Well, have finally gotten around to CB. First, hats off to Mr Deaver for trying his very best, as a life-long Bond fan, and an excellent writer. The only other book of his prior to CB I've read is
The Blue Nowhere which is a good, tough read.
CB grows on you. The possible main drawbacks are, of course, the modern setting, and writing a Bond book that delivers is almost impossible unless one is Fleming. However, as in Sherlock Holmes pastiches, sometimes a writer will get d**n close ... for example, the short story
Sherlock Holmes and the Devil has atmosphere of a Conan Doyle. It displays a noble Holmes who when challenged by the 'devil' (a mental patient who may or may not be the ultimate villain) to wager the soul of Dr Watson, says nothing doing; despite the prior scenes where he is blithely verbally dueling with the diablo. CB gets very close to Fleming, even though the novel is much longer than a Fleming thriller, which takes away much of the pacing. Some cons: British spellings aren't used (in the Holmes story above, the American author does use British spelling). The description pages lack the full Fleming touch. When one re-reads the Bond books' first pages, one is struck by the prose. However, Deaver does a fine job nonetheless.
Despite Bond being thrown into the modern age, I accept this as being a combination of the book and the movie Bonds. Most of the main characters are drawn with a fine line. Bond has the nice wit, irony of the original. After dinner with the Philly Maidenstone, Bond has a chance to bed her. He doesn't, because she's on the re-bound from her long-time fiancé. There's the feeling of the last scenes in
Moonraker with Policewoman Brand. Moneypenny has a nice homage. Besides Bond's character, the best one is M. Although they don't have dinner at Blades, they do have lunch, and M comes across as our beloved crusty admiral with the 'damnably clear eyes' (I would have included that phrase, btw). The poorest main character from the canon is Felix Leiter. Here Deaver doesn't hit the bullseye. This isn't the Felix from the books, who describes himself as a chocolate sailor, the authority on jazz and strange motorcars. I don't recall Felix ever using 'ain't' although he uses it with irony in CB.
Some of the best scenes are when Bond is set up to kill an innocent man, and the surprise with the main villain. There are nice touches, too, with the villain being an expert on garbage (!), and the 'heroine' who is a humanitarian.
So will conclude this (for now) and say that of all the Bond writers, Commander Deaver does it the best. I am happy for him (again, fulfilling one of his dreams) and also for all the Bond fans who have a good, tough book, a return to (mostly) the Fleming 007 with bits of the film 007. Out of 5 Bezants, I have to give this at the least a very solid 4 Golden Bezants.