Yes thought that would be of interest. Odd that is something new isn’t it
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,844MI6 Agent
I'm guessing that because IFP is a relatively new publisher they just hadn't gotten all of the overseas delivery logistics sorted. I'm glad to hear this issue has been resolved though.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,746Chief of Staff
You are probably right @Silhouette Man ….but that’s quite a big market to miss…I’ll have to check shipping costs…but it’s a great start…
YNWA 97
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,844MI6 Agent
Yes, it's just speculation on my part and I could be talking complete nonsense too. The rushed nature of OHM2S suggests that they may have rushed things with their venture into publishing too. I'm not exactly sure.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Yes, it changed from Glidrose Publications/Productions to Ian Fleming Publications in the late 1990s when the Fleming family took over full control of the copyright in the literary James Bond. No doubt the name change was for legal reasons as this was a new legal entity. I liked the old Glidrose name but I suppose that IFP is less ambiguous and let's you know what it's all about better.
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Of course the funny thing to remember is that James Bond is absolutely tiny to the Fleming family: the family bank which Ian turned down has grown into a company worth billions!
Yeah I think they're kind of fascinating: basically the bank was worth so much that the family became experts at managing huge family fortunes, and actually went into business doing that for other huge dynasties, then eventually sold that off into a huge global firm. James Bond is really a tiny footnote in the Fleming family history.
I read it in one sitting as I intended - this amuses me because in a letter to Starlog back in 1983, the 'biggest Bond year of them all' as they put it in the run-up to the release of both Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, someone wrote to say how as a GI they'd settled down to read Goldfinger on its publication and stayed in their bunk to finish it, then lent it to his mate who did the same; I'd never done that; read a Bond novel in one sitting!
But it took a while for me to get round to this and that is kind of damning. Why? Well, you kind of know the sex isn't going to be that interesting in a modern Bond novel, there will be nothing salacious in it, nothing in it you couldn't lend your teenage son, or such that if you were to mention to someone you'd read it, there'd be no secret exchange, no raising of the eyebrow, no reason to not tell your line manager you'd read it in case she didn't approve or something. Nothing you couldn't reveal on your Facebook page.
'That Napoleon's a dirty pervert!' I hear you cry but I don't know - it just seems that these days the women can be salacious when it comes to sex but bloke's can't publicly, it makes us weirdos. Women can do the Nancy Friday erotic fantasy thing... see Gillian Anderson's latest.
So you also know the violence won't be sadistic - some would say Fleming's writing was sadistic and that's not quite true, rather he writes about violence such that you enjoy it. Not the act of violence, rather the prose.
Just as rather than watching last night's England game against Finland I preferred to mop the kitchen floor and then have a bath, I was in no hurry to do my patriotic duty and pick up the library copy of On His Majesty's Secret Service, I mean, it's not going to be a guilty pleasure, is it.
That said, I enjoyed it. The first chapter is ruddy awful, possibly because Higson rewrote the beginning and end to bring about symmetry, for the paperback edition. The bit of the toss of the coin that opens it doesn't work for me, does anyone see a coin hover in the air in that moment, you think it might be a bit of clay shooting or a drone or something, when you find out it's a coin it doesn't ring true, nor does the idea of the silhouette of the King being like that of the actual King Charles.
Next - or is this the same chapter - the briefing with M, who is the same M of the Fleming novels. Thing is, he doesn't quite ring true in this day and age, it's like describing your grandparent if you're a certain age - they just don't look like that any more. Whatever you make of Dench as M, she did actually represent the kind of person who looked like they might head MI6. It reflected the new world, or as it was then. M as depicted here, as with the Horovitz novels, seems a facsimile and so does Moneypenny, who was never throughly depicted in the books as in the films, so as with just about every other continuation novel she doesn't appear credible either. (Why would she have been engaged to a 00 whom Bond describes as deathly dull? It doesn't reflect well on her, does it - it's yet another tiny moment that jars. ) Bond doesn't seem too credible either for some reason, so you have three characters who don't quite ring true, then you get the ludicrous villain introduced and it doesn't augur well. That Bond can instantly trot off an unlikely paragraph about how far-fetched the villain's notions are doesn't help. The briefing is done in a perfunctory, unconvincing manner, as with so many scenes with M in recent novels.
