Double Shot

Doubleshot is Raymond Benson’s 2000 Bond novel and the first of his Union trilogy, the most plot-heavy and high-stakes of his five original 007 continuations. Bond is medically grounded after a brain injury in High Time to Kill, paranoid, hallucinating, and (he fears) being impersonated by a double the Union has trained for a single hit: assassinate the Spanish king and the British prime minister at a peace conference in Gibraltar. Bond chases the imposter through Tangier and Granada while M can no longer trust which Bond she has on the line.

Benson is swinging for the fences here. The brain-injury subplot is unusual for the Bond canon and lets him do interior writing the films could not attempt. The imposter conceit is well executed; the third-act bullring confrontation is one of his most cinematic set pieces. What costs the book a star is the Union itself, which remains a too-vague antagonist organization, and a couple of pacing slumps in the middle Tangier sections. Even so, this is the most narratively ambitious Bond continuation of the 2000s.

Recommended for Bond readers ready to commit to Benson’s Union trilogy and for anyone looking for books like Doubleshot in the "imposter Bond, paranoid Bond" subgenre (Sebastian Faulks’s Devil May Care is a useful comparison). Three stars, leaning generous.