James Bond: The Union Trilogy: Three 007 Novels: High Time to Kill, Doubleshot, Never Dream of Dying (Hardcover)

Raymond Benson brings us an updated 007 that offers more depth than the cardboard action figure seen in many of the movies. In The Union Trilogy, we find a James Bond with fears, vulnerabilities, depression and passions that allow us to care about the character himself, and not just about what he does next. Benson also delivers the familiar as well: Our favorite secret agent finds himself scaling new heights of intrigue (the Himalayan Mt. Kangch) and we get a double shot of bond girls. The first of the three novels in the Trilogy, High Time to Kill, Benson cites as his personal favorite. That is a significant endorsement from Benson, the person most consider the leading Bond expert in the world (author of the The James Bond Bedside Companion). I personally enjoyed Benson's The Man With a Red Tattoo, a continuation of Fleming's You Only Live Twice story. Here again, The Union Trilogy delivers because it includes for the first time in English, the short story, Blast From the Past. Blast ties up ends left dangling in Twice. The complexity we see portrayed on the screen by Daniel Craig's 007 owes much to the Benson Bond and the novels included with the Trilogy.

This year saw the release of new adult Bond novel, Devil May Care, by the celebrated novelist Sebastian Faulks, and the press frequently said it was the first James Bond novel since Ian Fleming. Not true. There have be over a dozen "continuation novels", including six books by Raymond Benson (author of the The James Bond Bedside Companion). All of Benson's Bond novels are terrific 007 adventures (all set in present day), and he really hit his stride with these three books, which are loosely connected and form a "trilogy" within his series (similar to Fleming's "Blofeld Trilogy"). High Time To Kill is, IMO, one of the very best James Bond novels ever written, taking Bond to Tibet for a high altitude mountaineering adventure. Doubleshot is a bold and experimental Bond novel which finds Bond mentally impaired (due to injuries in the last book) to the point of fearing he may be going insane. Never Dream of Dying is a fantastic book with Raymond's best female character and relationship. With Benson's Bond novels now all out of print, it's great to have these novels collected. For those who read Devil May Care and are craving more post Fleming 007, this is the book for you. But what's most exciting about this release for me is that it includes the full and uncut version of "Blast From The Past," Benson's first James Bond short story. This story was only ever published in Playboy, and this full version has never before been published in English. Here's hoping Benson's remaining Bond novels (and short stories) will be collected as well.

Three great Bond novels in one publication. What a great way to celebrate the 100th birthday of Flemming! If you already have the three books individually, this works as a great collectors item. I'm hoping the others will be released this way as well. :)

Raymond Benson tackled an assignment as tough as any James Bond has ever taken - continuing the literary legacy of 007. Fleming's shoes are hard to fill, and Mr. Benson does it with style in the Union Trilogy. More than the great adventures and twisting plots, Benson immerses the reader in details that set not just a time and place, but an attitude of the characters. What Fleming brought to Bond was a casual flair for identifying the world 007 travelled through. Benson captures this Fleming quality in his own voice, and never better than in these three adventures. These tales do not ape the master, but rather they are worthy successors, good spy adventures in their own right. Best to be read on a ship, plane or in a sleeper car traveling through Europe or Asia...or at least read while wishing one were there!

Acknowledged as one of the world's top 007 experts, Raymond Benson turned his considerable expertise and talents to continuing the literary character of James Bond in print, and "nobody does it better." Unlike the very unsatisfying Sebastian Faulks novel earlier this year, Mr. Benson's work really does breath new life into Ian Fleming's original James Bond character. It "feels" like Fleming's hero. You recognize him in a way that only a truly sympathetic expert could have accomplished. Readers who picked up Faulk's novel looking for James Bond found him absent. Good news. He's here, and not just in one novel, but three; any one of which is superior to the muddled attempt by Faulks. James Bond occupies the center of a very intriguing trilogy. Ian Fleming had his own Bond trilogy and like those novels, each of Mr. Benson's can be read as a stand alone adventure. But published here for the first time together, the reader can best appreciate the sweep of continuity that ties these three stories together into one grand adventure. Highly recommended!