With a Mind to Kill: the action-packed Richard and Judy Book Club Pick (James Bond 007)

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With a Mind to Kill (WaMtK) is Anthony Horowitz's final book in his James Bond trilogy which was commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate. It follows a mid-career Bond in Trigger Mortis (2015) and a pre-007 Bond in Forever and a Day (2018). In terms of chronology, the latter is a prequel to Fleming's original Casino Royale (James Bond #1 - 1953) and the former follows after Goldfinger (James Bond #7 - 1959). It is M’s funeral. One man is missing from the graveside: the traitor who pulled the trigger and who is now in custody, accused of M’s murder – James Bond. This will be the last of the three James Bond novels that Anthony Horowitz was intending to write after Trigger Mortis and Forever and a Day. And yet again the classic essence of Bond was captured which I thoroughly enjoyed! I’m sad to see the end of Horowitz writing Bond, it’s been one hell of a ride! Anthony Horowitz, OBE is ranked alongside Enid Blyton and Mark A. Cooper as "The most original and best spy-kids authors of the century." (New York Times). Anthony has been writing since the age of eight, and professionally since the age of twenty. In addition to the highly successful Alex Rider books, he is also the writer and creator of award winning detective series Foyle’s War, and more recently event drama Collision, among his other television works he has written episodes for Poirot, Murder in Mind, Midsomer Murders and Murder Most Horrid. Anthony became patron to East Anglia Children’s Hospices in 2009.

I’d expect this kind of lazy writing from older books that at least have the excuse of being “of a different time”, but not from a novel published today (although maybe because it’s set in the ‘60s, Horowitz is trying to stay true to the literary conventions of the time?). It’s just embarrassing to read more than anything. It’s almost uncanny how well Mr. Horowitz summons Bond’s mindset . . . Yet this Bond also feels the winds of change: 'He had his licence to kill. But was it possible that in this new, more questioning age, that licence might have expired?' A drop of retro pleasures, a pinch of things to come; shaken, not stirred." — Wall Street Journal Guardian Angel (2005) • " For Your Eyes Only, James" (2006) • Secret Servant (2006) • " Moneypenny's First Date With Bond" (2006) • Final Fling (2008) Anthony Horowitz already published two previous Bond adventures. Trigger Mortis was set just after the events of Goldfinger; Forever and a Day was set prior to Casino Royale; and now With a Mind to Kill takes place after the events of The Man With The Golden Gun and is directly influenced by events that occur in Ian Fleming’s final Bond novel. Horowitz’s tale is dense with detail on period Moscow and the verisimilitude of psychological warfare. ‘With A Mind To Kill’ touches upon contemporary concerns of mass mind manipulation, public deception, and a desire by errant parties on a globally resurgent Russian empire.When the plot gets going it consists of steals from From Russia With Love (James Bond #5 - 1957) (including SMERSH type thugs & assassins, the conflicted Russian femme fatale and a train ride) and then even from other authors such as Len Deighton's The Ipcress File (1962) (the Russian brainwashing techniques), Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate (1959) (the unknowing, brainwashed assassin) and Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963) (the doomed and cynical spy). After the final reveal, it pretty much fizzles out. In a mission where treachery is all around and one false move means death, Bond must grapple with the darkest questions about himself. But not even he knows what has happened to the man he used to be. Ascended Extra: The novel's Big Bad is Colonel Boris, who was briefly mentioned at the beginning of The Man with the Golden Gun as the Soviet officer responsible for brainwashing Bond and sending him to assassinate M.

While Horowitz 007 was thinking about his past and who played a role in it towards which extend they played a role. You realise that this Bond is a very good 00 agent and does the job so well because he likes and enjoys the job. Some people are just like that. Putting an agent into a risky place with very little support is not good for the agent. It is exploitation and abuse. A third outing for Anthony Horowitz taking on the mantle of Ian Fleming and delivering a credible and all immersing Cold War thriller.

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TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Plagued with nightmares about the death of his wife—killed 12 years earlier by a drunk driver—Bain takes a leave of absence to seek revenge against the man who ruined his life. Deconstruction: This novel arguably serves as one for the typical Bond story. After spending time in Soviet Russia, Bond comes to realize that his heroic defeats of megalomaniacal villains like Dr. No or Goldfinger ultimately will not make much of a difference in the outcome of the Cold War and that only the Russian people can free themselves from the tyranny of Soviet rule. He also reflects on how the years of physical and psychological trauma that he's suffered as a secret agent have permanently damaged him. The conventional notion of Bond being The Casanova is also deconstructed by Katya Leonova - contrary to popular belief, Bond does genuinely have feelings for all the women he's been involved with and treats them well during the relationship. It's just that the relationships don't last since he's too emotionally damaged to make a long-term commitment. Meanwhile, Colonel Boris and other leaders he is working with are still not 100% behind Bond and have one more test. They came across a boorish American named Garfinkel who will swear that Bond is actually an agent he knows by another name who he recently saw several times in Jamaica working closely with Scaramanga. Colonel Boris knows this could not be possible if Bond was still their brainwashed operative in London on mission to assassinate M. Of course, MI6 is still helping out where they can and Garfinkel’s run-in with Bond proves to be nothing more than mistaken identity, allowing our favorite spy to dodge a deadly bullet.