Where next for Horowitz’s Bond?

Following on from the success of his first Bond novel Trigger Mortis, Ian Fleming Publications has announced that Anthony Horowitz will write a second 007 book to be published in spring 2018.

Trigger Mortis is a period Bond novel and is set immediately following the events of Thunderball.  It was generally well received by both critics and Bond fans due to a combination of a strong story and the writing remaining faithful to the original Fleming.  The book features locations including London, the Nurburgring racetrack in Germany plus Florida and New York in the United States.  It included material from a story called Murder on Wheels, part of an intended Bond television series written by Fleming.

It seems that the new novel will again be a period piece and Horowitz has hinted that he is has been thinking about placing it around the time of Casino Royale.  This got me thinking where it would be good to see Bond visit next.

Winning the 00 number
In Casino Royale, Bond tells how he was awarded the 00 number after killing a Japanese cypher expert in New York and a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm.  Again linking one of these stories, perhaps as a prologue to the novel, would be a nice nod to Fleming’s original books.  Mentioned in Thunderball,  The Spy Who Loved Me and From Russia With Love (and also being a city that I visit regularly), Stockholm is surely ripe for inclusion.

Hong Kong
A colony (later dependent territory) from 1841 to 1997, Hong Kong was a major strategic location of the British Empire/Commonwealth.  The territory has been used in various Bond continuation novels set in more modern times but a 1950’s Hong Kong, possibly featuring Dickson from Goldfinger would be an interesting stamp in Bond’s passport from the mid 1950s.

An African Adventure
Despite the historical ties between many African countries and Britain, Fleming only sent Bond to Africa on two occasions.  At the end of Diamonds Are Forever he closes the diamond smuggling pipleline in Sierra Leone and the short story The Hildebrand Rarity is located in the Seychelles.

We can rule out Bond being involved in the Suez crisis (“one of the most pitiful bungles in the history of the world”) as this was at the same time as the Hungarian uprising where he was on an operation at the time.  However there are many exotic locations in Africa that Bond could visit such as Algiers or Dar es Salaam.

You can just imagine Bond being sent by M to some remote colonial outpost where unbeknown to the outside world, there is a megalomaniac villain up to his nefarious tricks…


Behind the Iron Curtain?
Despite all of Bond’s many trips, Fleming never sent him to one of the old Warsaw Pact counties.  In Moonraker he mentions previously being attached to the British Embassy in Moscow and in Thunderball Bond recalls a trip on the Arlberg Express which mainly ran from Budapest to Paris.  Weaving one of these two events into the new book would interesting and add something more to Bond's backstory.

Alternatively an undercover trip to Warsaw, Prague or East Berlin could be another adventure for 007 which would presumably include an exciting escape over the frontier (Fleming always seems to use this word rather than “border”).  Personally, I would love to see Bond operating undercover in Eastern Europe.

Of course all of this is pure speculation, I guess we will have to wait until 2018 before we find out what Anthony Horowitz has up his sleeve.