“A fine storyteller, Horowitz employs all the tropes fans know and love (including an elegant explanation for the famous martini mandate, “shaken, not stirred”), but he also delivers a conclusion whose moral complexity will surprise anyone expecting an ending more in line with Fleming’s own.” — Publishers Weekly
The versatile Horowitz has written authorized books about Sherlock Holmes and others, and here spins a fragment of Fleming’s writing into a splendid prequel to the Bond canon. — Seattle Times
Horowitz’s trademark is a kind of gorgeous competence; a reader always feels utterly secure in the credibility of his narratives, however outlandish they get. Here, again, he handles a complicated plot with aplomb (and blessedly few explosions). Does he find a human being inside James Bond? He tries, and Sixtine is one of the best Bond girls ever written. — USA Today