsequently defeats the fascist radio host, taking over his radio station in the jungle and delivers a warning broadcast.

Calder-Marshall also wrote the story for Alfred Hitchcock`s short twenty-five minute WWII film Bon Voyage, which was `about the shifting moralities of the French Resistance.` According to Donald Spotto, `Hitchcock very rightly worried whether, with a murder committed by one of the characters who was supposed to be a hero, it would ever be shown in France. It never was.` The film, which had been shot quickly, was `shipped out to a disappointed French distributor, who shelved [it] at once.`

Calder-Marshall had more luck with his script for the Academy Award nominated documentary The World is Rich (1946).

Calder-Marshall concentrated on non-fiction after war, especially biographies and editing collected editions of other writers` work. During 1960`s he edited the collected works of Jack London for Bodley Head, whose chairman, Graham Carleton Greene, was managing director of Jonathan Cape around the time of the James Bond Junior novel. No Earthly Command, the story of Vice Admiral Alexander Riall Wadham Wood, is probably Calder-Marshall`s best remembered non-fiction work; Wood entered theological college in 1931 when he was 51, and died aged seventy-four, `a poor parson in London`s East End`. John Betjeman in the Daily Telegraph wrote, `Arthur Calder-Marshall has always written lucidly and readably. However dated and unreadable some prose-writers may become who seem to us elegant or contemporary-tough today, he will remain fresh and clear… I think this is the best book even he has written and the best book I have read for a long time.`

Other non-fiction work included The Innocent Eye, his biography of film director Robert Flaherty; and Sage of Sex, about Havelock Ellis. Calder-Marshall also edited and introduced Prepare to Shed Them Now: The Ballads of George R Sims.

Calder-Marshall`s two best remembered novels remain The Fair to Middling, about `a travelling show that brings magic to a small town`, in particular `the patron, staff and pupils of the Alderman Winterbottome`s School for Incapacitated Orphans, such as the facially-disfigured music teacher and her talented but partially-sighted pupil` who learn that they would have accomplished far less in their lives had they been `normal`; and The Scarlet Boy, an initially light-hearted haunted house story, with a twist that anticipated the motion picture The Sixth Sense. Cyril Connolly praised the novel, writing: `A variation on the theme of the Turn of the Screw in the manner of Graham Greene with an olive from the Cocktail Party and a dash of Dashiel Hammett.`

Calder-Marshall remained a well-known and well-regarded literary figure who unfortunately never quite broke into the front ranks. Critics noticed the similarities between his work and the far more famous Graham Greene, though Calder-Marshall is in some respects perhaps the better of the two. Calder-Marshall acquaintances included Greene, George Orwell, Malcolm Lowery, and even the legendary Alastair Crowley.

He died April 17th, 1992, several months after the much-maligned `James Bond Junior` cartoon series debuted.

NOVELS: 1933 Two of a Kind 1933 About Levy 1934 At Sea 1935 Dead Centre 1937 Pie in the Sky 1940 The Way to Santiago 1949 A Man Reprieved 1955 Occasion of Glory 1961 The Scarlet Boy

STORIES: 1934 Crime Against Cania 1935 A Pink Doll 1937 A Date with a Duchess

FOR CHILDREN: 1958 The Man from Devil`s Island 1959 The Fair to Middling 1963 Lone Wolf: The Story of Jack London

Oh yes, and…

1967 The Adventures of James Bond Junior – 003 1/2 (as `R.D. Mascott`)

NOVELIZATIONS (as `William Drummond`): 1960 Midnight Lace 1961 Victim 1962 Life For Ruth 1964 Night Must Fall 1966 Gaslight

PLAY: 1965 Season of Goodwill (based on `Every Third Thought` by Dorothea Malm)

MEMOIRS: 1951 The Magic of My Youth

Though I`ve (presumably) solved this mystery, one question still remains… how could anybody have thought it was Kingsley Amis?

Anybody want to throw in their two cents? Let me know at nickkincaid@bigfoot.com.

Do you think you know all of the James Bond books? Think again! In 1985 an author named Jim Hatfield wrote and published a complete James Bond novel entitled “The Killing Zone” that has gone unnoticed until now. For the first time on the `Net 007Forever has brought the most obscure 007 novel to light and has attempted to answer some of the questions surrounding the origins of this strange Bondian adventure.

What is intriguing about The Killing Zone is that it is neither spoof nor parody. It is a real, 100% James Bond novel. In fact it is even better than quite a few of the John Gardner novels. So where did it come from?