I know there is a feint involved with the larger-than-life villain but it doesn't really add up after the fact, I mean haven't MI6 managed to research this bloke to the nth degree? It's a surprise to us when it's revealed but it shouldn't be to them.
Bond gets to be introspective about his job but I didn't find it terribly convincing. At one point he likens it to be a plumber before realising with a laugh that he knows nothing about what a plumber's job entails. Why? Why wouldn't he know what a plumber's job entails? It's not that difficult, and surely Bond has an elementary grasp of such things. It's not exactly 'out there'.
I did enjoy the chapters thereafter, the stuff in Budapest admittedly it's a bit 'look it up on Wiki' but there are some nuggets of spy craft and information in this that are ingenious and impressive. Modern-day references to LinkedIn, Wiki, blogs and PornHub are distracting however, they detract from the plausibility.
The other problem is the whole woke thing, it's not artfully done, in fact it reminds me of Ben Schott's hilarious Jeeves pastiche, Jeeves and the King of Clubs I think it's called, which I very much recommend, where I was a bit uneasy because the Black Shorts or something is a send-up of Nigel Farage. Here we have a send up of the whole populism thing with Trump, Putin and so on - you will get scrambled sympathies. I want a bit of escapism, not have to encounter these types, nor the stereotypes Bond meets at a party, modelled on Boris Johnson and Tommy Robinson and so on. None of this part is plausible, maybe it isn't meant to be - I think @chrisno1 says it's satire as I think was the intention for parts of the film Tomorrow Never Dies but I'm not sure Bond and satire are meant to go together. I'm not entirely sure we have the full measure of Trump anyway - is he colluding with Putin? Did he entertain himself with underage girls on Epstein's island? We don't know, and by mentioning him, it seems clear Bond doesn't actually know either, so if he doesn't who does? Don't get me wrong, I don't like Trump - though have no hero worship for Biden or Harris either - but it all slightly jars.
I find myself thinking, is this why @Hardyboy didn't like this book - is he a Trump supporter? What would @Loeffelholz make of it? So in a way the book is divisive whereas I'd wager if there were a passage of erotic intrigue we all three could all bond over it. Or is that divisive too, in not allowing for the possibility that one of us might be gay?
Nah, the sex is like in Kim Sherwood's books, LinkedIn sex, all rather bland, no angle on it. The sort suggested by a Center Parcs ad. It's not individualised really. You can't see her toenails, are her fingers short or long, the scent of her breath.
One character - the villain's wife - disappears from the scene entirely; was she meant to do an Irma Bunt in the final scene but Higson forgot? Some of the subsidiary villains are pretty good - the South African mercenary (I suppose it seems white South Africans are foreigners it's still okay to hate) though it's unclear why another - a 'Scottish' thug - would continue to crack jokes to a non-compliant audience. That they are all such a rabble is one thing, but there should be a scene where Bond speculates early on just how this group could ever pull anything off - it should be made clear they think they're only expecting an Extinction Rebellion-style protest, nothing more. Even so, the stereotypes Higson portrays would support the Coronation, not want to undermine it, the Tommy Robinson types.
The scene in the castle reads like something from a Will Hay comedy.
There is a nifty, funny scene towards the end involving an ink pen, rewritten to accommodate events, I enjoyed that. Knowing that such a scene will come about because it's been foreshadowed in the opening scene adds to one's enjoyment even though that and the general gist of the plot will be familiar to fans of 1990s American cop-detective thrillers.
But for much of this, whenever I enjoyed it, I would also find myself having to put it down when something 'not right' happened - or is that part of the enjoyment in reading a modern Bond novel these days? Like complaining about the England game. It doesn't quite read like a thriller either, the sense that you're really meant to believe in it, or that the author is a depressive type seeking excitement - via drink, danger, food, sex, sports or fast cars, and don't get me wrong, attaining it - to offset the pain.
