# Raymond Benson
**Raymond Benson** (born 1955) is an American author, game designer, and film historian best known as the third, and first American, writer commissioned to produce official [James Bond](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-bond) continuation novels, a role he held from 1996 to 2002.[1](https://raymondbenson.com/) In that period he published six original 007 novels, three film novelizations, and three short stories.[1](https://raymondbenson.com/) He has since written more than forty books, including the Black Stiletto thriller series and tie-in novels for video game franchises.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | 1955, Midland, Texas[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) |
| Bond tenure | Third and first American continuation author, 1996–2002; six original novels, three novelizations, three short stories[1](https://raymondbenson.com/) |
| First Bond novel | *Zero Minus Ten*, published April 1997 (Hodder & Stoughton, UK) and May 1997 (Putnam, US)[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) |
| Non-fiction | *The James Bond Bedside Companion* (1984; updated 1988), nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Biographical/Critical Work[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) |
| Return to Bond | *The Hook and the Eye* (2025), the first-ever Felix Leiter novel, published by Ian Fleming Publications[3](https://raymondbenson.com/2025/12/20/wrapping-up-2025-onward-to-2026/) |
| Other series | The Black Stiletto, five novels published 2011–2014[1](https://raymondbenson.com/) |
| Game credits | Head writer on *Ultima VII: The Black Gate*; designer of *Dark Seed II*; Bond text adventures *A View to a Kill* and *Goldfinger*[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) |
## Early life and education
Benson was born in [Midland, Texas](https://www.edgepedia.org/midland-texas), and his family moved to [Odessa, Texas](https://www.edgepedia.org/odessa-texas), when he was five; he graduated from [Permian High School](https://www.edgepedia.org/permian-high-school) in 1973.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) He has cited seeing the film *Goldfinger* at age nine as the start of his lifelong interest in James Bond.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) He studied drama at the University of Texas at Austin, switching from acting to directing, and graduated with a BFA in Directing with high honors in 1978.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) After an apprenticeship at the Alley Theatre in Houston, he moved to New York City in 1979, where he directed off-off-Broadway productions and composed theatrical music for over a decade.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
## The James Bond Bedside Companion
In 1981 Benson began a non-fiction book on the Bond phenomenon, covering the history of 007, a biography of [Ian Fleming](https://www.edgepedia.org/ian-fleming), and analyses of the novels and films; he received a publisher's contract for the project.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) *The James Bond Bedside Companion* was published by Dodd Mead in 1984, with an updated edition in 1988, and was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America for Best Biographical/Critical Work.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) Through the book he met members of the Fleming family and Peter Janson-Smith, chairman of Glidrose Publications, the company that handled the Bond literary business (later renamed Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.).[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) A retrospective review described the book as dubbed the "Bond Bible" by readers and credited its critical sections on Fleming with catching the rights holders' attention.[4](https://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/book-review-the-james-bond-bedside-companion-2576453.php)
## The Bond continuation novels
In late 1995, after John Gardner announced his retirement as Bond author, Janson-Smith asked Benson whether he would "give it a shot."[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) Benson spent most of 1996 writing his first Bond novel, *Zero Minus Ten*, along with the short story "Blast from the Past," which appeared in the January 1997 issue of *Playboy*.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) *Zero Minus Ten* was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton in April 1997 and in the US by Putnam in May, and was serialized in *Playboy*'s April and May 1997 issues.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
His six original novels, in publication order, were:
1. *Zero Minus Ten* (1997)[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
2. *The Facts of Death* (1998)[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
3. *High Time to Kill* (1999)[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
4. *Doubleshot* (2000)[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
5. *Never Dream of Dying* (2001)[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
6. *The Man with the Red Tattoo* (2002)[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
Three of these, *High Time to Kill*, *Doubleshot*, and *Never Dream of Dying*, form a trilogy involving the criminal organization called the Union, and were collected in the US anthology *The Union Trilogy* (2008); a second anthology, *Choice of Weapons* (2010), collected the other three novels plus two short stories.[5](https://raymondbenson.com/books/james-bond/) Benson also wrote novelizations of the films *Tomorrow Never Dies* (1997), *The World Is Not Enough* (1999), and *Die Another Day* (2002).[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) His three short stories were "Blast from the Past" (1997), "Midsummer Night's Doom" (1999), and "Live at Five" (1999), the last written for *TV Guide*.[5](https://raymondbenson.com/books/james-bond/)
