K1Bond007.com » Interview with Sebastian Faulks at the Times Online

The Times gets all the good stuff. Today they published an interview with Faulks on the subject of Devil May Care. There’s a lot of interesting bits throughout. Some of it old that we’ve seen before, some it new. If you read the extract that was published by the Times then you’ll know the villain like many of Fleming’s villains has a physical deformity, which I won’t ruin for you guys out there saving yourself for the big day. But no matter how far-fetched you may feel it is, according to the interview, Faulks’ idea originated from “his schoolboy memories and his father’s talk of a throwback freakishness that afflicted a fellow undergraduate.”

Other points of interest include how Faulks came to the idea of using drugs, specifically opium, as a main plot of the story. The use of France in the opening of the book and the use of the Middle East. Reading that I wonder if Faulks is aware or perhaps even read (at least in part) Fleming’s typescript: State of Excitement: Impressions of Kuwait which was never published.

Something of a semi-review and talk of a follow-up close the interview:

Quick-witted as well as fast-paced, the resulting book blends high-octane thrills with playful allusiveness. (There’s an adroit handling of Bond’s “shaken not stirred” martini preferences, and a wonderfully duplicitous Bond girl.) Will Faulks write another 007 sequel? It seems unlikely. He is, he says, going back to work next month on his novel-in-progress about contemporary Britain. Maybe, he suggests, the Fleming estate should invite a series of other novelists to do one-off Bond continuations. If so, possible contenders will find that Devil May Care has set the bar challengingly high.

Of course never say never, and remember that Faulks did originally turn down doing this one (saying not likely) so who knows. I do, however, like the idea of getting other novelists (preferably well-known) to continue what Faulks has started. That sounds interesting to me. Imagine in maybe 2010 another 1960s Bond, but this time written by Lee Child or Ken Follett (for example, I advocate no particular author at this time). You never know.