Summer Book Club - Colonel Sun by Robert Markham

Bond by Amis

After the outstanding success of the Summer Book Club last year, which featured the English Rambo, we're continuing this year with another single slim novel to take on your hols.

Our summer picks aren't too taxing — you can leave Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century till winter (or not read it at all like most others who bought it) — but this year's is intriguing none the less. Colonel Sun [Amazon] is a James Bond novel written by Kingsley Amis. The book was published in 1968 under the pen name Robert Markham.

The novel has a comfortingly familiar Bond story arc: M has been kidnapped  and it is up to Bond to rescue him. The villain behind the kidnapping is the dastardly Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Colonel Sun is intent on instigating a worldwide conflict. Much of the novel is set in the Aegean, so we get murder and mayhem in the sun — a prefect holiday read.

If you manage to get around to reading it, feel free to drop a comment below.