‘Trigger Mortis’! The novel written by Anthony Horowitz as a follow on to Goldfinger and set in the 1950s.

007’s briefing begins: “They have studied the field and they’re pretty confident of beating everyone except our own chap, the British Champion Lancey Smith in his Vanwall”.

One has to assume that Lancey Smith was based on a certain Stirling Moss!

Surprisingly, none of Ian Fleming’s James Bond films have centred around the drama of a Grand Prix. However, he did write some TV story outlines, one of which was called ‘Murder on Wheels’.

The Ian Fleming Estate commissioned Anthony Horowitz to develop a new Bond novel based on this theme. ‘Trigger Mortis’ features Bond having to defend British champion Lancy Smith from a Russian agent at a fictional Nürburgring Grand Prix.

To quote Horowitz:-“Fleming’s original story makes Stirling Moss the target of SMERSH at Nürburgring. As much as I admire Sir Stirling, I decided not to use him in the story - real celebrities do not tend to make appearances in the Bond novels and anyway, he might not have been amused.”