Whether Hong Kong is shaken or stirred by the handover, the British will be on hand to save the day with super spy James Bond.
As the sun sets on the last outpost of empire, the men who 'run' Bond have made his next mission Hong Kong . . . but it's not clear who the baddies will be.
Bond expert Raymond Benson, a computer games author from Chicago, is the man chosen to write the '007 meets 1997' spy novel.
To avoid any political nastiness, it seems likely the main villains will be triads . . . but Benson, 47, is giving little away.
'I'm not telling you who the villains are: the Chinese, the English or the Triads - that's part of it all,' he said.
That the book should be set in Hong Kong at such an exciting time is no great surprise - but what has shocked Bond fans is that Benson has never written a novel.
