Book briefs | Sunday August 3, 2008

The name is Bond, James Bond, and he's back in this centenary celebration of author Ian Fleming. Bond, on a three-month leave enforced by his London doctors, is becoming bored roaming the continent. In Paris, an Algerian drug runner is brutally murdered, and M, Bond's boss, calls him back. His assignment is to find out what Julius Gorner is plotting. Gorner, a British-hating pharmaceutical manufacturer, is producing more than legal drugs. It's the 1960s; the Cold War is heating up, and Gorner in addition to filling England with illegal narcotics also plans to provoke a confrontation between Great Britain and the U.S.S.R.

Faulks has done a fine job capturing Fleming's style, complete with the rich villain, his flawed henchman and the lovely girl. This time instead of cards or golf, it's tennis.

— John Harrington

•"Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Sanction” by Eric Van Lustbader (Grand Central Publishing, $25.99).

Jason Bourne is back in academia as his alter ego David Webb, but his stay is short-lived. Professor Dominic Specter, Bourne's university mentor, leads a double life and wants Bourne's help in eliminating the head of the Black Legion.

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