Devil May Care
By Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming
Penguin £18.99, 322 pages
FT bookshop price: £15.19

If there were to be a principle of Bond-writing, it might be expressed as a version of Gresham’s Law. It once made one mediocre author – Ian Fleming – write at the top of his form. But it causes superior practitioners to fall well below their customary standard. Kingsley Amis was the first to demonstrate this principle when in 1968, under the nom de plume of Robert Markham, he churned out Colonel Sun. Now Sebastian Faulks, under his own name, has incautiously committed himself to the following “wannabe” formulation: