Bond Under Covers

A quick word about the cover images I am using to illustrate my posts about the Bond novels. I've chosen my favourite paperback editions, the iconic Pan covers which were designed by Raymond Hawkey, who also did the famous covers for the Harry Palmer novels by Len Deighton.

There are a host of sites devoted to the various editions of Fleming's novels. For me it is these colourful but understated covers for the Pan editions that stand out. They were the face of the Bond books at the peak of his popularity in the 60s. At the moment I have collected seven of the fifteen and continue to scour second hand book stalls for the rest. Beautiful things.

James Bond - Goldfinger

Back to the complete Bond-thru with the seventh book, Goldfinger from 1959.

M assigns 007 to investigate the gold smuggling activities of one of Fleming's best villains, Auric Goldfinger. Before long Bond is catching him cheating at cards, beating him in a memorable golf match, and coming up against the definitive henchman, Oddjob.

This is Fleming at the height of his powers and of the Bond novel's popularity. The format is well established: we get not one but two sporting encounters, some racy Bond girls including Pussy Galore, and Bond is strapped to the table to be tortured with a circular saw (it was changed to the Laser for the movie version). There is quit a lot of dialogue to wad through with lengthy exchanges between Bond and Goldfinger, but these do include my favourite lines from any of the novels when Goldfinger declares: "Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."

Having acquired his signature weapon in the last book Bond changes his Bentley for the famous Aston Martin in this one. Not that he gets to use either the gun or the car very much as once again he has to rely on his wits and his physical resilience to get him out of trouble. It's another cracking example of the 007 books, perhaps the best section is the golf match with Fleming demonstrating his knowledge of the intricacies, and the dirty tricks, of the game.

One memorable villain, no medical conditions (other than his lust for gold), one nasty henchman, several Bond girls, two sporting encounters and one torture scene. All this plus death by gold paint!

James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only.

James Bond - Dr. No

The sixth 007 novel, Dr. No published in 1958.

Bond has recovered from his ordeal at the end of From Russia to Love and is sent to Jamaica to investigate a couple of missing persons connected to the secret service. Both M and Bond seem to regard it as a bit of a holiday assignment but before long 007 is sneaking onto Crab Key island and encountering both Honeychile Ryder and the infamous Dr. No.

It is fairly easy to see why they chose this one for the first film. Bond does a lot more than in Casino Royale, and, of course, there is some exotic travel, a creepy villain and the Bond girl to beat all Bond girls. 007 also receives his signature weapon in this book. Fleming, who confessed he knew nothing about guns, had received a letter from a firearms expert called Major Boothroyd who put him right about Bond's Beretta. Fleming rewarded his correspondent by having him appear as the armourer who suggests Bond switch away from this "ladies' gun" to the more powerful and reliable Walther PPK. Not that Bond gets to fire it, he does use a Smith & Wesson .38 against Dr. No's dragon vehicle but with little effect. Bond's personal friends continue to do badly and the loyal Quarrel dies horribly when their plan to disable the dragon fails.

After this setback we get a memorable encounter with the sadistic Dr. No, complete with mechanical hands and thick glass contact lenses, who explains his plans to Bond before forcing him through his torture tunnel (not a euphemism) and staking Honeychile out to be eaten by crabs. Inevitably Bond survives to turn the tables on the bad guy and dispose of him in such a suitably ironic way that I wonder why they didn't keep that in the film version. Although on reflection it would perhaps have been more appropriate for the Roger Moore Bond era.

This is a terrific Bond adventure spoiled only by the period's view of the "Yellow Peril" and the Chinese in particular. Apart from this 21st century anachronistic quibble this is Fleming in a purple patch, with From Russia to Love behind him and Goldfinger to come. Again it easy to see why the James Bond novels were generating such excitement at the time.

One villain with several medical conditions (including Dextrocardia), the most memorable Bond girl ever, no sporting encounter but one torture sequence and several gruesome deaths.

James Bond will return in ... Goldfinger

James Bond - From Russia with Love

The fifth Bond novel was published in 1957 and this is much more like it.

The first interesting thing is that Bond doesn't turn up in this book until nearly half-way through. Almost  80 pages deal with the construction of the SMERSH plot to lure Britain's most effective intelligence agent to Turkey and then kill him in a manner designed to cause maximum embarrassment to her majesty's secret service. All the stuff about the recruitment and training of the assassin Red Grant is neatly summed up in the first two scenes of the movie but here goes on for quite a bit longer.

