Portobello Book Blog

Handing over to Special Agent Baird today, otherwise known as my occasional guest reviewer and big James Bond fan – my husband!

About the book

The start of a brand new trilogy following MI6’s agents with a licence to kill, that blows the world of James Bond wide open!

James Bond is missing…
007 has been captured, perhaps even killed, by a sinister private military company. His whereabouts are unknown.
 
Meet the new generation of spies…
Johanna Harwood, 003. Joseph Dryden, 004. Sid Bashir, 009. Together, they represent the very best and brightest of MI6. Skilled, determined and with a licence to kill, they will do anything to protect their country.
 
The fate of the world rests in their hands…
Tech billionaire Sir Bertram Paradise claims he can reverse the climate crisis and save the planet. But can he really? The new spies must uncover the truth, because the future of humanity hangs in the balance.
 
Time is running out.

Review

James Bond is well known to most of us: Ian Fleming’s Bond first appeared on the page in 1953 In “Casino Royale”, and then on the Silver screen in 1963 in “Dr No”.  As of next year, the famous suave secret agent will have been drinking his Martini, shaken not stirred, for 70 years and if he’d kept up with us, rather than ageing in “Bond years”, he’d be 100 next year and getting a telegram from the Queen, rather than jumping out of a helicopter with her! 

So, it seems to me then, Kim Sherwood is as brave as 007 himself when she takes the “assignment” to write the next mission!  But James Bond is missing – so it’s “Double or Nothing”. 

Sherwood has a wonderful style in her prose; the pace is quick, effortless but relentless, with a style and elegance Bond would be proud of. Her development of each scene is fantastic, placing the reader right in the midst of the heart stopping action. As the pages turn, she continues to develop the world of Bond we know so well, with lovely new gadgets, cars, characters, and locations. There are some lovely new touches such as an electric E-type Jaguar, a very carefully chosen Renault Alpine sports car instead of the ubiquitous Aston Martin, beautifully tailored suits, fancy restaurants, and wonderful locations across the globe. What else would one except expect when in service to Queen and Country?

Part of the excitement of this book, and I think all great books, is getting to know the characters and their relationships.  We meet other new “double-Os” in 003, 004, and 009 and follow their parts in the mission as well as hearing more about the familiar support characters; “M”, Moneypenny, Q , Felix.  What I found I liked best of all, was that the book isn’t a copy of the films. I imagined different, fresh characters, familiar yet new, unconstrained by what has gone before, and taking the story in a new direction. Somehow, the direction feels right for 2022 and a more complete imagining of the organisation and its license to kill.  

James Bond may be missing, but Kim Sherwood has found his voice and is telling fantastic tales.  Pour yourself a martini, or better still Bond’s original choice, a whisky, sit back, and enjoy a 5* adventure.  

About the Author

Kim Sherwood is a novelist and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her award-winning debut novel Testament was released in 2018, and in 2019, Kim was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. A Wild & True Relation, following a woman who joins a smugglers’ crew in eighteenth-century Devon, will be published by Virago in 2023. Double or Nothing is the first in a trilogy of Double O novels expanding the James Bond universe.