Questions about IFP’s new Double O novels

Ian Fleming Publications “Double O” logo.

Ian Fleming Publications has announced a new series of novels by Kim Sherwood intended to expand the James Bond literary universe.

Naturally, the blog has questions.

Who is Kim Sherwood? C&W, which represents her, has a biography.

Kim Sherwood was born in Camden in 1989 and lives in Bath. She pursued her MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, before teaching at UEA and the University of Sussex. Kim is now Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, and teaches prisoners. She has written for Mslexia, Lighthouse, Going Down Swinging, The Telegraph, and elsewhere. Kim makes frequent media appearances, including BBC Radio 4 Front Row, BBC Bristol, and Griefcast. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram at @kimtsherwood

Kim began researching and writing Testament, her first novel, after her grandfather, the actor George Baker, passed away, and her grandmother began to talk about her experiences as a Holocaust Survivor for the first time. Testament won the 2016 Bath Novel Award, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Award, shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel, and won the Harpers’ Bazaar Big Book Award.

In 2018, Kim received support from the Society of Authors’ Authors Foundation Grant for her second novel. Drawing on adventure fiction, the literature of roguery, travel and life writing, A True Relation will explore issues of gender, genre, and place.

Kim is also the author of the forthcoming Double 0 trilogy, and is the first woman to author a 007 novel. 

Her grandfather was George Baker? Yes, the same George Baker who played the real Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and a Navy officer in The Spy Who Loved Me. Baker also played one of the many Number Twos in the Patrick McGoohan series The Prisoner. Baker enjoyed a long career as an actor.

When will the new Sherwood novels be set?

During the present day, according to the author herself. She disclosed the information in response to a question on Twitter.

It will be set in the present-day – an excellent question! And even more excellent point. Off to Jamaica for me… 🍸

— Kim Sherwood (@kimtsherwood) November 4, 2021

The new Sherwood trilogy of novels will come on line just as Anthony Horowitz is wrapping up his three-period-piece Bond novels (one set at the start of Bond’s career, one set in the middle and the upcoming third after the events of The Man With the Golden Gun novel).

How significant is this?

It demonstrates that Ian Fleming Publications continues to be interested in spinoffs. It has previously commissioned Young Bond novels and The Moneypenny Diaries. Meanwhile, Eon Productions, maker of the James Bond films, has said it’s not interested in Bond spinoffs.

IFP announces new series of Double O novels

Ian Fleming Publications today announced a new series of three novels by Kim Sherwood “featuring the next generation of Double O agents.”

“James Bond is missing, presumed captured or even killed,” IFP said in the announcement on its website. “All of Bond’s contemporaries are gone and a new generation of Double O agents has been recruited to replace them and battle a global threat.” Meanwhile, M and Moneypenny are searching for a mole inside MI6, IFP said.

“I’ve dreamt of writing James Bond,” Sherwood said in a statement. “I feel honoured to be the first novelist to expand the Bond universe through the Double O sector.” The author said the novels would bring “new life to old favourites, and fresh characters to the canon.”

The Guardian quoted Corinne Turner, managing director of IFP, as saying the new series will be launched in September 2022.

A third Bond novel by Anthony Horwitz is scheduled to be published in May 2022, according to HarperCollins. Horowitz previously wrote Trigger Mortis in 2015 and Forever and a Day in 2018.