The Facts Of Death - 1st Edition/1st Printing - Hardcover

Benson, Raymond

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340696419 ISBN 13: 9780340696415

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 1998

Synopsis

Someone is poisoning British soldiers in Cyprus; the same killer has murdered a British intelligence agent in Athens. James Bond himself barely escapes with his life....

But the secrets behind these and other deaths first start to come to light in Texas, where Bond goes in search of the assassin of M’s friend and lover. Fearful of an international scandal that could engulf both his service and his country, he learns instead of the existence of the Decada.

Held together by an archaic philosophy and their own bizarre rituals, the Decada’s fanatics have stockpiled a terrifying range of poisons and are willing to use them to further their insane ambitions for power and revenge.

Aided by beautiful, brave Greek intelligence agent Niki Mirakos, Bond puts himself into the firing line for a last-ditch attempt to stop the Decada before they unleash a horrifying weapon on their helpless prey.

About this title

About the Author

Raymond Benson is the author of The Facts of Death, Zero Minus Ten, High Time to Kill and the novelizations of Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough. He is a director of The Ian Fleming Foundation. Benson lives and works in the Chicago area.

From Kirkus Reviews

The fate of the world, and James Bond, are in capable hands in this second 007 adventure from Benson (Zero Minus Ten, 1997). Writing as both a disciple and defender of Western civilization's most enduring action hero, Benson, a director of the Ian Fleming Foundation and author of the fan bible, the James Bond Bedside Companion, attempts to meld Fleming's brooding, coolly cruel British knight with the dapper, quip-slinging techno-warrior of the Bond movies, with a few respectful bows to the superhuman stuntman Bond became when British thriller-factory John Gardner had an exclusive franchise on the series. All the canonical elements are in place--the Flemingesque fetish for brand names (were informed that Bond's crippled American sidekick, former CIA agent Felix Leiter, now zooms about in a high-speed Action Arrow motorized wheelchair), a demented, megalomaniacal father figure villain (Konstantine Romanos, an independently wealthy mathematics professor who thinks he's the reincarnation of Pythagoras), the ultimate car (a self-driving Jaguar XK8 with more gadgets than the Batmobile but, alas, no ejection seat), the corny sex jokes (Bond seduces the statuesque female director of a sperm bank who extracts her sample from 007 as passionately as possible), a superbly furnished techno-fortress with a hidden superweapon, and, most infamously, a harem of beautiful, accomplished women, some of whom are bisexual, all of whom cant resist Bond's darkly handsome charms. The plot, meanwhile, is standard Bond, with Romanos using designer weaponry to kill numerous innocent people, with a purloined Pershing missile being readied for launch. Between the requisite scenes of sex, violence, and destruction, Benson's Bond occasionally succumbs to existential gloom, but never fails to do the right thing for Queen and country. A postmodern treat for fans and newcomers that lovingly, if not ironically, duplicates a formula so familiar that originality would be sacrilege. (First serial rights to Playboy) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0340696419
• ISBN 13: 9780340696415
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 284