The tenure ended when the new board at Glidrose, by then Ian Fleming Publications, decided to suspend the continuation novels; Benson left the Bond world in 2003 to write original fiction.[6](https://iamtw.org/2024/04/06/raymond-benson-on-writing-the-bond-novels/) In 2025 he returned at the invitation of Ian Fleming Publications to write *The Hook and the Eye*, the first-ever novel featuring Bond's American ally [Felix Leiter](https://www.edgepedia.org/felix-leiter), set in 1952 within Fleming's original timeline, with Felix working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency.[3](https://raymondbenson.com/2025/12/20/wrapping-up-2025-onward-to-2026/) The e-book appeared in June 2025 and the paperback in October 2025.[3](https://raymondbenson.com/2025/12/20/wrapping-up-2025-onward-to-2026/) An e-book anthology, *James Bond: The Raymond Benson Years*, collects all six original novels.[3](https://raymondbenson.com/2025/12/20/wrapping-up-2025-onward-to-2026/)
## Game design and tie-in work
Benson entered gaming through the James Bond 007 Role-Playing Game published by Victory Games in 1983, for which he wrote and designed the adventure module *You Only Live Twice II: Back of Beyond* (1986).[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) He then designed and wrote text adventures for Mindscape, including two Bond games, *A View to a Kill* (1985) and *Goldfinger* (1986).[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) As a computer game designer and writer he was head writer on *Ultima VII: The Black Gate* (1992) at Origin Systems, designed *Return of the Phantom* at [MicroProse](https://www.edgepedia.org/microprose), and wrote and designed *Dark Seed II*, based on [H. R. Giger](https://www.edgepedia.org/h-r-giger)'s artwork.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) At Viacom New Media he worked on the children's game *Are You Afraid of the Dark? The Tale of Orpheo's Curse*, which won a Parents' Choice Award and a *Newsweek* Editors' Choice Award in 1994.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
His tie-in novels include *Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell* (2004) and *Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda* (2005), both written under the pseudonym "David Michaels" and both New York Times best-sellers, as well as novelizations of *Metal Gear Solid* and *Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty*, *Hitman: Damnation* (2012), and *Dying Light: Nightmare Row*.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
## Original fiction
Benson's original suspense novels include *Evil Hours* (2004), *Face Blind* (2003), *Sweetie's Diamonds* (2006), which won the "Lovey" Readers Choice Award for Best Thriller of 2006, the rock 'n' roll detective novels *A Hard Day's Death* (2008) and *Dark Side of the Morgue* (2009), the latter nominated for a Shamus Award for Best Paperback Original P.I. Novel, and three Skyhorse thrillers, *The Secrets on Chicory Lane* (2017), *In the Hush of the Night* (2018), and *Blues in the Dark* (2019).[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) *The Black Stiletto* (2011) began a five-book series about a female vigilante in the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras, concluding with *The Black Stiletto: Endings & Beginnings* (2014); the serial was optioned by ABC Studios in 2015 for a possible television series and has since been in development as a feature film.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) *The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way* (2022) won the IPPY Gold Medal in Mystery from the Independent Publisher Book Awards.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
## Film history and other activities
Benson taught film history at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, from spring 2009 to fall 2019, and earlier taught a class on James Bond at the New School for Social Research in New York.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) He is a regular contributor to *Cinema Retro* magazine and, with film critic Dann Gire, ran "Dann and Raymond's Movie Club," a public library film discussion program, for 17 years.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) In 2005 the government of Kagawa Prefecture, Japan, erected a museum on the island of Naoshima dedicated to his final Bond novel, *The Man with the Red Tattoo*; it remained open for eleven years, and Benson served as a Kagawa Ambassador from 2006 to 2018.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/) He served on the Board of Directors of the Ian Fleming Foundation from 1995 to 2011.[2](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
## Place among Bond authors
Benson followed Ian Fleming, Kingsley Amis, and John Gardner as an author of original Bond novels, and was the first American among them.[7](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0072624/) • [1](https://raymondbenson.com/) Fan discussion of his tenure has been mixed: some readers credit his books, which blend Fleming's character with the gadget-heavy style of the films, as their introduction to literary Bond, while others rank him below Fleming and Amis as a stylist.[8](https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1061481) His *Bedside Companion*, by contrast, is consistently remembered as a landmark Bond reference work of its period.[8](https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1061481)
## References
1. [Raymond Benson, official website](https://raymondbenson.com/)
2. [About Raymond Benson, official biography](https://raymondbenson.com/about/)
3. [Wrapping Up 2025... Onward to 2026!, Raymond Benson blog](https://raymondbenson.com/2025/12/20/wrapping-up-2025-onward-to-2026/)
4. [Book Review: The James Bond Bedside Companion, Blogcritics via Seattle Post-Intelligencer](https://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/book-review-the-james-bond-bedside-companion-2576453.php)
5. [James Bond books page, Raymond Benson official website](https://raymondbenson.com/books/james-bond/)
6. [Raymond Benson on Writing the Bond Novels, International Association of Media Tie-In Writers](https://iamtw.org/2024/04/06/raymond-benson-on-writing-the-bond-novels/)
7. [Raymond Benson, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0072624/)
8. [25 Years since the publication of Zero Minus Ten, ajb007 forum](https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1061481)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Literature and written works › Writers and literary biographies › Fiction writers: novelists and genre › Crime, mystery, and thriller writers › Surnames symbols to H*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 12, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license