Score one for MI6, who correctly predicted that Sebastian Faulks, most recently the author of ENGELBY, is the newest author aboard the James Bondenterprise. DEVIL MAY CARE is scheduled to be published on May 28, 2008 – just in time for the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming‘s birth – by Penguin in the UK and Doubleday in the US. Doubleday president and publisher Steve Rubin bought US rights from Gillon Aitken with Deb Futter to edit.
“Three pages into DEVIL MAY CARE and you are immediately thrown back into the world of James Bond and all those wonderful characters we have come to love,” Rubin said in the announcement, reprinted on Doubleday Broadway’s official blog. “DEVIL MAY CARE is pure Fleming channeled by Faulks – a madcap adventure, a romantic romp and a book you can devour in one sitting. It all starts in Paris, and no one alive writes better about Paris than Sebastian Faulks.”
The book will be set in 1967, when, Faulks said yesterday, “Bond is damaged, ageing and in a sense it is the return of the gunfighter for one last heroic mission”. His own interpretation of the spy, he hinted, would show all the caddishness of Bond’s previous incarnations, tempered with just a shade of new-mannish sensitivity. He has been widowed and been through a lot of bad things … He is slightly more vulnerable than any previous Bond but at the same time he is both gallant and highly sexed, if you can be both. Although he is a great seducer, he really does appreciate the girls he seduces and he doesn’t actually use them badly.”