Horowitz completes his James Bond trilogy--begun in Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018)--by providing what would be the nonpareil British spy's final adventure if only all those other earlier scribes hadn't preceded him at the feast. Brought back home in 1964 after executing Francisco Scaramanga in Jamaica in order to fake the assassination of M, his longtime superior in the Secret Intelligence Service, Bond performs so well that everyone who knows the actual position of Adm. Sir Miles Messervy--perhaps 50 people all told--is fooled into thinking that he's dead. This fraud only lays the groundwork for Bond's real job: to continue pretending that he remains indoctrinated by the Soviets aligned with Scaramanga in order to infiltrate the ranks of Stalnaya Ruka, a cabal of officers in the USSR who are clearly up to no good. Accordingly, he lets himself be abducted out from under the English officers who clearly hate him for killing Sir Miles, though this deception is trickier than it looks. Whisked off to Leningrad, he's drugged and interrogated by his old nemesis Col. Boris, who's far from convinced that Bond has set queen and country aside for the Soviet Union. The colonel assigns clinical psychiatrist Katya Leonova to stick close to Bond, becoming his friend, his confidante, and, if necessary, his lover. From this point on the plot proceeds in a much straighter line, though Horowitz can't resist several additional twists, the most notable of them the identity of the target Bond's new masters send him to East Berlin to eliminate. Not nearly as ingenious as Horowitz's meta-whodunits but well above average among post--Ian Fleming Bonds. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Horowitz's third James Bond novel, after Trigger Mortis (2015) and Forever and a Day (2018), is exactly what 007's fans deserve. Bond, deprogrammed after the Russians brainwashed him to assassinate the head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (see 1965's The Man with the Golden Gun, to which this is a direct sequel), is sent back to Russia to infiltrate a new security agency, Steel Hand, and find out all he can about an operation "that would completely smash the balance of power between East and West." But can he convince the Russians he still belongs to them? Bond's life depends on the answer to that question. If Horowitz was tempted to give us a revisionist Bond, to bring him in line with modern-day sensibilities, he resisted: Bond is just like we remember him, just like Fleming wrote him. The story could have come out of the Ian Fleming playbook, too: a nasty villain, plenty of action, and a sly sense of humor. This would make an excellent Sean Connery Bond movie, if such a thing were still possible.

Bestseller Horowitz's solid third James Bond novel (after 2018's Forever and a Day) picks up after the final Ian Fleming novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, in which the Russians captured Bond, brainwashed him, and programmed him to kill M, the head of the British secret service. The British stage M's funeral and imprison Bond to fool the Russians into believing Bond succeeded in the assassination as part of a plot to get 007 into Russia to discover what its intelligence organizations are planning. The Russians oblige by snatching Bond from police custody and sending him to Leningrad, where he falls under the "care" of Colonel Boris, a mind control expert, and Katya Leonova, an icy, Communist technocrat. The Russians have a high-profile mission for Bond, which leads to a genuinely thrilling climax, though readers should be prepared for a somewhat predictable plot and an abrupt ending. Horowitz displays a thorough knowledge of Bondean tropes, captures the dreariness of Khrushchev-era Russia, and deepens 007 by allowing him a certain ambiguity about his profession. This heartfelt homage is sure to please fans of the original Bond books. Agent: Jonathan Lloyd, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (May)