I thought reading a James Bond spy thriller might be an escape from incessant internet doom scrolling and the St. Louis summer heat. I can vaguely recall my dad reading Ian Fleming in the 1950s and the avalanche of 007 films. How bad could it be? Horowitz, a prolific author, apparently jumped on the Bond cash cow, making an agreement with the Fleming estate to continue the spy series. In this re-mix nearly all the Bond cliches are present -- misogyny, gratuitous violence and impossible feats of daring-do. This genre reflected cold-war realpolitik in the early 1950s, but now it is just stale and lifeless -- this puerile fiction does not age well. Perhaps Horowitz did not see the satirical 1999 movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
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