Scenes in the James Bond Novels that make you squeamish?

Silhouette Man

After the success of this thread when it focused on the scenes and moments in the James Bond film series that made you feel squeamish I thought that it was high time that I created one for the James Bond novels.

For me, personally, there's nothing really that stands out from the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels as reading matter that would make me squeamish. The carpet-beater torture from Casino Royale is a good one but I find it described in a kind of 1950s censored "less is more" tone (that I think actually went over my head when I was younger). Mr Big being eaten by the shark in Live and Let Die is also a good scene but again it doesn't make me squeamish.

No, for me the scene in the Bond novels that makes me most squeamish is actually in one of the Continuation novels (which are fair game in this thread by the way). It concerns the repeated stabbing in the chest by James Bond of a guard/sailor on The Altair boat in Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun (1968). I recall reading this for the first time on top of my bed. I had to get up and move about just to read this wantonly violent passage. It was really difficult for me to read so I put that scene down as one that really did make me squeamish. No doubt there were some others, but nothing else in the literary Bond affected me as much as did reading that one scene for the first time.

So, I've shared my scene from the Bond novels that really made me squeamish - now I'd love to hear yours! -{

Napoleon Plural

One that takes place off page, as it were. The description of Rosa Klebb's torture methods, how she would breathe in the victim's screams like 'perfume'... or am I mis-recalling? Really very horrible stuff, nothing like that in the film I'm glad to say.

Some nasty soft porn stuff in Wood's film novelisations too, like the trussed up naked body in the ski lodge, in a transparent blood stained plastic bag. Hmm, perhaps it says something about me that I remember all that.

Barbel

Napoleon Plural wrote:

The description of Rosa Klebb's torture methods, how she would breathe in the victim's screams like 'perfume'... or am I mis-recalling?

Nope, you're quite right.

superado

Napoleon Plural wrote:

Some nasty soft porn stuff in Wood's film novelisations too, like the trussed up naked body in the ski lodge, in a transparent blood stained plastic bag. Hmm, perhaps it says something about me that I remember all that.

Yes, it does say a lot about you, NP, if you associate the dead body with soft porn! )

Napoleon Plural

I see what you mean, but it's the whole tone of the writing really. It was very 1970s, you felt guilty reading it. Wood took it further. So to speak.

superado

Just kidding of course. Yes, Wood took his Bond books to the next level, in fact he made Bond more "adult" than Fleming did as well as all the continuation novels as I attempt to mentally survey those, a paradox considering how the movie versions are. But, I enjoyed them like that though I suppose some of the moments in those books would make people squeamish.

Chriscoop

I think the part in Solo when bond pushes the large stone ball off the roof onto the south African bad guy Breed, with the "shattered shoulder and collar bone and three inched of shattered and smashed humerus sticking out three inches above breeds elbow"
Having seen some truly horrible injuries Boyds description of breeds downfall along with Bond's eventual killing of breed made me whince a little.