kILLING ZONE

I've downloaded "The Killing Zone" and skimmed through it, but I doubt I'll be letting it take up valuable space on my computer for long. From what little I've read so far, I find it hard to believe it was written by an adult, let alone a professional journalist (one who makes the tall, somewhat immodest, and - it seems to me - wildly inaccurate claim that he has managed to describe "the sights, sounds, and textures of Mexico"). The kindest thing to think is that Jim Hatfield knocked it together at furious speed over the course of a couple of sleepness nights. On plenty of Klaus Doberman's product. Which he must have been pretty far gone on when he wrote in the acknowledgements section that he had transformed James Bond from "a cardboard automaton of the movies to a living and breathing British spy with a license to kill". Hmmm.... Jim, don't call us, we'll call you.

"The Killing Zone" gives us a Chinese assassin who for some reason rejoices in the Japanese name Fuji. We are told that Bond has a "Scottish face" (what sort of image is that supposed to conjure, other than, presumably, Sean Connery's mug?), while a young Bond is described as a "seagoing sailor". Oh, how I'd love CBn's Jim to review "The Killing Zone".

Yet for all the dumb errors and dreadful descriptions, it's clear that Hatfield was not entirely unskilled as a writer. He has dreamed up what appear at first glance to be some possibly quite exciting action scenes (although the dead hand of cliche is everywhere), and I'm sure there's the germ of a good story in "The Killing Zone" (although I can't be bothered to look for it).

This can't possibly have been his or anyone else's idea of a finished work. It reads like a first or second draft. How else to explain the almost indecent haste with which Hatfield covers the "book"'s inciting incident, the murder of an old face from the Fleming novels, which causes M to nudge Bond into action?

I'd like to know more about the nature and results of the scam that Hatfield is said to have penned "The Killing Zone" in the service of. Was his main purpose in writing it the possibility that certain doors would open for him if he were able to pass himself off as the current author of the James Bond books? (Not exactly a believable scenario these days, of course - how times have changed for the literary Bond, I remember when there would be an entire row of Gardners plus "Colonel Sun" in every bookshop in the world, when being writer-in-residence at Glidrose was only one step down from being the Poet Laureate, etc. etc.) Was Hatfield thought to have successfully obtained money and/or favours via this curious scheme?

#1 Cesari

#2 rafterman

#3 zencat

#4 Loomis

#5 Matt Helm