Pile by the Bed reviews With a Mind to Kill, the third Ian Fleming-style James Bond thriller by Anthony Horowitz, this one set late in the famour agent’s career.

Anthony Horowitz, famous for a bunch of properties including Midsomer Murders and Folye’s War as well as the YA Alex Rider series, has already dipped his toe into the James Bond world. In 2015, with the blessing of the Ian Fleming estate, he released Trigger Mortis, a Fleming-style, era-specific, Bond set after the events in Goldfinger. Trigger Mortis was fun and clearly won the approval of the Fleming estate as they commissioned Horowitz again, this time looking a little earlier in Bond’s career. Forever and a Day is the story of James Bond Pre-Casino Royale. It is, in effect, a James Bond origin story. In the age of prequels, it is perhaps unsurprising that Horowitz has taken this route. But the question has to be asked whether fans really need to know why Bond takes his martini shaken not stirred. But the challenges of prequel writing are not the biggest issue for Horowitz. The hard part for a book of this kind is navigating Fleming’s 1960s views while still delivering something that does not feel hopelessly dated. Once the preliminaries are dispensed with this is a typical Bond thriller. All of the elements are in place – wealthy setting in…

In his latest book Anthony Horowitz tries have several cakes and eat them all. The fictional work Magpie Murders is an Agatha Christie-style golden age detective novel that is embedded in a novel that is itself a bit of a homage to golden age detective novels. And while being two murder mysteries in one, it is also both a critique and a celebration of the public’s love of cosy English-style murder mysteries. All of which is no surprise coming as it does from the pen of the author who brought us on TV the likes of Midsomer Murders, Foyle’s War and Poirot and recently in novel form loving reconstructions of Conan Doyle (House of Silk and Moriarty) and Ian Fleming (Trigger Mortis – reviewed here). Novelist Alan Conway has delivered his ninth Atticus Pünd novel to his publisher. As we learn in the cute frontpieces to the novel in the novel, Pünd is a famous literary detective in the mould of Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey. We get an introduction from Susan Ryeland, the editor of Magpie Murders, before the first six parts of the novel, a murder mystery set in the quaint English village of Saxby-on-Avon….