17 replies to this topic

[Jake007]

This is a random topic I'd thought up recently, but: are there any authors out there (who haven't wrote Bond yet) that you would like to see do so?

James Swallow would be one choice of mine, anyone else?

[x007AceOfSpades]

Colson Whitehead.

Zone One is a fantastic read!

[Messervy]

I know I'm gonna get crucified for this here (!), but I for one would love to see John Le Carré write a Bond novel. It could be a very interesting take on the character and could provide a great reading experience.

[Single-O-Seven]

I know I'm gonna get crucified for this here (!), but I for one would love to see John Le Carré write a Bond novel. It could be a very interesting take on the character and could provide a great reading experience.

I would agree. I'd like to see where he would take the character, as his perspective on Bond is certainly not enthusiastic. Therefore, instead of checking the boxes to make the book as Bondian as possible, I suspect he'd do something quite unique but maintain respect for the character at the same time so as not to make him wildly different. If a novel were to be written that addresses Bond's bungled assignments in the angst-filled time between OHMSS and YOLT, Le Carre would be a great choice to handle the character within that timeframe (and mindframe).

[Dustin]

Can't say I see it myself. In a way leCarré already did Bondian characters in Peter Guillam, Alec Leamas and Jim Prideaux. But leCarré's approach is usually quite different and 'adventure' isn't high on his list of priorities. The closest he came to a Fleming/Bond adventure was THE NIGHT MANAGER which depicts an uber-villain in Fleming's tradition and the fight of a single agent who's betrayed in the course of the greater picture. I won't say it isn't worth a read but I somehow would expect something different from a Bond novel (not that I got that from the last two).

[Dustin]

Haven't read Whitehead or Swallow as yet, so I can't comment on them. As for other authors, well, the forum must be littered with my suggestions of Stephen Fry by now. Other names outside the box - or perhaps inside a different box - would be (in no particular order)

Iain Banks - his WALKING ON GLASS has a most compelling structure and mixes successfully different genres to tell one tragic story.

Kazuo Ishiguro - NEVER LET ME GO is a harrowing, gripping, heartbreaking tale that leaves the reader baffled and downright shocked.

Haruki Murakami - a fan of jazz and rock, whiskey and good food, the Beatles and the Beach Boys Murakami was influenced by Western authors as varied as Vonnegut, Chandler, Theroux, Updike, Mann and Capote amongst others. Murakami combines Eastern themes with Western influences and Western themes with an Eastern approach. To get an idea pick up HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD, NORWEGIAN WOOD or AFTER DARK.

More 'traditional' names would be Charles Cumming, David Wolstencroft, Jeremy Dunns or Tom Cain.

[glidrose]

We already have multiple threads on this. Why start another one?

I know I'm gonna get crucified for this here (!), but I for one would love to see John Le Carré write a Bond novel. It could be a very interesting take on the character and could provide a great reading experience.

He would never do it. Period.

[Messervy]

He would never do it. Period.

I know. But this thread is about what authors we would like, not about what authors would do it...

[glidrose]

He would never do it. Period.

I know. But this thread is about what authors we would like, not about what authors would do it...

Great. In that case, I'd like Ian Fleming, Kingsley Amis and perhaps even Simon Raven to write future Bond novels.

[Dan Gale]

I have often wondered who else Glidrose Publications would have asked to be the next writer if the "Robert Markham" pseudonym experiment had continued. Although his books were bestsellers and the films had helped make the characters and the titles household names, I assume, as Fleming didn't have quite the clout he has now, that the list of authors queuing up may not have been that long (hence the unknowns John Pearson and Christopher Wood being the next in line, several years after). I could be wrong of course! Assuming they had approached big named thriller author writers of the 1970s I'd have imagined Dick Francis, Alistar MacLean, Len Deighton, John Le Carre and Frederick Forsyth would have been the biggest names to ask. Wether or not they'd have been the slightest bit interested when they were doing fine without Bond is another matter. I've not read any of them (I've only seen MacLean film adaptations), so I don't know if their styles are/would have been appropriate or even I'd they are/were alive then/now!

