And you thought some of John Gardner’s Bond novels were bad? Fleming must have rolled in his grave when The Man With the Red Tattoo was published. This book is a total embarrassment to the 007 literary series, on the same level of awfulness as Die Another Day was to the films.

The Man With the Red Tattoo is nothing short of complete farce. Filled with tons of padding and virtually no plot, the editors should have simply shredded the manuscript instead of giving this junk the green light. If I’m to be brutally honest here, I can say with some certainty that I’ve read better, more coherent James Bond fan-fiction than this, a published novel. It comes as little shock to me that Benson himself regards TMWTRT, his final Bond continuation novel, as his least favorite (although his books before this were nothing to write home about, if you’re asking me). The character of Bond is completely unrecognizable, a shell of his former self. The great Tiger Tanaka from You Only Live Twice is also bastardized to a criminal degree and the girl, Reiko, is nothing more than your stereotypical airhead for Bond to flirt with. Any other characters encountered here are so one-dimensional they’re not even worth mentioning.

Here’s a brain drainer to consider. Don’t think about it for too long or your head might explode. Why is Tiger Tanaka suddenly an old man, whilst Bond has an apparent Gandalf-like immunity to aging? Shouldn’t they have aged at the same rate over the years? It’s arguably more annoying than seeing a much older Judi Dench playing M in Casino Royale alongside the rookie James Bond.

At any rate, The Man With the Red Tattoo sees Bond sent back to Japan to investigate the mysterious death of a British businessman, Peter McMahon, and his connections to both the Yakuza and a lethal biological weapon. I will give the novel credit where it’s due - the virus, and its ingenious method of dispersal, through mosquitoes, is suitably Bondian and exotic in approach. This was published in 2002, when West Nile Virus was first coming to the attention of the western world, so I suppose it was a quite timely addition to the story. I should also point out that Benson does make plenty of references to Bond’s most harrowing adventure in You Only Live Twice, with the ghosts of 007’s previous visit to Japan cropping up and hindering the man at regular intervals.

That’s all the positives I can find in this novel. The rest is dire. Some of the crap that Benson includes in this book wouldn’t happen in even the zaniest of Roger Moore’s films. We’ve got a chase through a fish market that results in a baddie throwing a dead octopus at Bond, an exploding cigar from Q-branch, and the final straw for me - a killer dwarf that at one point drops down onto Bond’s head much like Mini-Me attacking Austin Powers. I literally slammed the book shut at that point and chucked it across the room in disgust. While I have no doubt that Benson is a huge fan of Fleming and the 007 character, he apparently failed to realize that Ian Fleming wrote adventure stories first and foremost; adventures that just happened to include a lot of spying and espionage action. Benson attempted to turn the 007 novels into a series of techno-thrillers in the same vein as a Tom Clancy, and it just does not mesh at all. Even without the Bond connections, this would be a poor man’s espionage story. Recommended only for completists. ( )