The Old Man and the Spy

It's taken a while, but I have finally finished the AudioGo recording of Ian Fleming's 'From Russia with Love'.  This version was read by Toby Stephens, who fans will recognise as the villain Gustav Graves from 'Die Another Day'.

'From Russia with Love' by Ian Fleming
Read by Toby Stephens
(AudioGo, 2012)

James Bond is a marked man.  The Russian spy-killers SMERSH have decided they need to bag a big name and none come bigger than Bond.  Orchestrated by Colonel Rosa Klebb and chess master Kronsteen, SMERSH set a trap with the twin temptations of the beautiful Corporal Tatiana Romanova and a top secret Spektor coding machine.  Although suspicious, M and Bond decide it is a prize worth making a play for and before long the famous secret agent is on his way to Istanbul, unaware that Russia's top assassin, Donovan Grant, is on his tail...

Unfortunately, I found this story hard work.  It starts well enough, with a focus on Grant and his origins, but once the story moved to the boardrooms of the Russian military, my mind began to wander.  In the paperback, it's more than 90 pages before Bond makes an appearance, but it's hard to believe that it's purely his absence that stopped it holding my attention.  I usually like it when Fleming tries something different, but I think this time it fell a bit flat and led to a lack of tension early on, for me anyway.

Whether I enjoy each Bond novel often seems to hinge on how much I like the female lead.  Romanova seemed a bit too much of a push-over, little more than a pair of blue eyes and some fluttering lashes.  That may appeal to a certain male audience, but I'm afraid I need a brain too please.  I know that the girls can't outshine Bond and that these books represent the values of a different era, but it's always more fun when the ladies get a look in on the action rather than just being damsels in distress.

I think my love of the film version was also a big problem here.  'From Russia with Love' is one of

'From Russia with Love'
by Ian Fleming
(Penguin Modern Classics, 2004)

my favourites, so I had high hopes that the book would exceed the movie and flesh out the key characters, particularly Kerim and Klebb.  To a degree it did, but unfortunately I didn't really like what I found out, especially about the apparently lovable Kerim.  I'm very glad that the sexual politics of today don't accept 'taming' women the same way they did in 1957.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed by the book.  Perhaps people who haven't seen the film will get more out of it because they don't know the basic plot, but I doubt there are many people who haven't watched it already and that doesn't make up for the dodgy way the female characters are portrayed and treated.  On the whole, like Grant and Klebb, it's a bit odd, but that won't stop me pushing on with the rest of Fleming's novels.

I will return.... with the rather different 'The Victorian Chaise-Longue' by Marghanita Laski!

Related Posts

'Casino Royale'
'Live and Let Die'
'Moonraker'
'Dr No'
'For Your Eyes Only'
'Thunderball'
'Octopussy, the Living Daylights and Other Stories'

No Limit!

No no no no no no no no no no no no there's no limit!

'Dr No' by Ian Fleming, read by Hugh Quarshie
(AudioGo 2012)

OK, now I've got that out of my system, here is a post about 'Dr No' by Ian Fleming, an AudioGo 007 Reloaded version of the novel read by Hugh Quarshie.

Returning to active duty after a near fatal encounter with the Russians, James Bond is given an easy assignment; investigating the disappearance of two MI6 operatives based in Kingston, Jamaica.  But the case is not as it seems. Before too long M's 'bit of a holiday' looking into a suspected affair and elopement has evolved into something far more sinister.  As Bond joins the dots, he finds all the threads lead to Crab Key, home to rare birds, a guano plant and the secretive spider at the web's centre, Dr Julius No.

'Dr No' is much more meticulously paced than 'Live and Let Die', the last Bond story I listened to as an audiobook.  It's still not a long novel, but it includes much more tension, character development and back story and is the better for it.  Bond lives a hyper-real, ultra-violent life just within sight of reality, so it helps to actually bring the story back down to Earth by making readers care about the characters.  In 'Dr No', Quarrel and Honeychile Ryder are much more developed than Solitaire in 'Live and Let Die', so there is a greater sense of danger that makes you genuinely root for these people and want to find out what happens next.

'Dr No' by Ian Fleming
(Penguin Modern
Classics, 2004)

I thought Solitaire was a complete waste of space, but I absolutely fell in love with Honeychile Ryder.  Although in some ways a victim of circumstances, she's not been sat around waiting for Bond to arrive and sort everything out for her.  She has her own aims, talents and desires, some more sensible than others, but whether her decisions make good sense or not, at least she's trying and she's not afraid of using her skills and knowledge to make her way independently in the world.  You go girl!

While the heroes seem more real, the villain Dr No was as unreal as they come.  Perhaps it was a deliberate dichotomy or maybe a villain as completely off the wall as this one is so unbelievable to prevent readers having nightmares.  Having said that, while No was a typical megalomaniacal Bond villain who seemed completely detached from reality in his underground lair, he was scary.  Normally this sort of character becomes borderline camp in the films, but on the page and in his own domain claustrophobia sets in and you begin to doubt that even 007 can overcome this madman's manipulations.

Overall, 'Dr No' is a great adventure story, action-packed, tense and with real punch in places.  It has dated in the last 57 years, but, to be fair, all the Bond books I've encountered so far have, like so many of their contemporaries.  If you can see beyond this, however, I would recommend it.

Now, what next?

Related Posts

'Live and Let Die'
'Casino Royale'
'For Your Eyes Only'

Bond goes on a Treasure Hunt

The final book I finished last month was 'Live and Let Die' by Ian Fleming.  It was another in the 007 Reloaded series from AudioGo and read by Rory Kinnear, who played M's assistant Bill Tanner in 'Quantum of Solace' and 'Skyfall'.  Fact!