[Dustin]

I have often wondered who else Glidrose Publications would have asked to be the next writer if the "Robert Markham" pseudonym experiment had continued. Although his books were bestsellers and the films had helped make the characters and the titles household names, I assume, as Fleming didn't have quite the clout he has now, that the list of authors queuing up may not have been that long (hence the unknowns John Pearson and Christopher Wood being the next in line, several years after). I could be wrong of course! Assuming they had approached big named thriller author writers of the 1970s I'd have imagined Dick Francis, Alistar MacLean, Len Deighton, John Le Carre and Frederick Forsyth would have been the biggest names to ask. Wether or not they'd have been the slightest bit interested when they were doing fine without Bond is another matter. I've not read any of them (I've only seen MacLean film adaptations), so I don't know if their styles are/would have been appropriate or even I'd they are/were alive then/now!

I suppose the Markham idea was up to a point inspired by the example of Leslie Charteris, whose Saint after 1963 was 'outsourced' to numerous other writers. The practice has a long tradition in popular pulp literature, dating back to Nick Carter and other such heroes of the pulp fiction era. The basic premise here is that an established hero will attract readers, no matter who writes the adventures. And in fact Nick Carter, Mack Bolan and Remo Williams in their various incarnations seem to support this line of reasoning.

It's of course debatable if Fleming's Bond can be put into the same drawer with largely forgettable and entirely unpretentious pulp characters. Still, Fleming was greatly impressed by Rex Stout and Georges Simenon, and particularly by their huge output of consistently high quality. It's not a stretch to imagine him going a similar route as Charteris with his hero, all the more so as he himself had already proposed - perhaps not entirely jokingly - to co-write a book with Stout and Deighton. I daresay the approach would have appealed to him. His own well of ideas had dried out somewhat and the prospect of churning out another book had become a chore for him.

It's not clear if big names in the thriller game ever were an aspect in Glidrose's considerations about the topic. A lot seems to have been simply up to the good old/ bad old boys network, and little else. The books themselves and their quality seem to have had little room in the entire process. One major aspect apparently was the fact it was possible to earn some money with this continuation business that otherwise would go into different pockets, and that was that. I don't suppose considerations of cheapening the brand had any influence, neither giving it a higher profile. At Glidrose the crew just kept on sailing, safe in the knowledge the films would do a lot of free promotion every two years. It's not sure at all if the members of the Glidrose board ever read a thriller themselves, apart from their own product. I doubt they really had an idea of the market aside from the odd mention of names in the newspapers. Of course they may have heard of Deighton and leCarré, perhaps even met them. But read any of their books? Not very likely.

[glidrose]

I have often wondered who else Glidrose Publications would have asked to be the next writer if the "Robert Markham" pseudonym experiment had continued.

"Robert Markham" was never meant to become a house pseudonym. Chalk that one up to Bond fans with too little regard for the facts. When you consider who Amis was and the books he wrote, I think the powers that be wanted some way to separate his Bond novel(s) from his regular fiction. Bond fans who have too much imagination in all the wrong ways have gotten carried away, read too much into this pseudonym nonsense and so invented this myth of the "Robert Markham" house pseudonym. Besides, Pearson and Wood didn't use pseudonyms. No way Geoffrey Jenkins would have agreed to a pseudonym. It also makes no marketing sense. If they'd gotten, let's throw out some names, James Leasor, Stephen Coulter, Gavin Lyall to write Bond, you can be damn sure they'd want their names on the cover. Besides, what possible marketing advantage would using a pseudonym have? You want readers to know this isn't by some no-name author, but by some reasonably well-known British thriller writer.

Dustin mentions Leslie Charteris, but the thing about Charteris is that the publishers wanted to trick people into thinking this was by Charteris, not by some no-name hack.

Although his books were bestsellers and the films had helped make the characters and the titles household names, I assume, as Fleming didn't have quite the clout he has now, that the list of authors queuing up may not have been that long (hence the unknowns John Pearson and Christopher Wood being the next in line, several years after). I could be wrong of course!

