To Russia I flew...

Napoleon Plural

Revisited Fleming's old work over the weekend. Both brilliant and appalling in equal measure!

Good o' Kerim Bey's obsession with rape! Charming! Chaining his woman to the table leg so she becomes his willing slave. It all to make him larger than life, a loveable rogue.

But then: Red Grant's eyes described by Bond as 'opaque - the eyes of an introvert, of a man who rarely looks out into the world but is for ever surveying the scene inside him'. Brilliant!

And the way the narrative changes, so we know Grant is a killer but Bond doesn't! Very good, sort of mock-innocent narrative, rare for Fleming.

Then again: why build a telescope into the Russian hq? Surely a microphone would have been better to start off with! You don't really need to know the Russian's latest dress sense! What they're saying is what's important.

And Grant is such a shifty figure, and Bond so on his guard, you can't really believe he wouldn't verify with HQ that they'd actually sent someone out to help him.

This is also a distracting book to read in that bits of dialogue are lifted, in summarised form, and planted onto the screenplay. It's a lot darker and grimmer - well, the finale for instance. A rollicking good read though, and it captures Bond's awkard Englishness in trying to get on with Grant and make him comfortable.

Still not really sure how he escapes Grant's pistol in the train shootout though, does he flip the cig case up across his heart or something?

7289

Bond manages to insert his cigarette case into his novel and flip both over his heart just before Grant fires at him with the silenced 25 caliber version of "War & Peace".

The book and cigarette case would esily stop Grant's .25 dum dum bullet.

Napoleon Plural

Oh, Okay. I missed one amazing bit: the girl fight. Now in the film this is just a nasty wrestling match. In the book, Bond is advised that this fight is actually 'to the death' and would Bond be offended to watch it?

Why no, our charming hero says, even quoting from his mate Mathis something along the lines of "I like the stronger sensations". So our fine fellow is about to watch one woman beat another woman to death while he sips his raki - and he's okay with that! Kind sir, may I interest you in a copy of Hostel 2?

thesecretagent

7289 wrote:

Bond manages to insert his cigarette case into his novel and flip both over his heart just before Grant fires at him with the silenced 25 caliber version of "War & Peace".

The book and cigarette case would esily stop Grant's .25 dum dum bullet.

I always questioned this. I don't know anything about dum-dums and how soft they are, but back when they were legal I shot a .22 from a pistol through two telephone directories at ten feet. Standard lead bullet, standard .22 ammunition. Five inch barrel - so nothing ultra powerful, and certainly not as powerful as a .25.
I suppose the cigarette case made all the difference.

Loeffelholz

I'm no expert like my friend 7289 (who has given me excellent gun/historical advice for a writing project of my own)...but it's my understanding that a 'dum dum' would flatten out on impact, spreading the energy of the round over a larger area---intended to create much more tissue damage than a standard round---which would also translate to lesser overall penetration. The idea would be to have the lead remain lodged in its target, rather than passing cleanly through, increasing the odds of fatality/incapacitation, so the gunmetal cigarette case and the book could conceivably work quite well in this situation.

Add to this the 'Bond factor'...and Bond survives with some pain in his ribcage :007)

(If mistaken, I'll gladly stand corrected ;% )

7289

The .25 out of a silenced short barrel- as would be necessary for the book gun, is a pretty weak cartridge. As Loeffelholz pointed out the "dum-dum bullet is intended to stay in it's target and deform, not punch through it.

I Shot a Colt .25 at a phone book about a month ago. It penetrated about one and a half inches. The phone book was dry, not soaked with water as phone book shooters generally prefer.

Bonds metal cigarette case and about 150 pages of novel, plus the boards on the front and back of an Ambler thriller should be sufficent to slow the .25 down so that it would cause Bond's ribs to be "on fire" at impact, without penetrating oo7's skin.