You can't imagine the Bond here played by Timothy Dalton or Sean Connery - he doesn't quite seem manly enough. Okay, maybe you couldn't imagine those actors as Fleming's Bond either. Still, the Bond here seems similar to the one presented off stage in the Kim Sherwood books - dark haired, handsome, pleasant and kind of bland. Not terribly relatable.
I'm afraid once you take Bond away from 'his eyes were fierce slits' mode, away from his fighting, f**king, drinking, battle-of-the-sex bitching, annoyance at the capriciousness of his boss, office pleasantries, hackles raised at an adversary, tedious office duties, the satisfying first glug of whisky as it hits the back of the throat, the bracing freshness of the morning air on your face, the dull nausea or sickness upon either being drugged or being presented with a dead body unexpectedly served up by the villain - once you take Bond away from those mostly day-to-day universal experiences of irritation and so on, well, you don't have anyone any more. Put all that stuff in, and the books almost write themselves. But the Bond here, as ever of late, appears watered down, a bit slack. I don't actually want Connery's Bond, or Craig's Bond, when I read a Bond novel. I want him to be - don't laugh - me. I want him to experience all those relatable things I might experience in the course of an interesting work day.
What we have here is kind of the film script Bond of late, though I do think On His Majesty's Secret Servicewould make a highly satisfying or entertaining comic strip of the kind that used to run in the Evening Standard or Daily Express.
In the run-up to a previous US election, one voter said they were voting for Trump because they wanted a businessman to run America again, not a lawyer. Similarly, a problem with the recent Bond novels is that they seem to be written by novelists. What's more, often novelists of a certain age - men in their 60s who write about the women as if they're 'young women' which of course they are, but one mind on the fact that they could be their daughters, so the sex must be wholesome, nothing kinky, nothing confrontational or a come-on. It just isn't the same perspective as writing in your 40s as Fleming was. Everything is a bit more intense then, though you are beginning to see the bigger picture. Anyway, I am beginning to think a Bond author should be a journalist in his 40s with a services background like Fleming, but I don't how niche that is.
Yes, I only picked up on that afterwards reading the reviews on the ever-vigilant MI6-HQ website - so it seems whatever details Higson provided, I failed to pick up on anyway! But I was also referring to most of the other continuation authors lately.
@Napoleon Plural , where do you see anything political, much-less "Trump supporting" in my very short review? This is what I said:
"I was thinking I'd posted my opinion earlier, but I hadn't. So let me say it now: a godawful book, hardly worth the time I spent reading it. The villain is ludicrous; the plot is clumsy (there's a whole chapter about the villain's wife that adds up to nothing); and the problem with Bond isn't that he's 'woke'--he really isn't--he's just a cardboard figure who reacts to the events around him. There. I said it."
My complaints are about bad, sloppy writing and bad plotting. Period, end of sentence. I have loved books where I have personally hated the politics, and I've hated books with politics I agree with... something does not have to match my political philosophy for me to like it or dislike it. The Higson book is a silly, stupid book slapped together to capitalize on a cultural event.
On the sex, we’ve really not had anything truly racy since the Benson days (indeed, he might’ve gone a bit overboard). But that might prove your thesis. Benson was certainly no novelist. Gardner, on the other hand, presented bland, paint-by-the numbers sex, mostly off-page, that foreshadowed the modern continuation novels.
I don't, specifically - which is why I posed it as a question. It's not an irrational supposition, given that you're an American and very roughly half of all Americans voted for Trump, and neither am I saying it's an invalid position. However, your terse review, given that you are a Bond fan, might make a person wonder if that was what was behind it, just in the same way that the Telegraph (a UK paper) slated the book, because it carries the sort of views that runs counter to its editorial stance.
Your terse response despite the Ringo sign-off sort of makes my point - it's a book that provokes discord although I don't know, maybe some beatniks or trade unionists back in the day thought Fleming was really harsh on those Soviets, with all their 'cornfields and ballet in the evenings'. @Loeffelholz supported Trump when he was elected but despite our online spats I don't particulary read OHMSS thinking ha! ha! he's going to be furious about this - I'd rather he enjoyed it.
