007 is dead. Long live 007.

James Bond seems to have been around forever and a day, but in the latest continuation novel of his adventures, FOREVER AND A DAY, we learn that his secret service number preceded him and another agent, unnamed and unidentified, held the double O prefix.

In the strictest sense, FOREVER AND A DAY is not a continuation novel, but an origin story, a prequel to the first of Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, Casino Royale.

After accomplishing his second assassination in Stockholm, James Bond is promoted to the Double O Section with his first assignment being the investigation of the death of his predecessor.

This takes him to Marseilles and the French Riviera where he encounters Scipio, an obscenely obese sadist, a literal Mr. Big of the European drug trade, set on implementing a plan redolent of Live and Let Die.

Scipio is in cahoots with an American millionaire, named Irwin Wolfe, who has issues regarding his own country’s involvement in the Second World War.

Bond also teams up with a CIA operative, Reade Griffith, a precursor to Felix Leiter.

And there’s the femme fatale in the form of Sixtine, an inspired creation with an incredible back story and more than a match for the amorous action man.

Sixtine may remind readers of Modesty Blaise. She is a female of formidable confidence and charisma. Sixtine saw service behind enemy lines, survived capture by the Gestapo and has since operated a small syndicate trading in information and intelligence to the highest bidder.

Sixtine is ten years older than Bond, and his association with her marks many of the conceits and accoutrements – from martini making to cigarette smoking – etched into the Bond persona.

FOREVER AND A DAY author, Anthony Horowitz succeeds here where the writers of the last Bond film failed with the Monica Belucci character. She is a fully rounded character, an equal to Bond who slaps down any show of male chauvinism, an independent woman of decisive ability and allure.

FOREVER AND A DAY is Horowitz’s second shot at 007, having previously penned the Goldfinger sequel of sorts, Trigger Mortis. It succeeded brilliantly, but FOREVER AND A DAY surpasses that sterling effort.

There’s an ingenuity and confidence in the telling and the plot is more plausible and less preposterous with pastiche put out to pasture. There’s also a fluid fidelity to Fleming – one of the chapters, Russian Roulette, is based on an outline he wrote for television and a story contained in his travel journalism, a volume published as Thrilling Cities – but Horowitz has the requisite imagination to deliver the sheer storytelling that great adventure demands and the craft and compassion to elevate the genre.

There’s skill and wit at play here, with some delicious dialogue from the undisguised dramatist.

The familiar is fused with the new. M, Moneypenny, May, Tanner and Ponsonby are in place but Bond’s ennui has yet to start its escalation.

James Bond has been thrilling the living daylights out of us for sixty-five years, living and let dying on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In Horowitz’s hands, this debonair, devil may care blunt instrument deserves to go on forever and a day.

FOREVER AND A DAY by Anthony Horowitz is published by Jonathan Cape.