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Raymond Benson is an acclaimed author from America, who is famous for being the official writer of the James Bond books between 1997 and 2003. He has a particular interest in writing mystery, spy fiction, and suspense thriller novels. Author Benson was born on September 5, 10955, in Midland, Texas. He completed his high school graduation from the Permian High School, located in Odessa, in 1973. During his primary school days, Benson took a lot of interest in piano. This interest later became an even bigger interest in composing music during the later stages of his life. He used to even participate in drama during the school days and was the vice president of the drama department of his school. This interest helped him to pursue direction of stage productions in the New York City. Before that, Benson attended and received a Drama Production degree from the Texas University in Austin. The other hobbies of author Benson apart from writing include criticism, history, and designing of computer games. In the year 1984, author Benson wrote a James Bond book called The James Bond Beside Companion, which was dedicated to the official books, films, and to Ian Fleming. This book received nomination for the Edgar Award in the category of Critical Work. It was updated later in 1988 and was released again digitally. In 1985, Benson worked as a designer for the development of a James Bond game. He designed another computer game for a different James Bond novel in the next year. When John Gardner officially resigned from writing the Bond novels in 1996, author Benson was chosen by the Gildrose Publications to write the continuation of the series. When he began working on the task, he faced a little bit of controversy for being an American and also for ignoring the continuity that Gardner had established. Later, Benson did his best to sideline these concerns and promptly carried out regular tours for promoting his Bond books in the United Kingdom. He also made occasional trips to the mainland Europe. In all, author Benson penned 6 Bond novels, 3 short stories, and r novelizations.
After Ian Fleming, Benson was the first writer to have written short stories, which were released in TV Guide and Playboy magazines and were also collected in the anthologies that were released in 2008 & 2010. The name of Gildrose Publications was later changed to Ian Fleming Publications, which began publishing from the Benson book titled High Time to Kill. Author Benson officially resigned in 2003 from writing the novels of James Bond. One of his novels inspired the Japan government to build a museum in 2005 through the Kagawa Prefecture. This was also meant to honor author Benson as a Goodwill Ambassador. In 2008, several books written by him were grouped and published in the form of an omnibus. This was repeated again in 2010 when a few others of his books were released as an anthology. In 2014, author Benson collaborated with another former Bond writer named Jeffery Deaver to co-edit an anthology that was sponsored by the MWA. This was the first collaboration between the ex-authors of Bond books. The anthology contained the short stories set around the Cold War. In addition to writing novels, author Benson also delivers lectures on film history at the college level. He is also involved in writing film reviews for Cinema Retro. Benson teamed up with a critic from Chicago, Dann Gire, to host live program that was held at the suburban libraries in Chicago. The two also present shows based on the topics of cinema history, trivia, show clips, anecdotes, and tell related jokes.
There are 9 books written in total written by Raymond Benson in the Bond series, which were released between the years 1997 and 2002. An initial book in the series is titled as ‘Zero Minus Ten’. This book was released by the Putnam Adult in the year 1997. At the start of the book, it is shown that the clock has started ticking in Hong Kong. The British Crown is set to be handed over to China on July 01, 1997. However, the peaceful transition gets shattered due several terrorist attacks that threaten to destroy the relationship between China and Britain, which was already fragile. A London based solicitor gets killed in a bomb blast, which is retaliated by the killing of 2 Beijing officials. This is followed by an explosion that kills the elite members of a major corporation in Britain. As only 10 days are left of the British sovereignty, Bond is asked to visit Hong Kong carry out investigation related to the accidents. His major task is to prevent political crisis from taking place as it would jeopardize the historical events about to take place. Bond suspects that the accidents are connected to the nefarious underworld Triad of China. However, he finds it very difficult to uncover the truth. A startling maze gets built up around Bond that comprises of a British Taipan, a sadistic general from China, a seductive and exotic dancer, a sinister leader of the Triad, etc. He realizes that he must navigate through this characters’s maze to be able to expose the fiendish plot related to revenge that has roots reaching back to more than one and a half centuries.
Another amazing book in the series is titled as ‘The Facts of Death’. It was released by the Jove publication in 1999. In this story, James Bond is shown as searching and infiltrating a fanatical terrorist cult that is shrouded in Greek mathematician Pythagoras’s teachings. A number of assassination attempts are made on the life of Bond for eliminating him. Therefore, it becomes important for him to make all the calculations correctly. The book starts by showing several deaths resulting out of mysterious diseases. Bond is first seen in Cyprus to investigate the mysterious circumstances in which a few British troops are murdered. While investigating, he is attacked, but gets saved by a female agent from Greece named Niki Mirakos. Later, at a dinner party in which Bond is also present, the boyfriend of his boss gets murdered. His boss informs Bond that all the murders are linked as Greek deity statues are discovered near all the dead bodies. Therefore, Bond must find the origin of all the statues. For this purpose, he moves to Greece and gets in touch with Niki Mirakos once again. There, he comes to know about a mathematic cult named Decada, which is headed by the mathematician named Konstantine Romanos. Bond and Niki grow suspicious of this group and begin to track all their activities. During the next set of events, Bond becomes successful in finding the culprits and hunts them down one by one. By doing so, he also destroys a deadly plan of committing worldwide murders with the help of a newly developed virus.
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