Sebastian Faulks has some licence to write Bond novels

The Birdsong author may have surprised many as the choice to write a new 007 novel - but he's far from being the least likely candidate, writes Maxim Jakubowski for The Guardian.

Like all well-guarded secrets the news had begun to leak across the Internet late last week and the James Bond fan site MI6 had actually uncovered Sebastian Faulks as the man who is now taking over the mantle of the Bond novels. This has now been officially confirmed by the Ian Fleming estate.

In the world of espionage, it's notoriously difficult to keep a lid on things, and the revelation will end a year of speculation during which time all manner of rumours had been shaking and stirring Bond aficionados: Allegedly Lee Child had turned the gig down. Other supposed candidates included John Le Carré and Frederick Forsyth. Even bemused Observer crime critic Peter Guttridge was at one stage named as principal suspect, which provided him with a great party conversation piece, given that his own novels usually feature a yoga-practising vegetarian sleuth - a polar opposite of the wonderfully politically incorrect James Bond.

Even though the shadowy folks of the thriller world will be taken aback by the choice of Faulks, it should be noted that his latest novel Engleby published in May of this year does have a mystery element and, more importantly that he published Pistache in 2006, a collection of short literary parodies including a witty piece where Ian Fleming takes James Bond shopping. He has also reviewed, often negatively, Bond films in newspapers. So the man has form!

Historically, the stable of Bond writers has of course already included Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Raymond Benson and more recently Charlie Higson with his Young Bond novels, so keeping the 007 flame alive has been a minor industry in its own right.

Faulks's novel, Devil May Care, reputedly set in 1967 and featuring an ageing but "highly sexed" James Bond will no doubt prove the commercial highlight of the Ian Fleming centenary celebrations in May of next year. No doubt some fans will cry heresy, but Bond is such an archetypal hero-cum-loveable rogue that it just wasn't possible to let him die out altogether. After all, so many screen actors have already embodied him that a new writer taking over the reins should not be objectionable. And an author with a good track record at evoking the nearby past, at that.

Sherlock Holmes has lived, again and again, so why not Bond?

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