A noteworthy James Bond collector unearthed the only known copy then thought to be in existence at a Texas book show. The Killing Zone was a paperback edition that looked professional but had suspicious markings. The cover has “The Killing Zone” in large generic letters with blood spots here and there. There is a small logo on top with the Roger Moore-James Bond silhouette used in the For Your Eyes Only posters. (See photo accompanying this story.) Aside from that, there are no Bond specific markings. The font and layout of the cover suggests a meticulous publishing job, however.

“For Your Eyes Only”
How did this book escape the attention of the Bond fan community until recently? The answer is simple. The Killing Zone is totally illegal and was never released as a real book. The Killing Zone is a bootleg Bond novel not approved by Glidrose Publications, the literary copyright holder to the James Bond character. In the 1980`s, John Gardner was the official Glidrose author, who went on to write 16 different James Bond adventures. The acknowledgement section of “Zone” mentions Glidrose as if it was an official James Bond novel but this is merely cheek on the author`s part. Glidrose had nothing to do with this book. They did not commission it nor do they sanction its existence.

“Secret Mission”
The Killing Zone`s Bond narrative is deadly serious and fits surprisingly into the Bond legacy, very reminiscent of Bond XVI, “License To Kill”. A German-South American drug lord, “Klaus Doberman” has executed Bond`s pal Bill Tanner in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Tanner was there coordinating British Secret Service efforts to slow the illicit drug trade to Europe and the Americas. Tanner`s sudden, violent death prompts M himself to travel to the Virgin Islands to coax James Bond out of retirement (ala “Never Say Never Again”). M wants Bond to pursue Doberman and avenge Tanner`s demise. Over a Fleming-styled dinner, M presents Bond with Doberman`s dossier. Doberman is a German homosexual, a brutal sadist who wears a patch over one dead eye below a coif of long blonde hair. Bond immediately dislikes what he learns and accepts the mission to take vengeance for his friend. Afterwards M comments, “the bastard`s back.”

Arriving in Puerto Vallarta, Bond and his tricked out Porsche Gamballa soon hooks up with his longtime partner Felix Leiter plus an adventurous local named “Lotta Head.” (Good grief!) Lotta is the daughter of the proprietor of Bond`s hotel, a blonde and voluptuous American willing to help Bond in any manner needed! (Her piquant name draws disbelief from even Bond. Lotta explains that her father wanted to remember the wild night she was conceived and so chose the name.) With his “dream team” in tow, Bond sets out to track down and utterly destroy Klaus Doberman and his organization. Further complicating matters are the arrival of Soviet KGB General Gogol and KGB Agent Anya Amasova! Both are in Mexico for a meeting with Doberman. It turns out that Doberman is financed by the Soviets to help destabilize fragile democracies in the Caribbean and Central America through the distribution of cocaine and general mayhem. Bond also discovers that Doberman owns a palatial seaside estate outside Puerto Vallarta. Doberman also has a luxury boat named “The Buenaventura.” His head of security is a sinister ninja named Fuji Chen, a veteran of prior encounters with 007.

The hunt is on and Bond and company set out after their prey. After numerous chases, ambushes and a fiery attack on Doberman`s fortress, the enemy and his empire are destroyed, again reminiscent of License To Kill, filmed a few short years later. Bond and Lotta plan to “recoup” together in Acapulco.

“Warning: Incredible Spoilers Ahead!” You may not be likely to read this unbelievably rare tome, but if you don`t want to know the shocking ending, skip down several paragraphs to the section entitled, “License Revoked”.

After Doberman and his evil machine are demolished, Fuji Chen is still around. Ambushing Bond in Lotta`s hotel room, he succeeds in garroting 007. Bond`s final act on earth is to fatally stab Chen in the chest…cut to the submarine “HMS Reliant” where M presides over James Bond`s funeral! Bond`s body is placed in a torpedo shell and launched deep under the Atlantic to the mournful strains of Scottish bagpipe music. And you thought On Her Majesty`s Secret Service had a moody ending! Even though it is totally wrong for a Bond story, Bond`s funeral scene is quite interesting. M quotes Charles Dickens` last analysis from “A Tale of Two Cities” over Bond`s casket. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” This scene seems to almost a graft from a film; there are many parallels to Captain Spock`s funeral scene in “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan”. In any event, the funeral scene here is a strange ending for the strangest James Bond book that you will probably never read.

The ending of The Killing Zone underscores the renegade nature of the entire book. There is no way conceivable that an official Bond book, or film for that matter, would ever kill off James Bond. So why does Jim Hatfield do it?

