SilverFin

"After Raymond Benson, there’s a little bit of a pause with adult Bond books, but we do get Bond books, happily. Two different series are going on, relatively simultaneously. One of them is The Moneypenny Diaries , a trilogy about Miss Moneypenny. The name on the book covers is Kate Westbrook, but the author is Samantha Weinberg. The other is the Young Bond series by Charlie Higson. The idea sounds terrible. It sounds like a money grab or an ill-advised attempt to cash in on the Harry Potter craze. How do you take an adult topic, James Bond, and transform him into something that’s kid-friendly? The answer is it shouldn’t work, but it really does. There are five books in the series and the first one is SilverFin . It takes place at Eton, where Bond is in his first year and I’d say the first two-thirds of the book are just young Bond, James, acclimating to the school. It’s a period piece. It’s set in 1933 and you’re getting this otherworldly look into the customs of this old institution during that time. I know that might not sound fascinating, but it really is. It’s enough to carry the story through and, of course, there is a mystery to be solved as young Bond gets wrapped up in his first adventure. What Charlie Higson avoids doing is having Bond meet a young Blofeld or Jaws or whomever. Instead, his five books track the slow evolution of Bond’s character. He deals with being an orphan—Bond’s parents were killed in a climbing accident and he is sent to live with his Aunt Charmian in Pett Bottom, Canterbury. This is him dealing with that loss, and his emotional evolution. It’s great stuff. There’s also a harrowing passage, as tense as anything in any Bond continuation novel, where James is swimming through a tunnel while holding his breath. He is swimming to freedom to escape the bad guy and he’s running out of breath. You feel the tension in a way that’s visceral. It’s one of the best passages in any of these books."