Anyway, it's not just the sex I had a gripe with - there is a sense with these continuation novels that they aspire to be film scripts or the like, and that they prefer not to go darker, deeper, grittier or weirder. They're scared of boring you, which is fair enough, but the problem with adhering to the beats of a page turner is the reader senses it, and the book loses its mystery, its pull.
One thing about re-reading it was that, as it was a modern day it's a little tricky not to have Daniel Craig in one's mind's eye from time to time, and when you picture him in it it's kind of weird to have a Bond story in which there's no sort of grander important story for Bond- this is ultimately a very straightforward meet-a-baddie-and-beat-him, which is lots of fun, but also kind of feels a bit empty. The Bond films of recent have given me the desire for a bit more meat on the bones. The last two Horowitzes, and I'm sure lots of people will now say how terrible they were because that's the nature of being on a fan forum I guess, did at least aim for that.
That's an interesting review @Napoleon Plural and I enjoyed reading it. Thanks.
Interesting @emtiem you mention picturing Craig, as when I read the novel I didn't picture anyone specifically. What I remember feeling - certainly during that long chapter in Budapest - was that it read like a Jason Statham movie. Now, I am not suggesting Our Jason would make a decent Bond [he would not IMO] or that Mr Higson imagined Statham as Bond [he has written Young Bond and I assume he was following his tracks from there] only that the book's exploits lacked sufficient depth - as you suggest, an empty surface gloss only - and while I enjoyed reading it and it had flourishes of interest and penmanship, it is a surface gloss thriller, much like many a cinematic offering from Our Jason.
@Napoleon Plural , the only correct supposition is that I am a Bond fan, and THAT is how I responded to the book--note that what I attack is not the politics (I even say that Bond in this novel is NOT "woke," as some have charged), but the ridiculous villain, the cardboard treatment of Bond, and the poor plotting. It's "terse" because that's all I have to say about the novel--it isn't worth my time. And that's it. As Freud said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
One other comment about OHMSS - this one, I mean - is the 'twist' which I've alluded to earlier; there are two in fact, one involving the villain and the other, more short term, re a female protagonist. I won't reveal the twists, but my point is that this does seem to be a feature of recent Bond novels, but I'm not sure it fits with Fleming's world, where everyone and everything is pretty much as they are presented. Indeed, it's the world of James Bond that is so enticing and we want it to be as it appears, the reader can explore the world of guns, pre-martial no-strings sex, gourmet cuisine, travel, fast cars and so on... more a thing of the 50s, for sure. Unexpected things occur, but rarely the upending of the narrative, the casual about turn of the reader's assumptions.
I think books like Devil May Care, maybe Solo and certainly Carte Blanche did that, as it's Deaver's speciality. As a digression, note how these novels have very generic titles that would work well as a Bond film title, despite the fact there's virtually no chance of their ever being made into a film. It seems a waste of a good Bond title really, as the films seem to be running out, esp as titles now require a good song to go alongside it. Note how many Fleming titles were unique in this way - Casino Royale, Dr No, Moonraker, Thunderball, The Man With The Golden Gun set against From Russia With Love, Live And Let Die, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only - the latter all make for good song titles. The new novels have very generic titles.
I'm not sure Fleming ever had any twists in his novels, and the films rarely - there's the Spectre training mission in the pre-credits of FRWL which is a bit silly given it's meant to be Bond but gets a free pass as we like the film so much, then a similar twist in the opener of Never Say Never Again, which doesn't because we don't.
I don't care for these smarty pants twists personally but they seem to be a feature of these new novels a bit. Perhaps without the benefit of Fleming's prose, it's the main way to grab the reader's attention, but it's a bit of a short-term gain. To me, it's the sense that the writer is the reader is also Bond, it's all quite cosy so the moment he pulls off this trick, it underlines the distance between the three, the effect can be quite alienating.
I think 'twists' is a bit strong, it's often just a new bit of information in these novels, I can't remember much that upends the whole situation. Fleming would often leave the villain out of the story altogether until right at the end when Bond got to meet him: really you could call that twist in a similar way as often their nature/lair/plan would be revealed not long before Bond killed him.