Damn right you are! John Pearson and Christopher Wood weren't unknowns. Pearson was a well-known biographer and historian, though by that point he'd written only one previous novel. Wood was very well known. His Confessions books were bestsellers. Mind you, IFP had no say in either Pearson or Wood. In each case some other power forced the Pearson-Wood books on IFP.

Assuming they had approached big named thriller author writers of the 1970s I'd have imagined Dick Francis, Alistar MacLean, Len Deighton, John Le Carre and Frederick Forsyth would have been the biggest names to ask. Wether or not they'd have been the slightest bit interested when they were doing fine without Bond is another matter. I've not read any of them (I've only seen MacLean film adaptations), so I don't know if their styles are/would have been appropriate or even I'd they are/were alive then/now!

IFP would never pick big name authors. Big name authors would demand creative control, a larger share of the pie, etc. Control over film and merchandizing rights, etc. And why would a big-name author in the 1970's want to write Bond? Guaranteed, big-name authors would consider it slumming. I said in another thread, IFP at that time was a bare bones operation. Not even sure they had a full-time secretary. The directors all had full-time jobs elsewhere. How were they supposed to know Bond would still be going strong today? As far as they were concerned Bond would be the "Just William" or "Biggles" of their time. There was also no financial incentive. Colonel Sun didn't sell that well and any need for money came from the films. No Bond book could ever make the kind of money for IFP that the Bond film royalties did.

At Glidrose the crew just kept on sailing, safe in the knowledge the films would do a lot of free promotion every two years. It's not sure at all if the members of the Glidrose board ever read a thriller themselves, apart from their own product. I doubt they really had an idea of the market aside from the odd mention of names in the newspapers. Of course they may have heard of Deighton and leCarré, perhaps even met them. But read any of their books? Not very likely.

The very fine Dustin is unfortunately - and quite atypically - wrong. Glidrose chairman Peter Janson-Smith represented several thriller writers, Eric Ambler, Ted Allbeury, Alan Williams, etc. Booker McConnell which owned 51% of IFP also owned 51% of thriller writer Gavin Lyall's copyright. I still suspect that Booker may have secretly approached Lyall about doing Bond at one point.

[Dustin]

Ah yes, you've mentioned that before. So Janson-Smith was the resident expert on the topic. But he probably was the only one having actual hands-on experience with the field, wasn't he?

[glidrose]

No. Ian's nephew (Peter's son) Nichol Fleming also served on the Board of Directors. He was a thriller writer himself and WWII historian. He was a fan of Gerald Seymour's novels. Safe to assume that - at the very least - he was familiar with Len Deighton's war novels.

Dennis Joss appears to have been the contractual Booker appointee, and Chairman of Booker's "Authors" division, but apart from that, none of us knows who else was on the Board at the time. Peter Fleming was long since dead, and his daughters didn't join until 1993. Despite what the MI6 website claims, Charles W. Tyrrell (May 16, 1920 - January 7, 1972) was Booker McConnell's chairman and not a Glidrose employee.

Edited by glidrose, 19 July 2012 - 10:44 PM.

[Dustin]

That's most interesting, wouldn't have thought there was such expertise on the Board. Things like the ignorance toward Pearson's book or the long gap between CS and LR seem to suggest otherwise. Well, the strange ways of Bond in print...

[glidrose]

Curiously, the only other chap I can find who sat on the IFP board of directors at the time was John Parkinson. Curiously, there is also a John Parkinson who was VP in charge of marketing at EON 1991-1997.

[Dustin]

Can this still possibly be coincidence? I'm mentally counting the John Parkinsons I've met over 50 years...

[IainMcLaughlin]

Well, my first choice would obviously be me, but given it would be rather crass of me to say so, and so I'd go for Russel D McLean. Russel has written a number very powerful noir thrillers and I would love to see him do a Bond with real edge. I'd also like Charlie Higson to take a crack at the adult Bond. Robert Harris could also give a very interesting take on Bond.