'Live and Let Die' by Ian Fleming
(AudioGo, 2012)

'Live and Let Die' begins with a pirate's gold.  Old, rare and valuable coins from a legendary Caribbean hoard are mysteriously surfacing in America and the authorities want to know how they're getting there.  Working with the FBI and the CIA's Felix Leiter, Bond is sent on a treasure hunt that plunges him headlong into a world of superstition, voodoo and organised crime.  His target is Mr Big, cult leader, smuggler and SMERSH operative, a powerful figure in the Black community who manipulates his magical reputation to get what he wants from his network of terrified informants.  When 007 is forced to go on the run with Mr Big's pet psychic Solitaire, there seems to be no chance of escape.  But Bond was born lucky and it takes more than stories to frighten him.  Something more like the thought of a night time swim in a sea of frenzied sharks and barracuda...

This book is the most 'boy's own' of all the Bond stories I've read/heard so far.  Ignoring the fact that the novel is very much of its time and uses words and descriptions that are unacceptable today, it starts off very gung ho and a bit Bond-by-numbers, almost like Fleming wasn't sure where he was going with it.  For example, a scene set in Mr Big's night club hide out featuring an erotic dancer who strips her meagre coverings for a baying mob may be a teenage boy's cheap thrill, but it seemed excessive even as an attempt to suggest Mr Big and his minions were nothing but unsophisticated tribal savages or to remind us that we're in the hyper-charged world of Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.  Solitaire, also, feels like a box ticked rather than a necessity for the story.  A typical damsel in distress, she comes across as vapid, useless and rather pointless overall.  But can Bond be Bond without a girl?

About half way through, however, Bond and Leiter get back to the business in hand, start doing some actual

'Live and Let Die' by Ian Fleming
(Penguin, 2004)

spying and - lo! - the story starts to pick up.  From then onwards, the tension builds to a fantastic climax that kept me guessing even though I knew what would probably happen.  Now that's more like it!

As with the other 007 Reloaded CDs I've listened to so far, this one kept things simple and benefited from it.

Overall, I was slightly disappointed by this book, but enjoyed the return of Felix Leiter, the tense second half and working out which films various scenes and events had ended up it.  (It goes without saying that this book bears little resemblance to the enjoyable film, but bits of it do appear in other movies, most obviously in 'Licence to Kill'.)

I've already started on 'Dr No' and it's already a much more plodding work, leaden by comparison with this.  I'll be interested to see if it does the opposite to 'Live and Let Die' and gets a bit feisty in the second half instead.

Related Posts

'Casino Royale'
'For Your Eyes Only'

There's Something at the Bottom of the Garden...

I'm never going into a garden again and if you think I'll look at any future eclipses or other astronomical events, you've got another thing coming!

As you might be able to guess, I've just finished John Wyndham's 'The Day of the Triffids', probably the best known of this British author's novels. 

'The Day of the Triffids' is a story of human survival in the midst of a terrifying worldwide apocalypse.  Bill Mason wakes in a London hospital, his eyes bandaged following eye treatment.  Confused and frightened by the lack of normal noise either in the hospital or outside his window, he cautiously removes the dressings and finds himself in the middle of a living nightmare.  A 'meteorite' storm the previous night has blinded most of the world's population and, as he travels through London in shock, Bill finds that life as he knew it has gone for good.  As he begins to encounter other survivors, he realises that the catastrophe has often brought out the worst in people.  As the remaining population begins to find ways to group and cope with the new circumstances, a new, terrible threat emerges - the determined, devious and deadly Triffids...

Now, first things first.  There was one part of this book that made me very, very irritated.  One group of intellectualised survivors band together at a London university.  One of the earliest things they do is call a meeting at which an eminent Sociologist talks about the future of society and how it will be necessary to leave elements of the old moral framework, behind for practical reasons.  Fair enough.  But why is sex their main priority when they haven't even found a safe way out of London yet?  London, which is already littered with suicides and brutal gangs and already a breeding ground for disease?  And when they only have one, shy nurse to provide pre- and postnatal care?!

I can only assume that when this book was written in the 1950s, talking about sanctioned sexual promiscuity was terribly, terribly shocking in a way it simply isn't today.  Then it would sort of make sense.  But to my modern (female) eyes, it just seemed like putting the cart before the horse.  No point in having babies if you can't feed them or keep them safe, even if you are trying to save mankind.

On the whole though, this book is a real page turner, a brilliant combination of horror, socio-political comment and old fashioned adventure.  It did get a bit preachy in places, particularly when an idealistic but impulsive character called Coker comes on the scene, but I think I understood most of the comparisons the author was drawing with different political ideologies.

I know I shouldn't be, but it still surprises me how relevant the science fiction of the last century still is.  'The Day of the Triffids' could be read as socio-political comment, environmental parable or analysis of how we might cope with extreme disaster.  As a result, it's incredibly interesting as well as entertaining.

And, of course, you have a fantastic villain: The Triffids.  Human beings may have had a hand in creating their predicament, but the constant and escalating onslaughts by the seven foot tall, alien-looking plants really is a danger all its own.  They're clever, they're everywhere and they're topped with lightening-quick stings which can kill a man several feet away.  As I say, Prince Charming can do the gardening from now on!

'The Day of the Triffids' begins with probably one of the most famous opening lines ever.  Striking the reader like a slap across the face from the start, the book doesn't let up at any point.  Before you know it, you've turned the last page... And you're wondering whether that rustling really is just the breeze through the trees.  Shudder!