Trigger Mortis is title of new 007 novel; Pussy Galore returns

Ian Fleming Publications announced the title of Anthony Horwitz’s James Bond continuation novel is Trigger Mortis.

IFP made the announcement via Twitter shortly after midnight, U.K. time, on May 28.

Horwitz had teased the title on May 27, saying the title had two words, with the first word related to a horse. For the uninitiated, Trigger was the name of Roy Rogers’ horse. Although, the MI6 James Bond website says it refers to a U.K. comedy, Only Fools & Horses.

NOTE: the “Trigger” in the U.K. show was an ugly man who looked like a horse. That’s not the clue that Horowitz gave. He said the first word of the title “is a horse.”

The second word started with m, but wasn’t in the dictionary.

The novel is based, in part, on an outline Ian Fleming wrote in the 1950s for a never-made television series.

Horowitz’s story apparently is set in 1959 1957. IFP the past few days sent out “post cards” about Trigger Mortis. One showed New York’s Times Square. A movie marquee for The Horse Soldiers, released in 1959, is visible. You can CLICK HERE to see the post cards on the MI6 James Bond website.

UPDATE (7:30 P.M.): Author Horowitz said in a PRESS RELEASE that Trigger Mortis is set two weeks after Goldfinger (which was published in 1959, but set two years earlier) and that Pussy Galore is present.

“I was so glad that I was allowed to set the book two weeks after my favourite Bond novel, Goldfinger,” Horowitz said in the press release, “and I’m delighted that Pussy Galore is back. It was great fun revisiting the most famous Bond Girl of all – although she is by no means the only dangerous lady in Trigger Mortis.”

Here was the tweet IFP sent out:

#TriggerMortis #newbondbook pic.twitter.com/KlTqwbH7TD

— Ian Fleming (@TheIanFleming) May 27, 2015

UPDATE II (7:35 p.m.): It turns out Horowitz isn’t the first author to use Trigger Mortis as a title.

Whoops. Not a new idea. Kane’s book was written the year the new Bond book is based. Maybe it’s a tribute? pic.twitter.com/ObkINh7tkS

— James Bond (@jamesbondlive) May 27, 2015

UPDATE III (8 p.m.) Orion Publishing put out a short promotional video.

UPDATE IV (8:13 p.m.). More details via YAHOO! NEWS:

As well as Ms Galore, famously played in the film version by Honor Blackman, the story will also see the secret agent rub shoulders with another Bond girl – Jeopardy Lane – and a sadistic Korean villain called Jai Seung Sin.