I don't really know what you mean about the titles, either: Thunderball, FRWL, LALD, YOLT, DAF, TSWLM, FYEO... all of those are very generic and bear very little relevance to the plots of their respective novels. I know what you mean that it's a shame that some of these titles have been used up as Carte Blanche and Devil May Care are a couple of the best Bond titles out there for my money, but I can hardly blame them for wanting to come up with good titles! 😁
Comments
update from IFP
That's welcome news for our Bond fan cousins overseas. 🙂
Excellent 👏🏻
Now I won’t have to ask family to send them 😅
Yes thought that would be of interest. Odd that is something new isn’t it
I'm guessing that because IFP is a relatively new publisher they just hadn't gotten all of the overseas delivery logistics sorted. I'm glad to hear this issue has been resolved though.
You are probably right @Silhouette Man ….but that’s quite a big market to miss…I’ll have to check shipping costs…but it’s a great start…
Yes, it's just speculation on my part and I could be talking complete nonsense too. The rushed nature of OHM2S suggests that they may have rushed things with their venture into publishing too. I'm not exactly sure.
I could easily be wrong, I often am but am I right in thinking that IFP was Glidrose publications, just a name change?
Yes, I’m sure that’s what happened.
Yes, it changed from Glidrose Publications/Productions to Ian Fleming Publications in the late 1990s when the Fleming family took over full control of the copyright in the literary James Bond. No doubt the name change was for legal reasons as this was a new legal entity. I liked the old Glidrose name but I suppose that IFP is less ambiguous and let's you know what it's all about better.
Thanks for that. Worth knowing 🍸🍸
Of course the funny thing to remember is that James Bond is absolutely tiny to the Fleming family: the family bank which Ian turned down has grown into a company worth billions!
Do they still own any shares ? I think the family live near Nettlebed now
I think they did sell the company yes, for billions. IFP ain't gonna be worth that, and they don't even own James Bond.
Nice if you can do that - I know that the big house, Joyce Grove was given to Sue Ryder as a hospice, but I think it’s been sold now
Yeah I think they're kind of fascinating: basically the bank was worth so much that the family became experts at managing huge family fortunes, and actually went into business doing that for other huge dynasties, then eventually sold that off into a huge global firm. James Bond is really a tiny footnote in the Fleming family history.
Very interesting thanks
That's interesting, @emtiem. I didn't know too much about the banking side of the Flemings either. Good to know.
Time to load up my review.
I read it in one sitting as I intended - this amuses me because in a letter to Starlog back in 1983, the 'biggest Bond year of them all' as they put it in the run-up to the release of both Octopussy and Never Say Never Again, someone wrote to say how as a GI they'd settled down to read Goldfinger on its publication and stayed in their bunk to finish it, then lent it to his mate who did the same; I'd never done that; read a Bond novel in one sitting!
But it took a while for me to get round to this and that is kind of damning. Why? Well, you kind of know the sex isn't going to be that interesting in a modern Bond novel, there will be nothing salacious in it, nothing in it you couldn't lend your teenage son, or such that if you were to mention to someone you'd read it, there'd be no secret exchange, no raising of the eyebrow, no reason to not tell your line manager you'd read it in case she didn't approve or something. Nothing you couldn't reveal on your Facebook page.
'That Napoleon's a dirty pervert!' I hear you cry but I don't know - it just seems that these days the women can be salacious when it comes to sex but bloke's can't publicly, it makes us weirdos. Women can do the Nancy Friday erotic fantasy thing... see Gillian Anderson's latest.
So you also know the violence won't be sadistic - some would say Fleming's writing was sadistic and that's not quite true, rather he writes about violence such that you enjoy it. Not the act of violence, rather the prose.
Just as rather than watching last night's England game against Finland I preferred to mop the kitchen floor and then have a bath, I was in no hurry to do my patriotic duty and pick up the library copy of On His Majesty's Secret Service, I mean, it's not going to be a guilty pleasure, is it.
