007 Goes Rogue

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/books/review/007-goes-rogue.html

Version 0 of 1.

William Boyd, who reviews Henning Mankell’s latest novel in this issue, was a teenager when he first read Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. “The thrill of reading them was almost illicit — they seemed so glamorous and daring,” he told me in an e-mail interview. “The feeling I experienced was that you were being given access to a world known and enjoyed by a very, very few. The ‘members only’ sign had been removed.”

Boyd will join an even more exclusive club in October, with the publication of “Solo,” his own novel starring 007. Glamour and gadgets aside, it’s Bond’s character that most interests Boyd, who calls the literary secret agent “a far more complex, nuanced and intriguing figure than his celluloid counterpart.”

The plot of “Solo” is, appropriately, “very top secret,” according to Boyd. We do know it’s set in 1969, when Bond is 45, and includes a “completely unauthorized” and vengeful trip to the United States after a mission in Africa goes awry. Asked to share at least one more detail, Boyd mentioned that Fleming had his hero living in a flat just a few hundred yards from Boyd’s home in Wellington Square, in the Chelsea section of London. “It would therefore be very surprising if, in my own Bond novel, there wasn’t a fair bit about living in Chelsea in 1969, wouldn’t you say?”

To Sue a Representative

An incident “shaping up to be one of the most disturbing chapters in American letters” is the subject of a report in the August issue of Vanity Fair. According to the reporter Mark Seal, in May, Harper Lee, 87, sued her former agent, Samuel Pinkus, contending he had improperly collected royalties from “To Kill a Mockingbird” since 2007. The suit says Pinkus “knew that Harper Lee and her sister (and lawyer) relied on and trusted him,” and that he “abused that trust and took advantage of Harper Lee’s physical condition” when he had her transfer the copyright of the book to him. Seal’s account describes Lee’s deteriorating condition in heartbreaking detail. It also opens with a startling image of the revered author, several years ago, playing slot machines “for hours” in her wheelchair at a “gaudy” casino in southern Alabama. Lee got the copyright back earlier this year, but the lawsuit continues.