M laid down his pipe and stared at it tetchily. 'We have no choice. We're just going to bring forward this other chap you've been preparing. But you didn't tell me his name.' 'It's Bond, sir,' the Chief of Staff replied. 'James Bond.' One body. Three bullets. 007 floats in the waters of Marseille, killed by an unknown hand. It's time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organised crime. It's time for James Bond to earn his licence to kill.

London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend - until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star, writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

File Note Strictly Confidential - Authorised Personnel Only. Subject: James Bond. Age: 13. Description: dark hair that falls in a comma above his brow, despite efforts to control it; blue eyes; tall for age; surprisingly strong; fluent French, good German. Essential components: a ruthless villain who will stop at nothing; a girl - blond, green-eyed, named Wilder Lawless; a fast car.

The year 2012 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the longest continually running film series in movie history. To celebrate the most renowned 007, Roger Moore, KBE, has written a book that features all the Bond movies, along with a wonderfully witty account of his own involvement in them. From girls to the villains, from the cars to the cocktails, from the gadgets to the locations; this is the ultimate James Bond book, written by the ultimate James Bond.

In the first of six witty short stories, 60s-something English barrister, Horace Rumpole, takes on the younger generation both at home and in the hallowed courtroom—while offending his esteemed colleagues and his draconian wife, Hilda.