FOREVER AND A DEATH

London: Hard Case Crime, 2017. 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Paul Mann. Hardcover in a bright dust jacket featuring a retro-style illustration by Paul Mann. In the late 90s, 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. Hard Case Crime gives 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. Record # 373227