Here are the opening chapters of the first 3 books in my Young Bond series. A lot of people, when they are starting out as writers, find beginnings very difficult, but I think the best way to grab a reader is by hooking them in the first few pages. In SilverFin I did that literally, by having the boy… well, you’ll have to read it for yourself to find out just how the boy gets hooked. I think, all in all, it’s a pretty memorable chapter and it lets the reader know that there’s going to be lots of excitement and danger (and, yes, gore!) coming up later on. So sit back and enjoy the ride.

I was playing a game with the reader in this, the very first chapter in my Young Bond series. They would assume that the boy at the beginning of the book was James Bond himself. I hope I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t read it saying that it isn’t James. In fact James doesn’t appear in any of these first chapters. Each one, though, sets up the themes, locations and stories for the various books. A mysterious Scottish loch in SilverFin with a sinister secret beneath its waters. Pirates and kidnapping in the Mediterranean for Blood Fever. Another kidnapping in Double or Die, this time in London, where we see the first clue in a long trail being laid.

In a way, these opening chapters are like the pre-titles sequences you get in some films. A mini-film before the main film begins. Of course some of the most famous (and among the first) pre-titles sequences in cinema are in the Bond films. There have been some great ones, though in the films they always feature our hero (except in From Russia With Love, where the spy we see getting killed at the beginning is not Bond, but someone in a Bond mask).

Anyway, enough of me, I hope the chapters speak for themselves…

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1. What sort of pistol was pointed at Alex Fairburn’s head?

2. How high was the fence around the loch?

3. What had Amy Goodenough’s mother died of?

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