Double or Nothing

​Author: Kim Sherwood
Publisher: Harper Collins
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
I’m not proud of this, but I surrendered. I gave up on Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood. Not because it’s not a good book, but because it’s just not moi. Helen Moffett recently asked ‘What makes a person pick up a book?’ I ask ‘What makes a person put down a book?’ In this instance, I am simply not sufficient, not sufficient of a James Bond devotee. Bit of a wimp actually. 

Don’t get me wrong – loved the movies, and all the Bond boys – Connery, Lazenby, Brosnan, Dalton, Moore, Craig (in whatever order). I can process the visuals, but not the words. The thrill just escapes me…’Three fingers on the grip, thumb on the barrel, finger at the trigger. His heart was haring. “It’s my first war”’. He tried a smile. “I haven’t developed a defense against my humanity yet.’” I’m out. I tried again, ‘Bashir kicked out, aiming for the colonel’s groin. The colonel caught his ankle, and hurled him against the wall…he was trying to shift his arms when the colonel stamped on Bashir’s solar plexus, with all the pressure he’d give a cockroach.’ Ouch. Lost me.
So around Chapter 7, The Sweet Science of Bruising – I threw in the towel. Is it because it’s a boy book, I asked myself. Hmm – sexist stereotyping. Or is it because I don’t, don’t want to understand? Hmm – closed mind. Sore? Yup.  
But before the bruising faded, I thought I’d just check the acknowledgements. Now there’s a story! Kim Sherwood thanks her action advisor, medical advisor, the man who advised on science and whisky, the other man who remembered the code, yet another whose mind could power a quantum computer...the list goes on. But wait, there’s more. Kim Sherwood is 34 years old. Born 1989. Ian Fleming’s Casino Royal, the first Bond book, came out in 1953. She wasn’t even a twinkle. So how did a young thing like Ms Sherwood get to be commissioned by the Ian Fleming Estate (nog) to write a trilogy to ‘expand the world of James Bond’ joining the men’s club of Bond-writers that includes Kingsley Amis, Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd?
Well apparently, James Bond has been “one of the enduring loves of my life since I first watched Pierce Brosnan dive from the dam in GoldenEye. As a teenager”, she says, “I chose Fleming when my English teacher asked us to write about an author we admired – I still have the school report.” So there you have it – staying power and raw grit admiration.  I aspire.
But wait again, because there’s even more. Her next book, Wild and True Relation, second in the Bond-expanding trilogy with a ‘new raft of Double-O agents for the 21st century’ has been lauded by the late Hilary Mantel as ‘a novel as remarkable for the vigour of the storytelling as for its literary ambition. Kim Sherwood is a writer of capacity, potency and sophistication.’ Can’t argue with that.