Thought you might say something like that, Jim - I quite understand.
OmarB, I understand what you're saying, and I suppose I'm also rather harsh on John Gardner. But the thing is he has the advantage of being one of very few writers to have been able to write Bond, so he kind of wins by default in a way! I wonder if Bond fans appreciate how Bondish some other writers are and just what we missed out on. I can think of at least six writers who I reckon would have done continuations that would have topped any we have had to date, including COLONEL SUN. Impossible to prove of course, so it's a bit silly, but I'm going to try to convince you anyway. Loomis did a clever thing taking a passage from Sebastian Faulks' novel A FOOL'S ALPHABET and changing the main character's name to Bond to demonstrate the kind of thing we might be in for with DEVIL MAY CARE. I'm going to do something similar. Give the following two passages a read and ask yourself what you would think if either were published on the IFP website as excerpts from the next official Bond novel.
Passage 1:
A single lamp burned in the hall of the Luci di Muntagna. Behind the desk the young receptionist had pulled his tie away from his collar and was sitting by the switchboard, reading a comic. He hurriedly put it away as Bond pushed through the glass swing-doors and got to his feet.
'Good evening, Mr Bond. How are you tonight?'
'Fine,' Bond replied. 'Miss Murray?' He scanned the rack behind the desk and saw that her key was hanging above its pigeon hole. He felt in his pocket.
'Miss Murray? She go out just as I come to work.'
'Any idea where?'
'She ask for a taxi at half past eight to bring her to Olbia.' Bond placed a five thousand-lire note on the counter between them. 'I'll wait for her in her room.'
The receptionist smiled and handed Bond the key to 137. 'Thank you very much,' he said as Bond walked away down the corridor.
The room smelt of Jolie Madame and still retained the heat of the afternoon sun. Bond pushed open a window and sat on the bed and wondered where to begin. There were several torn scraps of the hotel writing-paper lying in the waste-paper basket. Bond pieced them together. It was an unfinished letter addressed to him.
'James', he read, 'I don't know how to say this but I must, otherwise I feel I'm going to explode. Please try to understand and believe me when I tell you that I didn't have any choice and that the last thing I wanted was to involve you. Today has been such hell (underlined three times) that I don't know how I've managed to survive. First of all Mark being killed. Then Sarah and now today.'
The next two lines were crossed out, and there the letter ended.
It was in a drawer, beneath the red and white bikini she had worn on the first day that they had made love, that he found the key with the Marinasarda tag. He nodded slowly, the key clasped tight in his clenched fist. He lit a cigarette and began to walk up and down the room.
Anger, disgust, fear, relief, uncertainty - all elbowed their way into his mind, one pushing the other aside until he did not know what he was thinking or feeling. She was just a whore who had screwed him and used him. And he'd been taken in by her. Had he been so ![[censored]](https://debrief.commanderbond.net/topic/42016-not-fleming-not-bond/style_emoticons/default/censored.gif)
-crazy that he hadn't seen what was going on? Damn right, he had. She was as guilty as whoever's finger was on the trigger of the gun that had killed Mark. But then Mark was equally guilty. He'd let himself be blackmailed into making the whole thing, including his own death, possibly. Perhaps she'd been blackmailed, too. 'No choice,' the letter said. Why hadn't she said anything of any help in the letter, instead of a load of sentimental cliches? At least it was now out in the open. No more doubts or suspicions. But then there'd never been any doubt that Sarah had been kidnapped. So where did that get one? Back to square one. And where the hell was Liz? Why Olbia? Why hadn't she come back? Was she with the two men who'd killed Mark? The two men she'd landed on the beach at La Sirena? And if they'd killed Mark because he knew too much, what about her?
He picked up the telephone and spoke to the receptionist, telling him to call every hotel in Olbia and ask if Miss Murray was staying there. 'Yes,' he said in Italian in case the boy misunderstood, 'I know it's late. But that's what I want you to do - and right away. Call me back when you're through.'
'Sarah. . . rely on you.' Like the wheels of a train, the words repeated themselves over and over again. Don't worry Mark, Bond made a silent promise, she'll be all right. In forty-eight hours seventy per cent... What were Harrington's odds? A hundred to thirty against. So Liz had been a fool, like Mark. Poor bitch, she probably hadn't known what she was letting herself into. Again like Mark, the safe was one thing, but Sarah... He continued his pacing, lighting a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old one, until at last the telephone rang.
