Customer Reviews
Bad binding 
2008-07-13
I liked the story it self but the book started coming apart in 3 sections until I had a cover and 3 lose sections of the text. Not a very enjoyable way to read a book.
What a disapointment! 
2008-06-09
As a parent of a child who loves to read it is often a struggle to find one or two novels a week for him to read. I would not recommend this book at all.
I enjoyed the first two books in this series. Although they were scary and involved violent death, I felt they were border line OK for my son who is 8 to read, and they were James Bond which I love. I did not want him to read this one, and after he started the first chapter he was not interested. This is not a book for younger kids.
This book is as violent as any adult written thriller, but lacked sexual content. I was very disappointed in the plot, which is just one chase after another. I would like to ask the author WHAT HAPPENED???
Ian Fleming Reborn and Better Than Ever 
2008-05-04
I won't go into plot details as this has excellently been done by John Cox in the first review for this book. Actaully I agree with all of his comments and wish I had gotten mine in first. As a Bond collector and fan, since the late fifties, of all things relating to 007 I can be very picky. I cannot be in the case of Charlie Higson and his third venture into the young Bond. Each one gets better and in each you see the beginnings of various things that the older and more mature James Bond will have as part of his personna. And thank you Mr. Cox for indicating that there will be at least two more in the series. Actually, going year by year until Fleming's first book there could be another fifteen or more.
I'd rather dwell on why I consider the writing of these books so superior. While I loved John Gardner, who actually wrote more Bond books than Fleming, there was still a special flavor missing. Gardner is a brilliant writer and his other fiction, whether spy or mystery, was and remains superior to his Bond work and anything put out by Ian Fleming himself. Others have tried to write Bond novels and have really missed the mark when it came to that flavor thing as I call it.
What made James Bond stand out in the books, in my own mind, was a special touch. Something that only Ian Fleming seemed to be able to do and even the best of the Bond films could never perfectly capture. Yes, I have my favorites among the films, but that is not what this is about. The Fleming books are books I could read over and over and still find something new. Not great fiction, but still unique in its own way.
Magically Charlie Higson has found that flavor and I have no doubt that were Ian Fleming alive he would greatly approve of Higson's handling of the young James Bond. Higson has obviously taken great care in studying Fleming's Bond and has turned the hints about 007's past into a stories that explain all about Bond as a man. As I said above, I eagerly await the next one like I used to await the Fleming books.
Hey Amazon. Mr. Cox mentioned a 5th book! How come you aren't advertising the 4th one? Mr. Cox apparently has his finger on the pulse of what Charlie Higson is doing. PLEASE share with us Mr. Cox or Amazon.
Young Bond gets smart 2008-04-22
Charlie Higson's Double or Die is the pivot on which the Young Bond series turns. Double or Die both pulls from past books and points to the future. Where SilverFin infused Bond with his fearless instinct and Blood Fever developed his brawn, Double or Die works his mind (and ours).
Thematically, Double or Die is an adventure of the mind. Bond and his band of friends must decrypt puzzles and clues contained within a mysterious cipher sent by a kidnapped professor. Higson plays the motif throughout as references to skulls and the brain abound. Where Blood Fever was bright and expansive, Double or Die is dark and contained. While this may make it a lesser Bondian adventure for some, the smaller scale allows Higson to work in greater texture and detail, making Double or Die the most vivid and visual of all the Young Bond novels to date. It's also the Young Bond novel that showcases its 1930s setting the best as Higson peppers the book with delightful period slang and long forgotten brand names.
The body count in Double or Die is lower than Blood Fever, but Higson doesn't skimp on the gore, especially during the terrific climax on the London Docklands and inside an abandon pneumatic railway (wonderful Bondian locations both). The fact that the henchmen comes away from each encounter with Young Bond missing another body part is grisly good fun. Higson adds a surprising postscript to this book that is unlike anything that has yet appeared in a Young Bond novel. I will leave it to the reader to discover it, and decide whether it belongs in the Young Bond universe.
Absence of a Bond Girl (or any female for that matter) is missed during the first two thirds of the book, but the arrival of the perfectly named Kelly Kelly and her "Monstrous Regiment" (a sort of cockney street urchin version of Pussy Galore's Flying Circus) is a highlight of the final third. Higson again toys with romance, but one gets a sense he's nervous about scaring off his youngest male readers. At the risk of getting a schoolyard beating, I admit that I'm looking forward to the "love story" Higson promises will feature in his fifth Young Bond novel, By Royal Command (due for release in the UK in September).
The measure of any James Bond continuation novel, and novelist, is how they compare with Fleming. Charlie Higson matched Fleming with the excellent Blood Fever. Now, with the complex and thrilling Double or Die, Higson appears to be steering the Young Bond series toward even higher literary achievement.
