Raymond Benson’s next Bond story was the adaptation of the Pierce Brosnan film, The World is Not Enough. It doesn’t differ too much from what ended up onscreen, but because it’s the written word, it allows one to recast the film, and I happily eject Denise Richards as Christmas Jones from the movie in my mind. She had no chemistry with Brosnan, and it just didn’t work.

Benson doles out the story in his usual punchy style, emulating Ian Fleming’s classic storytelling method as James Bond 007 heads out on his next globetrotting adventure. This time he’s assigned protective duty to Elektra King following the murder of her father by the same man who kidnapped and abused her, Renard.

Renard is a terrorist for hire with a bullet in his brain that prevents him from physically feeling anything. He seems to have set his eyes once again on Elektra and James is to protect her, and find a way to stop him, and recover the radioactive material he’s stolen.

Can Bond find out Renard’s plan? And is there more going on here than 007 initially thought?

With the novel, Benson can fill out Renard’s backstory a little more, and give us a larger glimpse into what happened to Elektra when she was kidnapped, and how things evolved from there.

In his adventures Bond finds himself working with a nuclear physicist, Christmas Jones, and she’ll be essential to helping Bond save the day, and deliver one of the worst jokes in the series’ history.

Benson’s writing tries to handle the more cinematic escapades as best as he can. His written 007 is a little different, and a little more grounded than the one on the screen, so he tries to walk a line that blends the two, and it works for the most part, except when the cinematic version does something that only works on screen.

I do like that M, 007’s boss gets pulled into things a little more, and I like that Elektra is the real villain of the piece, manipulating everything around her. I remember walking out of the film feeling a little letdown, but I’ve grown to appreciate most of it over the years, and the novel definitely helps with that. There are little story details that didn’t make it to the screen, or at least didn’t play a huge part in the screen story, but things that fill out characters and beats, that make Benson’s novel almost more enjoyable than the film.

I loved Brosnan as Bond, but he was never given the best stories, and the casting of Richards as Jones just kind of crippled this film from the outset, without her, the character and the story, for the most part, work so much better.

And if you didn’t like the book or the movie, never fear because…

James Bond will return in Doubleshot.