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60 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome back Mr Bond, 29 May 2008
This review is from: Devil May Care (James Bond) (Hardcover)
I purchased this at 11 yesterday morning and went to bed at 3 this morning. Forget Raymond Benson and John Gardner, this is vintage James Bond, you can feel Fleming's ghost over your shoulder, it reads like the best of his books with a fast moving plot bags,of gourmet food and drink with a cracking villain. I always liked the early Bond books never liked the films, the Bond in the books was toally different darker and more vulnerable, and if you are expecting the Bond of the movies you will be disappointed. Sebastian Faulks has captured this brilliantly. I hope he writes another, I think Bond does for the fifties and sixties what Sherlock Holmes has done for the Victorian and Edwardian age the early books are becoming classics (my old english teacher will role over in his grave)
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44 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Racy but ludicrous - just as good as Fleming!, 9 Jun 2008
This review is from: Devil May Care (James Bond) (Hardcover)
"Bond has lost his licence to thrill" proclaimed The Scotsman newspaper in a review in the edition the day after this book was published. A play on words dreamt up months if not years ago, I should think, and having now read the book, one week on, written on the basis of a less than complete reading of it.
I read "Devil May Care" while considering the question "if I did not know that was not written by Ian Fleming (say about1967, when it is set), would I have known?". In short, I think not. Faulks captures Flemings' style brilliantly.
Faulks does allow himself a few nods to the Bond films as well as to the earlier books (Flemings' ones only - even Kingsley Amis/Robert Markham's Colonel Sun appears to have been discounted, not to mention the 23 other Bond novels. (Fleming published 12 novels, plus two collections of short stories.)) The villain, one Dr Julius Gorner, has more than a passing resemblance to Drax ("Moonraker") and appears in one scene "in a tropical suit with a carnation" just as I remember Charles Gray playing Blofeld in one of the films. There are some topical references too: opium poppies are coming from Helmand province in Afghanisatan - which just happens to be where British troops are battling the drugs trade and international terrorism today. Bond is equipped with a gadget by "Q Section" (there was never a man called "Q" in the books, just the films); Bond, however, fails to use it or even mention it again.
The plot's formula follows Fleming's established pattern with only the requisite number of variations. Bond is on a sabbatical, because he is losing his touch and has not quite recovered after the snake bite poisoning from Scaramanga's bullet two years before. He is on the wagon on doctor's orders. We know that all is not well when a woman offers herself to him - but he turns her down. There is an early "social" encounter with the villain, after which Bond follows him to his lair, falls into his evil clutches, is set a test to challenge the very best, fails but subsequently escapes, kills the baddie, saves the world. Did I mention that Felix Leiter appears to help out (and boost sales in the US?). As ever Bond has a female accomplice, and here I think Faulks does achieve something new. I was kept guessing throughout the book as to whether she was really what she said she was, and, if she was not, whether that was good or bad. I guessed the wrong way.
Lest you think that I am seeking to belittle the Bond novels, far from it. They are brilliant - entertaining, informative in their way, racy - but the plots were always (if you thought them through) a bit ludicrous. That was the point - and not the point - a willing suspension of disbelief was all that was needed, but was essential. If you want (to pretend you are reading) something more credible try Le Carre or even, god knows, Gerald Seymour or Andy McNab.
If I have any bones to pick, then I point out one "continuity" mistake that made it through (even though Faulks re-read all of the Bond books before writing this one. Bond could not have "found himself at last in Russia" because he had travelled across Russia between the end of You Only Live Twice" and the beginning of "The Man with the Golden Gun". I am inclined to accept that Faulks did this intentionally, however, as Bond had, perhaps, not been entirely in his own mind on that journey - he was being brainwashed by the KGB. Perhaps more irritatingly, some "new" characters were really quite derivative - quite apart from Gorner, Bond's SIS contact in the Middle East is almost identical to Kerim Darko from "From Russia with Love" - it is one thing to tip the wink to the original book, quite another to copy characters!
A well-reconstructed blast from the past, I loved it. Whether I think Faulks or anyone else should write any more Bond novels I don't know - but, on the basis of this work, I'd be prepared to give it a shot.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Money for old rope, 24 Jun 2008
This review is from: Devil May Care (James Bond) (Hardcover)
Apparently, the remit for Faulks was to take Bond back to the late 1960s, rather than continually updating him, as other authors have done with varying degrees of success. This promised much, but Faulks, in my humble opinion, didn't deliver.
The story begins in Paris with a murder and René Mathis of the French secret service is called in. Faulks has captured the flavour of France, which isn't surprising since he has written several literary novels set there. But as the beginning of a new Bond adventure, it was tame; there's no real threat to Bond or the world in general, though we obliquely meet one of the villains.
Returning from a sabbatical on the Continent, Bond is briefed by M concerning Dr Julius Gorner, who appears to be a genius involved in pharmaceuticals, liable to flood Britain with drugs. Bond's task is to `talk to him. See what makes him tick.' And here we thought Bond was licensed to kill, not to talk someone to death. Maybe he has an eye on psychiatry when he leaves the Service?
There's a lot here that is familiar to Bond aficionados - descriptions of thrilling cities, such as Paris and Tehran, details of food and clothing - but, that apart, the flavour of the book isn't what we expect when Faulks states he's `writing as Ian Fleming'. Indeed, the writing and plotting are sloppy in places, but it would be unfair to go into details and thus spoil the storyline.
Having said that, it's a tolerably good read (hence the 3 stars), with flashes of the old Bond, but it's also derivative - sub-standard pastiches of Goldfinger and Moonraker with several nods to the film franchise in particular. The villains initially seem to be intriguing and nasty but don't really live up to their promise. Faulks mentions SMERSH as if it still existed at that time, yet it merged into the MGB, the forerunner of the KGB in 1946. At least Gardner and Benson got their spycraft right.
The ending - with its fairly obvious `twist' - is contrived. Faulks cannot write good action scenes, either; his 'Charlotte Gray' is a fine example; good on character, poor on action. As a thriller, DMC hots up towards the end, granted, but there was nothing really new here; it has all been done before.
The title is not explained, either - which is typical of the later films perhaps but not of the original books. It might as well have been called `Money for Old Rope'.
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