Per Fine Ounce

Per Fine Ounce is the title of an unpublished novel by Geoffrey Jenkins featuring Ian Fleming's James Bond. It was completed c.1966 and is considered a "lost" novel by fans of James Bond because it was actually commissioned by Glidrose Productions, the official publishers of James Bond. It was rejected for publication, however, missing the opportunity to become the first continuation James Bond novel. The Adventures of James Bond Junior 003½, a novel written by the pseudonymous R. D. Mascott, was later published in 1967 featuring James Bond's nephew; Colonel Sun written by Kingsley Amis under the pseudonym Robert Markham was published in 1968 as the first adult continuation novel following Ian Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun (1965).

History

Geoffrey Jenkins was given a job in the Foreign Department of Kemsley Newspapers, an organisation owned by the London Sunday Times, by Viscount Kemsley. There he worked with Ian Fleming, who was the Foreign Manager of the department, and the two men became friends. In a letter to John Pearson in 1965 when he was researching his biography on Ian Fleming, The Life of Ian Fleming, Jenkins revealed that in the late 1950s he had discussed the idea of a James Bond novel set in South Africa with Fleming, and even written a synopsis of it, which Fleming had very much liked. Fleming had said he would come to South Africa to research the book, but he died before this happened. Pearson was understandably excited by this revelation, and even more so when he found Jenkins' Bond synopsis in Fleming's papers.