Author Jeffery Deaver on 007 - I can't describe the thrill
28-May-2010 • Literary
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The novel, dubbed Project X for now, will be published a year from today, marking Bond creator Ian Fleming's birthday.
Deaver, who has been hailed as 'the master of ticking-bomb suspense', has been selected to breathe fresh life into the super-spy by Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.
The American author, a Bond fan since childhood, has written 26 novels and sold more than 20 million books worldwide.
He has started work on the book and its real title will be revealed at a later date.
Deaver said: 'I can't describe the thrill I felt when first approached by Ian Fleming's estate to ask if I'd be interested in writing the next book in the James Bond series.
'I began reading them when I was about nine or 10, ignorant of the Cold War politics they explored but enthralled by their sense of adventure and derring-do.
'I continued to read and re-read them, which was fortunate because as a teen and adult I found, of course, nuances, that were invisible to a child.'
Bond first leapt into life in Fleming's Casino Royale, penned in 1952.
The spy, known for his masterful way of tackling baddies and wooing women, has become one of the world's best-known literary characters and a hugely successful film franchise.
More than 100 million Bond books have been sold around the world.
Deaver continued: 'The Bond books were important parts of my life...
'They appealed to me as wonderful stories but they also stood as singular examples of a thriller writer's craft.
'I learned, through osmosis as well as design, much technique from Mr Fleming's work: compactness, attention to detail, heroic though flawed characters, fast-pacing, concrete imagery and straightforward prose.'
Born near Chicago, Deaver is best known for his Kathryn Dance and Lincoln Rhyme books, notably The Bone Collector, which was turned into a film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.
He lives in North Carolina and has written short story collections and stand-alone novels including Garden Of Beasts and The Bodies Left Behind.
Before turning his hand to writing books full-time, Deaver was a journalist, like Fleming, and also a lawyer.
He started writing suspense novels on the long commute to and from his Wall Street office.
Deaver follows in the footsteps of Sebastian Faulks, who was picked to write a Bond novel marking the centenary of Fleming's birth.
But unlike Faulks's book, the new adventure will see the action unfold in the present day.
When Faulks's Devil May Care was published in May 2008, fans queued round the block to get their hands on a copy.
Writing as Fleming, Faulks said he copied the original books' sparse, journalistic style.
Faulks, known for historic novels Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, said he enjoyed writing it more than any other book he had written, but ruled out a second Bond novel.
The new novel will be published by Deaver's publishers, Hodder Stoughton in the UK and Simon Schuster in the US.
Deaver won the Crime Writers' Association's Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for his book Garden Of Beasts in 2004 - and spoke of his life-long admiration of Fleming's writing in his acceptance speech.
Corinne Turner, managing director of Ian Fleming Publications, was in the audience.
She said: 'I'd always enjoyed Jeffery Deaver's thrillers, but I particularly liked Garden Of Beasts. It demonstrated that he was not only a master of the contemporary American thriller but could also write compelling novels of period suspense within a European setting.
'I didn't know anything about the author himself and expected a fairly low-key response from him when he received our award.
'I was surprised and delighted when he spoke very fondly of Ian and about the influence that the Bond books had had on his own writing career.'
Deaver's latest Lincoln Rhyme thriller, The Burning Wire, will be published in the UK in July and a thriller titled Edge will follow in November.
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