That said, I enjoyed it. The first chapter is ruddy awful, possibly because Higson rewrote the beginning and end to bring about symmetry, for the paperback edition. The bit of the toss of the coin that opens it doesn't work for me, does anyone see a coin hover in the air in that moment, you think it might be a bit of clay shooting or a drone or something, when you find out it's a coin it doesn't ring true, nor does the idea of the silhouette of the King being like that of the actual King Charles.
Next - or is this the same chapter - the briefing with M, who is the same M of the Fleming novels. Thing is, he doesn't quite ring true in this day and age, it's like describing your grandparent if you're a certain age - they just don't look like that any more. Whatever you make of Dench as M, she did actually represent the kind of person who looked like they might head MI6. It reflected the new world, or as it was then. M as depicted here, as with the Horovitz novels, seems a facsimile and so does Moneypenny, who was never throughly depicted in the books as in the films, so as with just about every other continuation novel she doesn't appear credible either. (Why would she have been engaged to a 00 whom Bond describes as deathly dull? It doesn't reflect well on her, does it - it's yet another tiny moment that jars. ) Bond doesn't seem too credible either for some reason, so you have three characters who don't quite ring true, then you get the ludicrous villain introduced and it doesn't augur well. That Bond can instantly trot off an unlikely paragraph about how far-fetched the villain's notions are doesn't help. The briefing is done in a perfunctory, unconvincing manner, as with so many scenes with M in recent novels.
I know there is a feint involved with the larger-than-life villain but it doesn't really add up after the fact, I mean haven't MI6 managed to research this bloke to the nth degree? It's a surprise to us when it's revealed but it shouldn't be to them.
Bond gets to be introspective about his job but I didn't find it terribly convincing. At one point he likens it to be a plumber before realising with a laugh that he knows nothing about what a plumber's job entails. Why? Why wouldn't he know what a plumber's job entails? It's not that difficult, and surely Bond has an elementary grasp of such things. It's not exactly 'out there'.
I did enjoy the chapters thereafter, the stuff in Budapest admittedly it's a bit 'look it up on Wiki' but there are some nuggets of spy craft and information in this that are ingenious and impressive. Modern-day references to LinkedIn, Wiki, blogs and PornHub are distracting however, they detract from the plausibility.
The other problem is the whole woke thing, it's not artfully done, in fact it reminds me of Ben Schott's hilarious Jeeves pastiche, Jeeves and the King of Clubs I think it's called, which I very much recommend, where I was a bit uneasy because the Black Shorts or something is a send-up of Nigel Farage. Here we have a send up of the whole populism thing with Trump, Putin and so on - you will get scrambled sympathies. I want a bit of escapism, not have to encounter these types, nor the stereotypes Bond meets at a party, modelled on Boris Johnson and Tommy Robinson and so on. None of this part is plausible, maybe it isn't meant to be - I think @chrisno1 says it's satire as I think was the intention for parts of the film Tomorrow Never Dies but I'm not sure Bond and satire are meant to go together. I'm not entirely sure we have the full measure of Trump anyway - is he colluding with Putin? Did he entertain himself with underage girls on Epstein's island? We don't know, and by mentioning him, it seems clear Bond doesn't actually know either, so if he doesn't who does? Don't get me wrong, I don't like Trump - though have no hero worship for Biden or Harris either - but it all slightly jars.
I find myself thinking, is this why @Hardyboy didn't like this book - is he a Trump supporter? What would @Loeffelholz make of it? So in a way the book is divisive whereas I'd wager if there were a passage of erotic intrigue we all three could all bond over it. Or is that divisive too, in not allowing for the possibility that one of us might be gay?
Nah, the sex is like in Kim Sherwood's books, LinkedIn sex, all rather bland, no angle on it. The sort suggested by a Center Parcs ad. It's not individualised really. You can't see her toenails, are her fingers short or long, the scent of her breath.
