Ranking James Bond Authors
7. Raymond Benson
Tenure – 1997-2002, Novels – 6, Short Stories - 3
James Bond is a quintessentially British character and repeated efforts to ‘Americanise’ him throughout the years have been resisted, with Cary Fukunaga astonishingly being the first American director to helm an entry in the film series at the 25th time of asking.
The literary series was first given to an American author in 1997, though Raymond Benson wasn’t from a novel-writing background, having worked predominantly in the theatre and on computer games. He had authored The James Bond Bedside Companion in 1984, however, exploring the books, films and characters in detail.
Though clearly a huge fan of the source material, evidenced by his bringing back of almost every surviving Fleming character (although mostly to kill or maim them!), many of Benson’s efforts are dreary affairs that are particularly weak for their exposition, which is delivered heavily. His stories do include some interesting concepts and settings, including Hong Kong during the British handover to China, but efforts to create a SPECTRE-like organisation, The Union, fell somewhat flat.
Though trusted with the authorship of nine stories in just six years, Benson’s efforts ultimately come across as very fan fiction-esque and the series definitely needed the short break it took after his departure.