written in the half-century since his death.

This is something of a pity. While I haven't read, nor do I plan on reading, any of the newer pseudo-Flemings, I have read some of the originals. Ian Fleming was a master prose writer, as was his now largely forgotten brother Peter.

Ian Fleming isn't the only one to get the post-mortem ghost-writer treatment. The same has been done to Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. Back in the early 1990s, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind was mated with a much hyped sequel, Scarlett. I think the two-time Bond actor Timothy Dalton was in the TV film version. I'd look it up on IMDB but I doubt anyone cares. These are examples of marketing going to war with art. A fair fightit is not.

As if having an appropriately gay friend wasn't modern enough, James Bond has in this new novel also acquired a live-in girlfriend. In the early Connery films, Bond was paired with a girlfriend named Sylvia Trench. You can see her at the very beginning of Dr No and From Russia With Love. The character was dropped from the later films.

Since no one remembers Sylvia Trench, in the new novel Bond is instead being paired with no less a Bond girl -- sorry Bond woman -- than Pussy Galore.

Now imagine living with a woman like Pussy Galore. Heck, imagine living with the actress who immortalized her, Honor Blackman. You're thinking action, adventure and wild nights of passion! And you'd be wrong:

Trigger Mortis sees the new couple living