For Your Eyes Only (James Bond 007) [Paperback]

In "For Your Eyes Only", Bond enters highly murky waters by taking a more or less personal assignment from M to track down the killers of an old friend. It's a highly topical late '50s piece, involving a former Nazi as mastermind, and henchmen drawn from the ranks of Cuban dictator Battista. Interestingly (in hindsight), Bond expresses real sympathy with the rebel Castro's struggle! To act as M's executioner, Bond must travel to Canada and then sneak across the US border to operate in Vermont, which is kind of interesting. Things take a turn for the ridiculous when he stumbles across another revenge seeker, wielding a bow and arrow. The middle story, "Quantum of Solace" isn't a Bond story at all. Rather, it's a story of disaffected marriage told to Bond by his host after a rather boring dinner party. It's actually quite good, but has nothing to do with Bond.

"Risico" takes Bond back to action, and places him in Rome, where he is assigned to disrupt the flow of heroin into England. Fleming creates a rather prescient version of "The War on Drugs" by directing Bond to act against the insidious enemy of drugs. It's a classic Bond story in that Bond is easily duped, meets a pretty woman, meets an unlikely ally, and engages in near fatal gunplay. (And of course, at the end, the drug pipeline to England is all a nasty Soviet plot.) The final story, "The Hildebrand Rarity", is again, barely a Bond story—reducing him to observer status. He's not really on the job, but instead inexplicably agrees to hire himself out as a fishing expert in the Seychelles. Basically, he's just there as an audience for another marriage-gone-sour story. There is a villain, there is a murder, but Bond's not really a central character in it. The only real purpose to the story seems to be to allow Fleming to work out his own issues vis-à-vis American millionaires.

On the whole, these stories don't add much to the Bond canon. It would have been more interesting had Fleming chose to give us a taste of Bond's action in the Ardennes in WWII, or of the two assignments that led to his 00 designation (both of which are mentioned in Casino Royale). Still, the first story is worth a quick read, and "For Your Eyes Only" and "Risico" will be of interest to those who love the film versions.

'From a View To a Kill' is probably the weakest of the five stories and ends up by being unintentionally amusing. Bond is on his way through France after a previous failed assignment on the Austro-Hungarian border (most of these tales actually start with Bond being at a loose-end after a previous assignment) until he is press-ganged by Station F in Paris into investigating the murder of a British Army motorcycle dispatch rider and the stealing of his documents which contained 'all the top gen'
from SHAPE headquarters. Bond eventually uncovers a 'left-behind spy unit' inhabiting a sinister subterranean hideout in a forest clearing, from which they peer at the world through a periscope. The comparison to the Tellytubbies home is unfortunately inescapable. The humourous aspect is not helped when the spies cover their tracks by
wearing tennis-racket style snow shoes as they high-stepped backwards and forwards. When you see the title don't even think of the film of the same name, as like certain other of the Bond films the only thing it has in common with the written version is the title itself.

'For Your Eyes Only' (any similarity to the film of the same name is again, purely coincidental) is basically another 'hit' tale, but this time with an element of personal revenge added. It concerns the brutal murder of two of M's friends in colonial Jamaica and Bond's journey to Vermont to dispense justice. This story starts with a
delightfully descriptive account of a glorious 'lazy day' in a colonial house garden near the Blue Mountains in late 1950's Jamaica. Fleming is at his best when describing his beloved Jamaica, and for a while the reader is there too, sitting next to Colonel and Mrs Havelock on the veranda drinking tea. This device is also extremely
effective in garnering the readers sympathy for M's evident distress over their demise and to win their support for Bond's revenge mission. Time is spelt out for us with unusual clarity with Colonel Havelock's references to the situation in Cuba towards the end of the Batista years. Unfortunately for him and Mrs Havelock, 'Cuba' was
about to descend on them in a most unexpected and terrible fashion.

The Bahamas is the setting for 'Quantum of Solace', but it doesn't really matter, for
all the action takes place indoors, in the Governor's residence to be exact. I found this
the most curious of this set of five and indeed, it can arguably be stated that it is the most curious of all Bond's adventures because....it's not really a Bond adventure at all ! Let me explain; this tale is about how love when speared by deceit can turn to hate, but it's not experienced by Bond, it's told over cigars and drinks TO Bond BY the Governor, as he attempts to fill in a 'polite hour' after dinner, before they could both retire to bed. The protagonists of the Governor's story are one Philip Masters, of the
Colonial Service, and his pretty young wife called Rhoda. It is revealed to Bond how
their wedded bliss became a living hell on Bermuda. There is a slight twist in the tail
at the end of the Governors narrative and Bond is left feeling hollow as he thinks about the emptiness of his so-called dramatic life. This is a feeling that will probably last until he beds his next beauty.

'Risico' (an Italian double agents attempt at the word 'risk') is a tale that has the reader wondering just who is the good guy and who is the bad, as we, and Bond's, sympathies, are first pulled one way and then the other. Set in Italy, this tale concerns Bond's attempts to try and stem the flow of heroin coming into Britain. He initally starts out by acting on information received from a double agent for the American's,
one Signor Kristatos, which points to the smuggling chief being 'The Dove', Enrico
Colombo, but how reliable is Kristatos's information ?

The last tale is called 'The Hildebrand Rarity' and the title refers to a very rare fish that inhabits Chagrin Island in the Seycelles group. Bond (again at a loose end following a previous case) agrees to act as a 'fish-finder' for the wealthy but obnoxious American, Milton Krest. The story eventually turns into a 'whodunnit ?' as the unfortunate Mr Krest ends up dying in very fishy circumstances.

An enjoyable selection of short stories then. As you would expect, the plots aren't as involved as the longer novels but this brevity has its own attractions. It is not long before you are straight into the action and you don't really have enough time to know just what is going to happen next. Some are better than others but all are immensely readable and at the end of the day that's what it's all about isn't it ?