007 is summoned to M's office and then sent to Turkey to meet the mystery girl who is promising them a Spektor decoding machine that will allow them to crack all the Russian codes. From there on things move very quickly and it isn't long before Bond and the lovely Tatiana Romanova are trying to escape on board the Orient Express.

This is probably the novel which had the most faithful adaptation for the big screen. Just about everything happens exactly the same apart from the final encounter with Red Grant and the subsequent escape and boat chase that was added in to the film.

From Russia with Love is a much more satisfying read than the last book. Bond and M clearly know that the whole thing is a trap but are curious as to what the trap is and why. Bond is much more active here and there is plenty of violence, although he is rather inconsistent in his views about killing in cold blood. It upsets him when Darko Kerim uses his shoulder as a rifle rest to assassinate the Russian agent who tried to kill him, Bond seems to have forgotten that he earned his 00 status by carrying out similar acts.

It is a gripping read and the idea of the Spektor machine is fascinating. In 1957 not many of the public would have heard about the German Enigma, Bletchley park and project Ultra, yet Fleming's work during the war in naval intelligence brought him directly into contact with them and the attempts to seize one of the vital machines. The Bond girl is more memorable as is the sex scene. Red Grant makes a memorable villain and all in all this is a much more satisfying Bond book..

One villain with a sort of medical condition, one Bond girl who juts in front and behind, no sporting encounter, no torture and several bizarre deaths.

James Bond will return in ... Dr No.

James Bond - Diamonds are Forever

By 1956 Ian Fleming was turning out a Bond novel every year and they were proving to be hugely successful. Diamonds are Forever was even serialised in the Daily Express.

M sends Bond to take the place of an imprisoned courier and infiltrate the criminal gang responsible for a huge diamond smuggling scheme. Before long 007 is in America and mixing it up with a group of gangsters called the Spangled Mob. Along the way he will fall for the enigmatic Tiffany Case and meet up with his old friend Felix Leiter.

Diamonds are Forever is a quick and easy read. It does seem somewhat strange that Bond is basically working as an undercover policeman against a bunch of ordinary criminals with no connections to SMERSH. At least he is less objectionable in this book. Fleming seems to have toned down some of his more unpleasant views although he still finds time to be rude about the Irish, Americans, particularly their food (again), and Jewish people. There is also a rather extraordinary sequence describing Bond's flight to the USA and the irritations of air travel that existed even back then in the 1950s.

Bond is a bit more proactive this time and goes beyond the limits of his orders to stir up the Spangled Mob, although it seems clear that M expected him to do just that. There is a fair amount of violence and a sequence where Bond lives up to his double O status by shooting two nasty bad guys fairly quickly and efficiently. He is still using his Beretta pistol at this stage and has not yet been upgraded to his signature Walther PPK.

But it all seems a bit dull and low key for a James Bond adventure. There is no super-villain as such, the Bond girl is slightly more interesting than in Moonraker but still does not leave a lasting impression, and Bond himself seems a bit bored with it all. It feels like Fleming churned this one out fairly quickly in response to the public's reaction to the first three books.

The Bond check-list includes one minor villain with a medical condition (which Fleming gets wrong - there is no blood group F), no sporting encounter other than a rigged card game, a torture sequence which happens "off camera" between chapters, and one horrible and bizarre death (from hot mud!).

Bit of a let down really.

James Bond will return in ... From Russia with Love.

James Bond - Moonraker

April 1955 brought the third Bond novel Moonraker.

M invites Bond to his club, Blades, to help determine if Hugo Drax is cheating at cards. Having spotted how Drax is doing it Bond then takes him on and beats him at his own game. Afterwards Bond is assigned to investigate Drax's Moonraker missile project and uncovers a plot to destroy London itself.

This is a much more interesting Bond novel. It sees the beginnings of what would become the formula particularly for the sixties movies. Bond meets the villain early on, beats him in a sporting encounter and then goes on to foil some huge, technological plot. Fortunately it is a much easier book to read than Live and Let Die with less bigotry on display, although Germans come in for a fair amount of abuse. The Bond girl, Gala Brand, may be one of the least memorable in all of the books, She doesn't even make it into the film version.

At the heart of the book is the great Bridge game played between Bond and Drax. I remember when I first read this I was so fascinated that I learnt the rules of Bridge and spent some time recreating the hands that Bond deals to defeat Drax. I also spent ages trying to work out how Bond switched the decks at the crucial moment. After the card game the stuff about the missile and the targeting codes is rather uninteresting. It's the atmosphere in Blades, the food and drink, and that card game that make this novel.

