London - Bond is back, exactly as we remember him but also subtly different. For one thing, he looks a bit like Daniel Day-Lewis.
William Boyd, who has written a new official James Bond novel authorized by Ian Fleming's family, says Day-Lewis would be perfect to play the 007 he's created in Solo.
Boyd says Fleming once described Bond as "looking like the American singer-songwriter Hoagy Carmichael. Daniel Day-Lewis looks like Hoagy Carmichael."
Solo is set in 1969 and takes the suave British spy - 45 years old and feeling his age - from London's plush Dorchester Hotel to a war-ravaged West African country and to Washington.
The book was launched Wednesday with a suitably glamorous photo call involving sports cars and flight attendants, ahead of its publication in Britain on Thursday.
It will be published in the United States and Canada on 8 October.