"The New York Times" critic, Charles McGrath, felt that Faulks "improbably injects new life into the formula", which meant that "Devil May Care" was "a stronger novel than any that Fleming wrote". Fritz Lanham, writing for the "Houston Chronicle" declared that "so satisfying was Sebastian Faulks' new James Bond novel that I felt obliged to celebrate by making myself a vodka martini, very dry, shaken, not stirred." Lanham considered that Faulks had "produced a book true to the spirit of the originals", whilst also producing a novel that "works as a thriller".