Review by Ian Keogh

Himeros starts with the killing of an extremely wealthy businessman in jail. He’d been arrested for sex offences with children. He’s survived by his female assistant who claims once she realised the truth about him she was trapped with no options.

The set up is transparently taken from 2019’s news headlines, but it’s only the starting point for Rodney Barnes as that assistant Sarah Robinson is conveniently also skilled in martial arts and a better than average marksman. James Bond is tasked with keeping her safe from a murderous client of her former boss, whose reputation couldn’t withstand exposure as a paedophile.

If that plot seems a little below the film Bond’s attention, it is, but it’s a grounded real world scenario of the type Bond’s creator Ian Fleming used in his earliest novels, and it develops into something bigger as the location switches. The key becomes how far Sarah can be trusted. Barnes also switches the spotlight to the chief villain, and it’s his attitudes that supply the title, citing the Greek god of sexual desire in justification of the elite’s proclivities being beyond judgement.

While the plot is serviceable and Barnes has a good handle on Bond’s smooth character, he’s badly let down by the artwork. First up is Antonio Fuso whose preference is for sketchy pages featuring little beyond people, and he even manages to suck the excitement from a car chase. Giorgio Pontrelli takes over for the final two chapters and while he’s more inclined to supply backgrounds it’s also obvious that several pages have been drawn in a rush. Neither artist supplies much in the way of emotional reactions.

It leaves Himeros as a passable experience rather than anything special, although Barnes may have come up with a workable real world solution to the problem of gangsters well beyond the reach of the law in large countries. In this age of disinformation, would their power continue if rumours were circulated as to their deviancies?