“License Revoked?”
When this book was unearthed, some speculated that Glidrose commissioned The Killing Zone but chose not to publish it. To spite them, Hatfield may have published the novel himself. Keep in mind that between 1981 and 1996, one official John Gardner Glidrose book appeared each year, except in 1985, around the time of The Killing Zone`s release. (Mr. Gardner did not make his expected release date for 1985 due to some difficult times the Gardner family experienced.) It may be circumstantial or apocryphal, but in the end, Glidrose did not commission `Zone`.

“A License to Film?”
Perhaps “Zone” was a film treatment commissioned by Eon, which Jim Hatfield turned to a book when the producers passed. Remember in 1984 (the time that the setting of the book takes place) that Mexico was rumored to be the location for the film which became “A View To A Kill”. Many Zone action sequences feel like setpieces for a film. In particular, the dramatic climax has Bond dangling by a rope from the villain`s one-man helicopter as Doberman attempts escape. This is very similar to the climax of both “Octopussy” and A View To A Kill, films released around the time of the book`s composition. But this again is speculation. Maybe this was just a book written on spec?

“A Tip of the Hatfield”
So who is Jim Hatfield anyway? There is actually a very interesting story behind this man. It turns out Jim Hatfield is an ex-con, who has done time in three different states, including a stint in prison for trying to kill his boss with a car bomb! But the intrigue doesn`t end there. Mr. Hatfield went on to write the provocative book, “Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President”. In his book, Hatfield alleges that Republican Presidential frontrunner George W. Bush was arrested in 1972 for possession of cocaine, which was subsequently covered up by his famous father. St. Martin`s Press halted further publication of the book and then ordered a recall when word of Hatfield`s felonious past caught up to him!

Besides the car bombing conviction, Hatfield was separately convicted of embezzlement. Federal court records reveal that Jim Hatfield pleaded guilty in 1992 to swindling thousands of dollars in federal housing money…a case in which his intended bombing victim was a witness. Court records reveal that in 1988 Hatfield was sentenced to 15 years in prison after he admitted he paid a hit man $5,000 to explode his former boss`s car in February 1987. While in prison, he pleaded guilty to one count of “making a false statement in federal paperwork” and had five additional years tacked onto his state sentence. With early-release provisions, Hatfield was paroled to Arkansas in 1994, where he has since written at least five books, including several science-fiction television trivia books and a biography of “Star Trek” actor Patrick Stewart.

Hatfield told fellow employees at the federal housing authority where he worked before his arrest that he had won “a contest to write the next James Bond book” and continue the series started by deceased author Ian Fleming! “Years went by and we never saw the book. We wondered if it was really true,” an acquaintance told Washington Post reporter Kathy Sawyer in her March 19, 2000 expose on Hatfield. Eventually Hatfield delivered his book, printed and bound(The jacket blurb announces: “Bond has his hands full as he battles a lucious [sic] lady assassin. . . . Aided by his sex-galore confederate Lotta Head . . . 007 is pitted against Klaus Doberman in his heavily armed fortress.”) Suspicious co-workers called the publisher. They learned Hatfield had paid to have the work published himself; a vanity piece.

Hatfield now admits to The Washington Post that this was another deception. “I was so overly confident that my work would be selected, I boasted to everybody. When it wasn`t selected, I self-published and sold it to everybody I knew. I really had egg on my face, but nothing compared to now.” Yet he continues to tell people there was a contest when no such contest really existed.

“You Only Live Twice?”
Whoever he “really” is, however, Jim Hatfield does know his James Bond and what constitutes a solid 007-adventure novel. Bond`s physical description is lifted straight from Mr. Fleming`s work in a delightful way. Bond still wears a Rolex (in gold this time) and is an ultimate connoisseur of fine wines and food. Hatfield`s James Bond is also plagued by recurring memories of his murdered wife Tracy, a nice Fleming holdover. Hatfield does have the knack for Flemingesque detail down. Bond`s cars and weapons are all described down to minute detail. So too is hardware such as Doberman`s yacht The Buenaventura. Its description conjures up Fleming`s memorable description of the “Disco Volante” of “Thunderball”. Hatfield also sneaks in some vintage Fleming detail for the villains. Doberman`s one eye is doll-like (like Benito Mussolini`s) with the whites surrounding the iris. Fuji Chen`s eyes are cold and evil, “like gunbarrels” or just the way Mr. Fleming described Dr. No`s evil eyes.

Hatfield allows annoying American slang to creep into Bond`s character, however, totally wrong for our favorite British agent. Bond would never use American slang like “plug you” for “shoot you” and fifty “bucks”. He also would definitely not give someone “the finger” which he does to Felix Leiter in a moment of jest!

