Bond. James Bond. In the 007 Case Files, join me as I read all of the James Bond books, encompassing Ian Fleming and beyond. For Your Eyes Only: there’s spoilers ahead.
As we approach the end of the Raymond Benson era of Bond, the Bond continuation author is firmly looking backwards at the history of the character. Pulling on threads woven as far back as Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice, he allows 007 to put the recent unpleasantness of The Union Trilogy behind him for a ripping thriller.
Benson opens on a flight from Japan to the UK, where a young woman dies of a mysterious illness similar to West Nile Virus. She’s the daughter of a prominent businessman, and her entire family has died of the same illness – except for one estranged daughter, the runaway Mayumi.
With the pending G8 Summit in Tokyo, old ally Tiger Tanaka is put in charge of protecting the visiting world leaders and requests Bond’s help. While in Japan, Bond pursues leads on the virus case and searches for Mayumi. The multiple threads lead him back to Goro Yoshida, the terrorist he was investigating in Never Dream of Dying.
While the 2002 title evokes a classic Fleming outing, its Japanese setting and the return of Tanaka immediately recall You Only Live Twice. Benson updates those 1964 motifs with his own stylistic flair, but in a vastly different world from the one Fleming was writing in. Although Benson had written the novel earlier, by the time of its release, the post-9/11 landscape had reshaped global anxieties. He wasn’t just blending a post-Cold War world shaped by bioterrorism and shifting power dynamics—he was meeting an audience constantly told that the ideological concept of ‘terror’ itself was the threat, a stark contrast to Bond’s traditional model of villains as singular, tangible figures.
“All the women whom he had loved had come to a bad end. Vesper, Tracy, Kissy…was this the price he has to pay for the lives he had taken throughout his career?“
Japan has long had a deep affection for Bond. After Benson mentioned the island of Naoshima in this book, locals even opened a 007 museum in hopes of attracting Hollywood’s attention as a filming location. Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out, and the museum eventually closed. Still, Benson’s detailed depictions of Japan make it clear the admiration goes both ways—from his fascination with Yukio Mishima to his references to the Ainu, Japan’s First Nations people. That said, Benson’s focus on ceremony, the yakuza, and the superficiality of women’s appearances often veers into (and sometimes crosses into) exoticism and Western othering. Even so, it’s a vast improvement over Fleming’s take.
Another strange avenue Benson ventures down is the character of Junji Kon, one of Yoshida’s henchmen, described as a “kappa-like” dwarf who viciously ambushes our heroes from hidden vantage points. A kappa is a reptilian kami, one of the supernatural entities in Japanese folklore. On one level, this demonstrates Benson’s efforts to weave his research into the story, but it also perpetuates Fleming’s tradition of minions defined by grotesqueries and caricature.
Behind the scenes, things weren’t as smooth. In a frank interview with the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW), Benson recalled feeling burned out by the time he reached this book—largely as a result of online ‘fan’ criticism, complaints to the publisher, and even death threats. While he didn’t know it would be his last Bond novel at the time, the experience clearly took a toll. Toxic fandom is why we can’t have nice things, after all. “Of all my Bond novels, it’s my least favorite, but there are a number of people who like it a lot,” he admitted. Having spent time reading through them all, I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Benson: this one is a lot of fun.
With this book, the Benson era effectively comes to a close. He would go on to write one final Bond entry—the novelisation of Die Another Day—though an unpublished short story, The Heart of Erzulie, is known to exist. While his contributions may not have been widely acknowledged at the time, Benson’s Bond legacy is significant. From his non-fiction work The James Bond Bedside Companion to his six original novels, three novelisations, and handful of short stories, he kept Bond alive and engaging during an era when the films were veering into outright absurdity. By the time the next wave of continuation authors arrived, the Bond landscape had shifted considerably.
James Bond will return…in Devil May Care.
