The name is Bond, James Bond...

Today is a momentous day for us here at Penguin Towers - today we announce to the world that BOND IS BACK.

It's been a closely guarded secret here for a little while, but thankfully the time has come that we can reveal to all that in May 2008, Penguin UK will be publishing the next literary instalment in the glorious tradition of Ian Fleming's most famous double 0 agent.

And so, we bring you DEVIL MAY CARE - the new James Bond novel. Most excitingly of all - I can tell you now that the author of this next instalment is one of the true greats of British writing ... Sebastian Faulks...

Famed for his "French Trilogy" (The Girl at the Lion D'Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray), and more recently for Human Traces and Engleby - Sebastian has for the last twenty years reached out to readers with his masterful prose, his meticulous eye for detail and setting, and his exceptional ability to make his characters transcend the limits of the page. And now he is applying his style and skill to writing the next chapter in the life of our favourite spy - Bond, James Bond.

Picking up exactly where Fleming left off, DEVIL MAY CARE is set during the height of the Cold War, the action played out in exotic locations across the world - and it seems Sebastian very much enjoyed getting into the swing of things:

“In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write a thousand words in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another thousand words in late afternoon, then more Martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkelling.”

I can't reveal too much about the book at this stage - you'll have to wait until next May I'm afraid - but believe me - it really will be worth it. DEVIL MAY CARE has everything one could possibly ask from a James Bond novel, everything one could possibly ask from Sebastian Faulks' writing, and most of all, it's a bloody good thriller. I promise you all - you're in for a real treat.

For more information - please visit www.Penguin007.com

Alex Clarke - Senior Editor

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Comments

[roger]

Good luck to Sebastian Faulks and Penguin! By the way, my book, A GENTLE AXE, features a classic character from someone else's work - Porfiry Petrovich from Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, so I'm all in favour of this sort of thing.

Roger aka RN

"Lush, and exceptionally compelling, but take your time - R.N. Morris's The Gentle Axe has a vast depth of Russian soul; mysterious, compassionate, and utterly irresistible." Alan Furst.

"English writer R. N. Morris has produced perhaps the most audacious police-inspector novel of the season with "The Gentle Axe."....The tale hums along with controlled excitement, as if written by a Russian minimalist and rendered by a fine translator. The psychological and spiritual themes seem worthy of Dostoyevsky; there are traces of Gogol and Gorky, too. Such an accomplished book transcends pastiche." The Wall Street Journal.