New Interview With Jeffrey Deaver Reveals More About Next Bond Novel

The James Bond website Dr. Shatterhand's Botanical Garden has scored a major scoop: the first revealing interview with new 007 author Jeffrey Deaver! I say first revealing interview because there were a couple of fluff pieces done for UK radio in which the DJs failed to ask any interesting questions. Needless to say, Dr. Shatterhand does… and, surprisingly, Deaver answers them! Watch the video interview here to learn more about the contemporary setting (and slight changes made to accommodate it), supporting characters who might turn up, and more. I won't reveal too much about what's said, but I will say that (while it makes obvious sense for a contemporary story) I find the idea of a James Bond born in the early 1980s (too young to have even seen Octopussy!) a bit disconcerting--just because that makes 007 younger than me! Which is a weird feeling. The issue there, of course, is with me and not with James Bond.

As for a milieu of post-9/11 terrorism, well that's only to be expected. In the modern world, terrorism is the number one threat that spy agencies contend with. Of course it will be a concern, whether it drives the plot or merely comprises the background. It's the present-day equivalent of the Cold War that formed the backdrop (but not always main plotlines) for Ian Fleming's Bond novels.  Let me be clear: I hate terrorism and it scares the hell out of me and I wish it could just go away, but one side-effect of this horrible evil (as I just posted in a comment on the CBn Forums and will reprint here) has been to reinvigorate the spy genre in books and films and television. After the end of the Cold War, authors didn't really know what to do with spies. We got a few short-lived TV shows (like Sam Raimi's Spy Game) about rogue agents who were out of work and causing trouble after the end of the Cold War, but there really wasn't much out there. Even the Brosnan-era Bond movies felt like they were treading water, not really sure what to do with the character. And then suddenly spies had a clear purpose in the world again, a clear enemy. Alias, 24 and Doug Liman's The Bourne Identity all happened to come along in the year after 9/11, and frankly I think that their success can partially be attributed to people's sudden fear (similar to the fear they felt in the Cold War) and need for heroes of that sort, for secret protectors. None of those series were purposely tied into that kind of terrorism (although they all ended up incorporating it to some degree), but all filled the same void in the public psyche. Suddenly, audiences needed spies again. It's completely logical that both Daniel Craig's Bond and Jeffrey Deaver's would fit into this world.