‘The crocodile suddenly spins in the water, thrashing and jerking. Water sloshes over the side, carrying a tide of dead flies to her feet as she gets ready to stand – or run, whether from the crocodile or the man in the suit, she’s not sure.’
a spy like me
Twice Upon A Spy as author Kim Sherwood, Ian Fleming Publications and Harper Collins pull back the bedsheets on the second chapter in the Double O trilogy novel, A Spy Like Me.
Kim Sherwood’s Double or Nothing (2022) was a departure for the literary 007. The first part of the Double O trilogy, this was the first contemporary adventure to mark that new and coy move to ensure the works, titles and legacy of Fleming are handed onto future generations and new readers with style, inclusivity and an intentionally younger verve.
Set in a modern-day backdrop, Double or Nothing and the Double O trilogy illuminates the world of the Double O section. It suggests that the Bond literary franchise is – to use modern parlance – extending its universe along the lines of Marvel and DC.
Born in London’s Camden in 1989, Sherwood was six when that all-important Bond bullet vitally recalibrated 007 for a new era and new audiences. She also had been exposed to the world of Bond even before that. Her grandfather was the actor George Baker. He famously and brilliantly was not only once considered for the Bond role by Fleming, stars as a NASA engineer in You Only Live Twice (1967), he voices and stars opposite George Lazenby’s Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and returned to play Admiral Benson in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).
It was when George Baker passed away in 2011 and Sherwood started talking to her grandmother about the Holocaust that she was eventually compelled to write her 2018 work, Testament. The book about loss, secrets and family pride was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2019.
TWICE UPON A SPY
The middle act of the DOUBLE O trilogy, A Spy Like Me is a labyrinthine and bloody transfusion of universally exported agents, prescient intrigue and the melancholy of espionage. Lent great returning gravitas from at least two Bond world legends, Sherwood’s latest is a dark caper that avoids terrorist porn cliches to stitch an elaborate spy world where older generations and vulnerable people matter, where architecture and time matter, where home matters, where hope matters, and where 007 matters.
Sherwood is a mixologist – deftly blending the familiar minutiae of 007 from the written page and the big screen. This is a world of flinty orphans, Shrublands, where minnows pretend to be whales, where ladies and their property is suddenly familiar, where establishing shots of Lewis Gilbert Bond movies are not forgotten, where humans forever joust with principles, where the plane trees of Wellington Square remember a lost agent, where Bond clones in high street brands are merely cosplayer wannabes, and the elder statesmen and women of Bond’s orbit are judge, jury and jail. Astutely framed in a now world of culture wars, homegrown extremists, ancient antiquities, the perils of red-meat nationalism and pop-culture nods (Fleming’s own inclusion in the Doctor Who world comes full circle), A Spy Like Me is also a great testament to the world Ian Fleming left behind and the future worlds he always warned of.
mark o’connell
‘Anytime as a woman you stick your head over the parapet in a male-dominated field sadly that’s what you get. It was sobering at points, seeing just how scared people seemed about the idea of a female Double-O or a gay Double-O.’
kim sherwood
A guy like me talks A Spy Like Me with author Kim Sherwood. We talk about the universally exported James Bond universe, the literary legacy of Ian Fleming, the role of women in the Bond world, her love of horology and architecture, the distractions of the culture wars, where the real threats and dangers are in the world and what she has learnt about both the 007 and Fleming world…