Passage 2:
It was quiet in the hut. Far off they could hear a dog barking from some village, then another started up, then a third. Presently they lit cigarettes and lay smoking, watching the complex and slowly shifting pattern of light and the stars through the decaying roof.
She said, 'Nobody's ever made love to me like that before. Now I know I've never really. . . oh, half, but nothing like that, God.'
'Well, it's luck. Works with some, not with others. And it's the occasion too.'
She was stroking his belly. 'God, I really lost my head. I suppose plenty of women go through their lives not feeling anything like they should.'
'Well, with some men it seems it's a one-sided affair - only their side - and that's what makes it go wrong. You know... there's a subtle and special importance in the way a man makes the girl feel that his domination and tigerish possession of her is carrying her up, is for her, with her - not just a bit of goatery by him. As soon as he lets her feel he's not with her, then it's no good for her.'
She kissed him.
Bond said, 'I believe in a girl audibly expressing her enjoyment too - naturally, not like a fire-engine; but you get a girl who lies there going through it silently, almost politely, and maybe gives a little squeak or a whimper when she goes off bang - takes away half the pleasure.'
'Do they?'
'Oh God, some girls come and you can hardly damn well tell - not a hiccup.'
'Maybe you haven't been trying?' She grinned. 'Maybe I haven't now?' She nibbled his ear and said, very softly into it, 'Do you know when I come?'
Bond reached and took her cigarette, stubbed it in the sand and stubbed his own out. He kissed her and they made love again and she strained him to her, pulling her into him and moving with his movements. Afterwards she got up and put her clothes on. He watched her, then dressed too. She said, 'It's late. I must go back.'
'To Morell?'
'James, don't. I-'
Abruptly the mood had changed and she turned urgently to him. 'You've got to get out of this place. No - no, don't and don't ask me any more. Go away, I'll meet you somewhere as soon as I can but don't stay here, darling. Not now.'
'Haven't I a small claim to know why?'
'Because Morell will see, for one thing. That's enough.You don't know what he's like, he's cold and deadly, he'll kill you. What happened this morning? You were in a fight or something?'
'With Novak. Have you seen him use that whip?'
She nodded. 'He used to be a circus act. And he had animals.'
An animal trainer. It was the bizarre note again - and then as he stood looking at her in the dimness of the hut there was a sound outside. She caught his arm and they stood very still.
'Beach patrol,' she whispered. 'James, stay here.'
He caught her and pulled her close, lifted her head and kissed her fiercely. She disengaged herself.
'Don't come with me. Stay here till I start the car - they can't do anything to me. As soon as you hear the car, go into the trees behind here and to the left. Keep off the beach.'
She stepped into the patch of moonlight at the door and disappeared.
Now here's the thing. These passages aren't by Sebastian Faulks. They're not by anyone famous. The first is from ZOOM by Peter Townend, who I already mentioned - published in 1972. His series is so obscure that practically the only hit you'll get on Google is me mentioning him here. The second extract was from THE MAN ABOVE SUSPICION by James Mayo, published in 1969. A little less obscure, this is one of the Charles Hood series. Mayo was the pseudonym of Stephen Coulter, a friend of Fleming's, a former journalist employed by Fleming and a former intelligence officer. Now I'm not saying these extracts are masterpieces, the best thrillers ever written. But they have something Bondian and Flemingian about them to me - the whole books do. Whole other books do. They are seeped in atmosphere and are, if not written to a Booker Prize level, surprisingly nuanced. They have something of the flair for the locales, the villains, the women, the attitudes, the cigarettes and the style that I enjoy in Fleming, and even one page of these books seems to me richer than ten of John Gardner's. Show me a Gardner passage as good as either of these! So this is my response to the title of this thread. I could recommend at least a dozen novels that better the continuations in this way - I'm not sure it is misplaced nostalgia. I think the misplacement is that Gardner gets a pass because he got the gig, so nobody else is ever discussed. The feeling is that he wasn't that close to Fleming, but he was quite good - but look at what we could have had from writers that nobody's ever even heard of! 