Another game that Jim Hatfield cannot resist is to pepper The Killing Zone with references to Bond films and books. Indicating the time that this book was written, Never Say Never Again is referred to the most. For instance, Bond says that he has been retired from the Secret Service for one year, which would follow on with the events in Never Say Never Again. Our beloved “Q” now works for the CIA, also alluded to in that film.

Further, the bizarre appearance of Anya Amasova and General Gogol is interesting. Anya hints at a past relation with 007 in dialogue but her character is much more sinister that it was in The Spy Who Loved Me. General Gogol mentions that James Bond`s execution is long overdue…but he gets to do little about it before he is sabotaged by Fuji Chen and dies in a fiery helicopter crash.

The Killing Zone is also in sync with John Gardner`s books. Bond wields a Ruger Super .44 Magnum kept under the seat of his Porsche (as in the Saab of Gardner`s novels). There is also a recounting of Bond`s past tortures such as the carpet beater from Casino Royale, the brain probes in Colonel Sun and the ice water torture from Mr. Gardner`s “Icebreaker”. M`s dinner with Bond on St. Thomas echoes dialogue from Gardner`s first Bond opus, “Licence Renewed”. M tells Bond that he is a blunt instrument for Her Majesty`s government. Hatfield tips his hat to even John Pearson by having Bond retired on St. Thomas. This was mentioned in Pearson`s biography of 007.

Even more puzzling is the direct lifting of dialogue from the 007 films. When Doberman meets with his associates, he uses the exact same speech that Blofeld did in Never Say Never Again when he briefed S.P.E.C.T.R.E.`s board of directors. When Bond confronts a Mafia chieftain on Doberman`s whereabouts, the mobster don mocks Bond with the exact same lines that Scaramanga used in The Man With the Golden Gun. He says that Bond is a killer who “works for peanuts and a hearty well done from Her Majesty”. General Gogol even gets to recycle some of his own dialogue from Octopussy and A View To A Kill!

Why does Hatfield do this? He is obviously capable of writing a first class Bond adventure that does not need to rely on any gimmicks. Are all the references a homage to the books and films? Or is it an elaborate game to please hardcore Bond fans? Like the book itself, it is another part of the riddle.

In hindsight its interesting to see how many themes and ideas from The Killing Zone made it into subsequent Bond films. There is a character named Huggins in The Killing Zone whom Bond encounters. Huggins is a former MI6 agent gone bad who was scarred by Bond in a previous run-in…Alec Trevelyan`s “006,” anyone? Perhaps there is little direct connection between The Killing Zone, Licence To Kill and Goldeneye but it is interesting to note the coincidences.

“Death Leaves an Echo”
In the end though, The Killing Zone is a major romp for any 007 fan. The action sequences are stunning. Standouts include a cat and mouse game between Bond and KGB agents in the Mexican desert and a bravura sequence involving a remote controlled boat used by Bond and Leiter to decoy the guards at Doberman`s seaside fortress. Klaus Doberman and Lotta Head are serviceable characters but not compelling. Not much is made of Doberman`s homosexuality which could have been put to more interesting use. Doberman does have a great scene where he is eating rare steak and blood oozes down his chin. Lotta uses her body to help her and Bond get out of some tight spots. Felix Leiter is put to very good use. Much better in fact than most of the recent Bond films and novels where Leiter`s appearance is more of a cameo…and Mr. Hatfield has not forgotten that the Felix of the books is missing certain key appendages.

“On Her Majesty`s Secret Collection”
In sum, lucky Bond novel hunters may someday see, on the farthest corner of dusty bookstore shelving, a strange little paperback composed of 251 of the wildest pages you may ever read in the James Bond “saga”.

Written by: Greg Bechtloff The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Dallas Morning News, The Independent, Matt Sherman and Nicholas Kincaid all contributed to this article.

**Hatfield commits suicide:

Police said Hatfield, 43, died of an apparent drug overdose. His body was found by a maid Wednesday, July 18, 2001, the day after he checked into the motel in Springdale, near his native Bentonville and about 200 miles northwest of Little Rock.

Detective Sgt. Mike Shriver of the Springdale Police Department said there was no question it was a suicide.

“He left a note and everything,” Shriver said of Hatfield. ”It’s really cut and dried.”

While it’s no surprise that someone from Arkansas would want to kill themself, Hatfield’s story is an intriguing, though completely ridiculous tale. Let us take you back to the summer of 2000, when Hatfield’s book “Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President”, was receiving national attention, and BondFanEvents (007Forever) was the FIRST and ONLY website to expose Mr. Hatfield for what he really was.