Kim Sherwood has announced the title of the second book in her Double O Trilogy, A Spy Like Me, which will be published by Harper Collins on 25 April 2024.
In an interview with the Radio Times, Sherwood teased a little of what fans can expect from A Spy Like Me, “I guess I can say that people will get to revisit characters who hopefully they’ve grown to love from Double or Nothing,” she said. “There’ll also be some returning fan favourites and some new characters.
But, tonally and structurally, it’s quite different from Double or Nothing. The stories all flow together, although you can read them as standalone, but I was really interested in how Fleming in each of his books innovates in some way, he never does the same thing twice.
So I’ve tried to be structurally and tonally a bit different. Tonally, I think it’s darker. and structurally, I’ve tried something kind of new and hopefully exciting for the reader.”
An elite team of MI6 agents must go undercover to unravel a smuggling network funding violent terror.
Six days. Three agents. One chance to find James Bond.
James Bond is alive.
Or at least, he was when he left a clue at the black site where the insidious private military company Rattenfanger held him captive. MI6 cannot spare any more lives attempting to track down one missing agent-no exceptions, even for Bond. But Johanna Harwood, 003, has her own agenda. Sidelined by her superiors while she grieves the loss of a loved one, Harwood goes on an unsanctioned mission: to find 007. Meanwhile, MI6 has another problem…
A bomb has been detonated in London.
Double O agents on the trail of the terrorists responsible acted quickly to prevent mass destruction and save lives. But MI6 failed to neutralize the nation’s enemies before they could strike, and one of their own was seriously injured in the blast.They won’t fail again.
Assigned to root out the source of the terrorists’ funding, Joseph Dryden, 004, and Conrad Harthrop-Vane, 000, enter the field. Tracing clues from Sotheby’s auction house to Crete to Venice, they uncover a money laundering scheme involving diamonds, black market antiquities, and human trafficking. Once a major sale is made, a six-day countdown to the next terror attack begins. As the Double O’s follow the twisting trail, they find themselves unexpectedly inching closer to Bond…
Speaking on the title in her Substack newsletter, Sherwood says “the title came to me while writing the novel — it appeared organically in dialogue, and it was one of those, hang on a minute… moments. You might recognise a resonance with the title of Fleming’s most atypical Bond novel, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. I’ve always loved the surprising use of first person there. There are other meanings behind the title, but for now those are state secrets…”
