With A View to a Mind to a Kill*
Review of the Harper hardcover edition (May 24, 2022)

With a Mind to Kill (WaMtK) is Anthony Horowitz's final book in his James Bond trilogy which was commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate. It follows a mid-career Bond in Trigger Mortis (2015) and a pre-007 Bond in Forever and a Day (2018). In terms of chronology, the latter is a prequel to Fleming's original Casino Royale (James Bond #1 - 1953) and the former follows after Goldfinger (James Bond #7 - 1959).

WaMtK is a sequel to Fleming's final original novel The Man With the Golden Gun (James Bond #13 - 1965) and can also be read as an imagined end to the canon. That is the reason for my Ambiguous Ending Alert™, about which it would be a spoiler to say anything more.

I have mostly enjoyed the other Horowitz novels that I've read, especially the meta-fictions in the Hawthorne/Horowitz series and the Sherlock Holmes pastiches. WaMtK was underwhelming though and it felt very patched together. The plot has Bond returned from his duel with Scaramanga and immediately sent on to Russia pretending to still be brainwashed. He is meant to uncover the current plot of a SMERSH successor group: Стальная рука (Russian: Stalnaya Ruka [Steel Hand]). It logically continued the brainwashing theme of The Man With the Gold Gun, but that became pretty tiresome when the only 'action' for half the book consists of torture, both mental and physical.

When the plot gets going it consists of steals from From Russia With Love (James Bond #5 - 1957) (including SMERSH type thugs & assassins, the conflicted Russian femme fatale and a train ride) and then even from other authors such as Len Deighton's The Ipcress File (1962) (the Russian brainwashing techniques), Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate (1959) (the unknowing, brainwashed assassin) and Le Carre's The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963) (the doomed and cynical spy). After the final reveal, it pretty much fizzles out.

So it was a downbeat end for the Horowitz Bond trilogy, maybe even qualifying for an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert™. I am rather more hopeful for the new Kim Sherwood Double-00 trilogy which started off with Double or Nothing (September 2022) [4 **** stars] even if it is set up as an intentional icon-breaker.

Trivia and Links
* My title lede is a muddled joke due to my constant difficulty in remembering the title of this book. I kept mixing it up with the Roger Moore as James Bond 007 movie A View to a Kill (1985). Although that movie borrowed its title from Ian Fleming's From a View to a Kill - a James Bond Short Story (1960), the movie screenplay had a completely different plot. ( )

period Bond, a credible Cold War thriller ( )

Follows on from one of the original James Bond novels. Horowitz has done a good job imitating Fleming's style and his characters are right out of those Cold War novels, especially the psychologist cum femme fatale, Katya. Not great literature but enjoyable and devoured quickly. This would certainly make a much better movie than execrable last few not based on the Fleming novels. ( )

With A Mind To Kill (2022) (Bond extended series #49) by Anthony Horowitz. This is the final book in the Bond Trilogy by Horowitz. The others are Trigger Mortis and Forever And A Day and they included material originally written by Ian Fleming for a Bond television program that never materialized. This third outing does not include any material from Fleming, but no matter, this is great just the same.
Bond is back after the events recorded in The Man With The Golden Gun and M has a new mission that only Bond can deal with. At the start of the last book, Bond had returned to England after being presumed dead while dealing with things in Japan. (Read both You Only Live Twice and The Man with The Golden Gun to be fully caught up. And what ever you do, do not rely on the movies as a short cut to understanding them. You might get away with it in the case of You Only Live Twice but Golden Gun are very different stories.
M is dead, Bond managed to kill him but couldn’t escape capture. Now the same team of evil Russians want him back to do another, more difficult job
Bond goes along, knowing that every step he takes could lead to instant death. But he has no idea what the mission is to be until the final, ultimate stage of the story.
The plot is twisty and devious enough to have been penned by Fleming, but the ease and style are pure Horowitz. This is a great addition to any Bond collection and I love the way the Horowitz books flesh out the Bond sage, not merely add an addendum to it. ( )

In his first two Bond continuation novels Horowitz covered 007’s early and mid-career. In this, the final part of his trilogy, he examines the man heading towards the culmination of his days in the secret service.

Once again Horowitz delivers a strong addition to the Bond chronology, with this being the strongest of his three books. If you know your Bond there is a lot to enjoy, and digest here. But you don’t need to be steeped in 007 lore to be drawn into this tense, dark, nourish sixties cold-war spy thriller.

And the ending is just perfect… ( )