The Bond check list includes one villain with a medical condition, one sporting encounter, some self-inflicted torture in the missile exhaust tubes, and one Bond girl with a distinguishing mole on her breast but nothing else to remember her by.

James Bond will return in ... Diamonds are Forever!

James Bond - Live and Let Die

Hot on the heels of Casino Royale came the rather surprising second Bond novel. Live and Let Die published in 1954.

This one was much more tricky to get through. Bond is sent to America to investigate Mr. Big who appears to have discovered a stash of pirate gold, and is using it to fund his work for SMERSH. After Bond and Leiter get into trouble in a Harlem nightclub they meet the villain and the beautiful Solitaire. The action move on to Florida and then Jamaica where Mr Big captures Bond and the girl and prepares to keel haul them.

If reading the first book was a bit uncomfortable because of Bond's (and Fleming's) views about women then this book is even worse in its depiction of black characters. Fleming obviously prided himself on his ability to record the New York slang of Harlem in the 1950s and the patois of Florida and Jamaica but sixty years later it is just horrible and makes for a very unpleasant reading experience.

At least Bond gets more to do in this one. He has a couple of scuffly fights and one protracted gunfight. When he and Solitaire are about to be dragged over the razor sharp coral and into Barracuda invested waters their miraculous escape comes about because of something Bond did earlier and not as the result of a Deus ex Machina device as in Casino Royale.

Bond has to give up his fine clothes for American regalia as part of his cover, likewise he eats American food and is pretty snobbish about it all. At least he gets a few decent drinks. There is no clever spy work to match the craft Bond displayed in the his first outing. On the whole Bond just seems like a blunt instrument who forces his way through Mr Big's organisation. Interestingly the bad guys know who Bond is from the moment he arrives in America and the idea of the "secret" agent who is known right across the world has begun.

Not an enjoyable read to be honest, let us hope the card game in the next book can set this marathon back on its feet.

Bond check list includes one villain with a medical condition, one beautiful bond girl with "jutting" breasts, one torture scene, but no sporting encounter.

James Bond will return in ... Moonraker!

James Bond - Casino Royale

While I am working my way through the Superman films, all the Alien movies and the latest Big Finish releases I have set myself another challenge. Last month I went to a book talk by the historian Ben Macintyre about his most recent book Double Cross. I was intrigued to learn that he had written a biography of Ian Fleming and James Bond. I bought it and it was a fascinating read which has prompted me to go back and look at the original novels and to try and read them in the order they were published. So here goes with the original Bond novel from 1953.

The plot is well known. Bond is sent to beat the villain Le Chiffre at Baccarat in the eponymous Casino. I don't think it is too much of a spoiler to say that Bond wins the card game but things don't go entirely according to plan from then on.

The strange thing is how little Bond actually does in this first book. Apart from the card game, he is involved in one brief scuffle at the Casino and he drives and then crashes his Bentley. Otherwise he is a mostly passive participant in the events which happen to him or to those around him. He isn't the punching, shooting man of action that he becomes in the films.

However, all the well known facets of Bond's lifestyle are filled in. His clothes are described in beautiful detail. He goes on about drink a lot, and invents the famous Vodka martini. He orders expensive food with great precision and then asks the head waiter if he approves of the choices in a combination of snobbery and wishing to impress. As Macintyre points out in his book these meals must have been instantly attractive to Fleming's audience in post war austerity Britain. Some foods were still rationed until 1954, Bond's menu could only be dreamed about by the majority of his readers.

And, of course, there are Bond's views about women which are also spelt out in some detail and are really quite reprehensible, even for the time. All in all James Bond comes across as an unpleasant character. We might admire his actions and nerve, but we probably wouldn't choose to be in a room with him. Especially with his 60 cigarettes a day habit. This is certainly not the James Bond from the films. It is slightly difficult to see what set the public's imagination alight but maybe it was all those fabulous meals.

One final point of note. Bond has a few minutes between winning his card game and taking Vesper Lynd out to dinner, in which he has to hide the cheque in his hotel room. The way he does so, which defeats both the villains and his accomplice Mathis, is a fantastic little bit of spy-craft which I have never seen used in any of the films. Very clever indeed.

The Bond checklist for this book includes: one villain with a medical condition or deformity, one beautiful girl, one torture scene and one sporting or gambling encounter with the bad guy. Next up is Live and Let Die.