Amazon.com’s intriguing description of new 007 novel

Amazon.com, in its listing for Jeffery Deaver’s upcoming James Bond novel, Carte Blanche carries this description:

James Bond, in his early thirties and already a veteran of the Afghan War, has been recruited to a new organization. Conceived in the post-9/11 world, it operates independent of MI5, MI6 and the Ministry of Defense, its very existence deniable. Its aim: To protect the Realm, by any means necessary.

A Night Action alert calls James Bond away from dinner with a beautiful woman. Headquarters has decrypted an electronic whisper about an attack scheduled for later in the week: Casualties estimated in the thousands, British interests adversely affected.

And Agent 007 has been given carte blanche.

That suggests that Deaver’s novel will be an extensive reboot of the Bond literary franchise.

Among the Bond continuation novels, Kingsley Amis’s Colonel Sun was published just a few years after Ian Fleming’s last published works. John Gardner (whose first Bond novel was published 30 years ago) and Raymond Benson timeshifted Bond to the 1980s, ’90s and ’00s, but their novels (and in Benson’s case, short stories as well) made references to events depickted in Fleming’s original stories. Sebastian Faulks’s 2008 Devil May Care (“Writing as Ian Fleming”) was a 1960s period piece.

Deaver had previously indicated his story would have an entirely new timeline but now, assuming the Amazon.com description is accurate, is even changing 007’s employer. We’ll see how it goes.

(We noticed this via Kevin Collette, so thanks, Kevin.)