Bond is back with a license to thrill. Forty-three years ago, Ian Fleming wrote his last great 007 adventure. Now, in Devil May Care, the world's most iconic spy returns in a Cold War story spanning the world's exotic locations. By invitation of the Fleming estate to mark the centenary of his birth, acclaimed novelist Sebastian Faulks picks up where Fleming left off, writing a tour de force that will electrify every James Bond fan. A fitting tribute to the Bond tradition, Devil May Care stands on its own as a triumph of witty prose and plenty of double-0 action.
It was a wet evening in Paris. On the slate roofs of the big boulevards and on the small mansards of the Latin quarter, the rain kept up a ceaseless patter. Outside the Crillon and the George V, the doormen, were whistling taxis out of the darkness, then running with umbrellas to hold over the fur-clad guests as they climbed in. The huge open space of the place de la Concorde was glimmering black and silver in the downpour.
In Sarcelles, on the far northern outskirts of the city, Yusuf Hashim was sheltered by the walkway above him. This was not the gracious arch of the Pont Neuf where lovers huddled to keep dry, but a long cantilevered piece of concrete from which cheap doors with many bolts opened into grimy three-room apartments. It overlooked a busy section of the noisy N1 and was attached to an eighteen-storey tower block. Christened L'Arc en Ciel, the Rainbow, by its architect, the block was viewed, even in this infamous district, with apprehension.
After six-years of fighting the French in Algeria, Yusuf Hashim had finally cut and run. He had fled to Paris and found a place in L'Arc en Ciel, where he was joined in due course by his three brothers. People said that only those born in the forbidding tower could walk its airborne streets without glancing round, but Hashim feared nobody. He had been fifteen years old when, working for the Algerian nationalist movement, the FLN, he took his
