Forever and a Death

Description

The Bond Film That Never Was Two decades ago, the producers of the James Bond movies hired legendary crime novelist Donald E. Westlake to come up with a story for the next Bond film. The plot Westlake dreamed up - about a Western businessman seeking revenge after being kicked out of Hong Kong when the island was returned to Chinese rule - had all the elements of a classic Bond adventure, but political concerns kept it from being made. Never one to let a good story go to waste, Westlake wrote an original novel based on the premise instead - a novel he never published while he was alive. Now, nearly a decade after Westlake's death, Hard Case Crime is proud to give that novel its first publication ever, together with a brand-new afterword by one of the movie producers describing the project's genesis, and to give fans their first taste of the Westlake-scripted Bond that might have been. "Great fun to read...and speculate on what a Westlake-written Bond movie might have been like. A newly discovered novel by one of the true grand masters of the genre is always a cause for celebration." - Booklist

Donald E. Westlake is widely regarded as one of the great crime writers of the 20th Century. He won three Edgar Awards and was named a Grandmaster by the Mystery Writers of America. Many of his books have been made into movies; Westlake also wrote the screenplay for "The Grifters," for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

The orange wetsuit, that gun pose, the comma of hair above the eye - stop twisting my arm, Hard Case! -Birth. Movies. Death"