With a Mind to Kill: the action-packed Richard and Judy Book Club Pick (James Bond 007)

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Bain is flattered by the romantic attentions of Rachel Hardcastle, a successful concert pianist and sophisticated, attractive woman. Then her husband turns up dead, and Bain becomes the prime suspect in his murder. The rest of the novel plays out at an uninteresting, plodding pace with an underwhelming finale. It reads so workmanlike, like Horowitz was fulfilling a contract obligation, not because he was inspired. Which is a shame as he seems to have a good handle on Bond as a character. Set two weeks after the man with the golden gun this is a classic Bond which will please readers old and new Investigating a suspicious suicide in a tightly knit community, Bain wants to close the case and go home. Prompted by his daughter, Hannah, he digs deeper, unearthing a dark secret that binds three couples together.

When a 15-year-old girl is found murdered, a pedophile living alone in the forest is easy to blame. But Bain knows that simple answers aren't always the right ones, and he steps in to help a young colleague solve the case. Bain goes undercover at a seedy seaside resort to investigate a young woman's murder. Then Hannah shows up for her own holiday, much to her father's chagrin. When a teenager turns up dead in a Celtic burial ground, the top suspects are her scorned boyfriend and the local psychic who discovered her. Inconsolable with grief, the victim's family decides to take justice into their own hands. A gruesome killing in the woods links a secretive religious cult to a troubled urban neighbourhood and a heroin dealer to a prominent married judge and his lover. Bain must untangle a web of clues to learn the truth behind the murder and expose a fraud.A couple commits a desperate act when their only daughter falls into a coma after a routine surgery. All they want is a public admission of guilt from the surgeon; all Bain wants is to prevent another tragedy. Although Horowitz may not have the detailed descriptive talent of Ian Fleming his characters are spot on. Katya Leonova is a wonderful creation & worthy of any Fleming novel, as are many of the characters throughout this novel.

So 007 finds himself once again in hands of his tormentors and deep into Russian territory where he is to figure out what certain people are up to. And if anything goes wrong there is no escape but death. When the charred remains of a body are found inside a burned-out car, Bain travels to a town where vigilante justice prevails. Despite the locals' disrespect, he attempts to unravel an unsettling chain of events that led to murder.Meanwhile, Colonel Boris and other leaders he is working with are still not 100% behind Bond and have one more test. They came across a boorish American named Garfinkel who will swear that Bond is actually an agent he knows by another name who he recently saw several times in Jamaica working closely with Scaramanga. Colonel Boris knows this could not be possible if Bond was still their brainwashed operative in London on mission to assassinate M. Of course, MI6 is still helping out where they can and Garfinkel’s run-in with Bond proves to be nothing more than mistaken identity, allowing our favorite spy to dodge a deadly bullet. A Mind to Kill is a Welsh television police detective series, that developed from a feature-length pilot episode first broadcast in 1991. The series stars Philip Madoc as protagonist DCI Noel Bain. Four series were broadcast between 1994 and 2002, though the Christmas special is sometimes counted as a separate series, bringing the total to five. The show first aired as Yr Heliwr on S4C, before being broadcast on Channel 5 in the UK. On the other hand there is some terrific action. Early on Bond is forced to flee after being captured. The writing is genuinely exciting. Later on there is more action, Bond forced to fight for his life and continue his mission. And the finale when he must return to the west. In these moments the book is hard to put down. But I don’t really buy Bond’s mission and all the mind control. It worked in The Man With The Golden Gun because Fleming didn’t elaborate too much. While Horowitz has researched mind control methods I just didn’t believe it. The challenge for me whenever I read a James Bond novel is, in my mind’s eye, which version of James Bond do I see? Once I understood the timeline of when WITH A MIND TO KILL, the final novel in Anthony ‘Tony’ Horowitz’s James Bond trilogy was set, I had my answer.