Review of The Killing Zone

Created in 1953 by Ian Fleming, James Bond has appeared in numerous books and movies.

He was too large of a character to disappear after Fleming's death, so several authors have been authorized to write continuation James Bond novels.

One man, however, decided to self-publish his fan fiction and pass it off as an official book in 1985.

Looking beyond the legal problems and expected oddities of a fan-fiction which was self-published and falsely claimed to be licensed by Glidrose Publications Ltd, The Killing Zone  does a good job of keeping in line with its official James Bond counterparts.

Jim Hatfield's The Killing Zone is now infamously known as the Unofficial James Bond Novel.

The Killing Zone starts with Bond's friend and colleague Bill Tanner being killed, followed by M.'s journey to the Carribean to pull Bond from retirement.

Bond travels to Mexico to take out Klaus Doberman, the drug lord who killed Tanner, and comes across several familiar faces.

• Felix Leiter, the American agent who has helped Bond on several cases
• Major Boothroyd, also known as Q, who provides Bond with plenty of guns and gadgets
• Paul Huggins, a former British Secret Service Agent who had turned and worked for SPECTRE before coming to Doberman
• Fuji Chen, a ninja hitman with a knack for customizing guns
• Anya Amasova, the KGB agent who alternates between hating and loving Bond in the film The Spy Who Loved Me

Bond's main love interest of this book is named Lotta Head, and while that name is worthy of one of Fleming's "Bond Girls," the prejudice and discrimination is greatly toned down from what would be found in an original Bond book.

James Bond is older in this book but is still faced with several action-packed scenes in The Killing Zone, including:

• Fighting with spear guns while scuba diving in Mexican waters
• Firing heat-seeking missiles which are built into Bond's Porsche
• Crawling through cacti in the dark to booby trap Russian soldiers
• Racing speedboats across the Mexican coast
• Wrestling on slippery clifftops
• Invading an impenetrable fortress
• Dangling from a helicopter in the sky

The Killing Zone definitely has enough action, sex, and death to fit in alongside official James Bond books. 

Hatfield' story is obviously a fan fiction, but it is still better written than some official James Bond novels I've read and heard about.

For a hurriedly written novel which was produced without support or funding, Hatfield's The Killing Zone does a good job of capturing the essence of James Bond and placing him in a new adventure while interacting with several favorite characters from his past. 

I think this book is definitely worth a short read, especially for Bond fans.

It's available online in several places, so why not check it out for yourself? 

Excited for SPECTRE to come out this fall,

The Purple Writer

* To get more information besides the thoughts in this short blog post, check out this summary by The Book Bond, who owns one of the remaining physical copies of The Killing Zone.

** You can also check out my Prezi version of this review.

*** Feel free to contact me and ask for my full review of this book. It's only 4 pages, but has quite a bit more detail than I could fit in one blog post.