William Boyd (writer) The book, "Solo", is set in 1969; it was published in the UK by Jonathan Cape in September 2013. Boyd used Bond creator Ian Fleming as a character in his novel "Any Human Heart". Fleming recruits the book's protagonist, Logan Mountstuart, to British Naval Intelligence during World War Two. Boyd has also worked with three of the actors who have portrayed Bond in the film series: Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. Several collections of short stories by Boyd have been published, including "On the Yankee Station" (1981), "The Destiny of Nathalie 'X'" (1995), "Fascination" (2004) and "The Dreams
Solo (Boyd novel) also picked up by Geoffrey Wansell, reviewing for the "Daily Mail", who saw the tribute paid to Fleming as a "masterstroke", in a novel that he thought "brings back the real Bond, triumphantly". Writing in "The Guardian", Richard Williams saw Boyd using some similar phrasing of Fleming's, while also including "gestures of independence" with his own ideas. The result, Williams considers, is a story that "entertains far more than it exasperates". Much of the criticism about the novel focuses on the plot; Jon Stock, writing in "The Daily Telegraph", thought that although Boyd used details in the same way Fleming