Carte Blanche, by Jeffery Deaver
Published by Hodder and Stoughton
IT’S no doubt a difficult road to take as a writer – assuming responsibility for the continuing adventures of another’s lead character, especially when that character is a modern icon.
Reviving James Bond, even with the blessing - indeed at the express invitation of - the Ian Fleming estate, was no guarantee that Jeffery Deaver would be able to dodge the brickbats of Bond aficionados.
Ultimately, though, I’m not sure it’s the fanbase at large that the highly-successful-in-his-own-right thriller writer needed to be wary of, but his own personal love for all things Bond.
It was his public “coming out” as a fan after winning the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award last year that got him this gig in the first place, the first revisiting of Bond in literature (Charlie Higson’s Young Bond teen adventures aside) since Sebastian Faulks three years ago.
And overall the finished work feels overly-reverent.
On the big screen Casino Royale with Daniel Craig was largely seen as a triumphant reinvention.
Between these covers, though, everything is cardboard stiff.
All the elements are present and correct - far-flung locations, clever gadgets, fiendish baddies, implausibly named femmes fatales - but deployed in such a clunky way that it’s not hard to imagine Deaver sitting with his checklist by his side as he typed.
I did like the effort at updating, with Bond becoming a veteran of Afghanistan rather than the Cold War and signed up to the post-9/11 “black ops” Overseas Development Group rather than MI6.
Not being a great lover of political correctness, though, I found most of the ironing out of his – nowadays – arguably less attractive personal qualities unconvincing.
Whether it was the fact that he doesn’t smoke now, or that he seems to have turned all “new man” when it comes to the ladies, these changes had him coming across as a bit of a limp weed.
As far as it goes the story itself is fine.
The action kicks off in the Balkans, with 007 preventing the terrorist derailment of a train laden with dangerous chemicals.
Heading back to Britain a series of intercepted messages then see him speeding off again, first to Dubai and then South Africa, to try and prevent another major attack due to take place in a matter of days.
With little in the way of hard fact to go on his investigations bring him into contact with the devilishly monikered Severan Hydt, a global leader in the field of waste disposal and recycling as well as a man with some pretty odd personal predilections.
Flanked by his scarily detached Irish “engineer”/hitman Niall Dunne he seems to be the heart of the mystery.
But is he really?
On the plus side this novel does gather pace as it progresses, and concludes with a series of pretty satisfying twists.
It rarely convinces, though, and certainly never makes the reader feel really involved.
