Book review: Forever And a Day by Anthony Horowitz

After 2015's Trigger Mortis Anthony Horowitz becomes the first novelist since Raymond Benson to write more than one James Bond novel. Whereas Trigger Mortis followed up on the events of Goldfinger (the novel) Forever And a Day acts as a prequel to the very first Bond novel Casino Royale. We see Bond committing the second kill he needs to attain double 0 status as he confronts a WWII double the names of the men who died violent deaths when he betrayed then to the Nazis. Bond takes on the code number of 007 when his predecessor's dead body is found floating in Marseille harbour. What then follows is a fast path tale as Bond crosses the path of a morbidly obese Corsican gangster who features in one brutal torture scene though that is not to say he does not suffer a suitable comeuppance. There is of course a glamorous leading Female character though Horowitz makes a couple of twists on the typical Bond Femme. First of all she is 10 years older than him and perhaps the more vital to the plot she served as a SOE agent during WWII which gave her skills that come in useful when she and Bond are both in tight spots. Forever And a Day is such a fast paced tale that if the news came that Horowitz would be writing a third novel I for one would not complain.