One character - the villain's wife - disappears from the scene entirely; was she meant to do an Irma Bunt in the final scene but Higson forgot? Some of the subsidiary villains are pretty good - the South African mercenary (I suppose it seems white South Africans are foreigners it's still okay to hate) though it's unclear why another - a 'Scottish' thug - would continue to crack jokes to a non-compliant audience. That they are all such a rabble is one thing, but there should be a scene where Bond speculates early on just how this group could ever pull anything off - it should be made clear they think they're only expecting an Extinction Rebellion-style protest, nothing more. Even so, the stereotypes Higson portrays would support the Coronation, not want to undermine it, the Tommy Robinson types.
The scene in the castle reads like something from a Will Hay comedy.
There is a nifty, funny scene towards the end involving an ink pen, rewritten to accommodate events, I enjoyed that. Knowing that such a scene will come about because it's been foreshadowed in the opening scene adds to one's enjoyment even though that and the general gist of the plot will be familiar to fans of 1990s American cop-detective thrillers.
But for much of this, whenever I enjoyed it, I would also find myself having to put it down when something 'not right' happened - or is that part of the enjoyment in reading a modern Bond novel these days? Like complaining about the England game. It doesn't quite read like a thriller either, the sense that you're really meant to believe in it, or that the author is a depressive type seeking excitement - via drink, danger, food, sex, sports or fast cars, and don't get me wrong, attaining it - to offset the pain.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
One other comment - who is Bond in this?
You can't imagine the Bond here played by Timothy Dalton or Sean Connery - he doesn't quite seem manly enough. Okay, maybe you couldn't imagine those actors as Fleming's Bond either. Still, the Bond here seems similar to the one presented off stage in the Kim Sherwood books - dark haired, handsome, pleasant and kind of bland. Not terribly relatable.
I'm afraid once you take Bond away from 'his eyes were fierce slits' mode, away from his fighting, f**king, drinking, battle-of-the-sex bitching, annoyance at the capriciousness of his boss, office pleasantries, hackles raised at an adversary, tedious office duties, the satisfying first glug of whisky as it hits the back of the throat, the bracing freshness of the morning air on your face, the dull nausea or sickness upon either being drugged or being presented with a dead body unexpectedly served up by the villain - once you take Bond away from those mostly day-to-day universal experiences of irritation and so on, well, you don't have anyone any more. Put all that stuff in, and the books almost write themselves. But the Bond here, as ever of late, appears watered down, a bit slack. I don't actually want Connery's Bond, or Craig's Bond, when I read a Bond novel. I want him to be - don't laugh - me. I want him to experience all those relatable things I might experience in the course of an interesting work day.
What we have here is kind of the film script Bond of late, though I do think On His Majesty's Secret Service would make a highly satisfying or entertaining comic strip of the kind that used to run in the Evening Standard or Daily Express.
In the run-up to a previous US election, one voter said they were voting for Trump because they wanted a businessman to run America again, not a lawyer. Similarly, a problem with the recent Bond novels is that they seem to be written by novelists. What's more, often novelists of a certain age - men in their 60s who write about the women as if they're 'young women' which of course they are, but one mind on the fact that they could be their daughters, so the sex must be wholesome, nothing kinky, nothing confrontational or a come-on. It just isn't the same perspective as writing in your 40s as Fleming was. Everything is a bit more intense then, though you are beginning to see the bigger picture. Anyway, I am beginning to think a Bond author should be a journalist in his 40s with a services background like Fleming, but I don't how niche that is.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I feel it’s hinted at a couple of times that the main love interest is transgender, so perhaps not like the author writing about his daughter.
Yes, I only picked up on that afterwards reading the reviews on the ever-vigilant MI6-HQ website - so it seems whatever details Higson provided, I failed to pick up on anyway! But I was also referring to most of the other continuation authors lately.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@Napoleon Plural , where do you see anything political, much-less "Trump supporting" in my very short review? This is what I said:
"I was thinking I'd posted my opinion earlier, but I hadn't. So let me say it now: a godawful book, hardly worth the time I spent reading it. The villain is ludicrous; the plot is clumsy (there's a whole chapter about the villain's wife that adds up to nothing); and the problem with Bond isn't that he's 'woke'--he really isn't--he's just a cardboard figure who reacts to the events around him. There. I said it."
My complaints are about bad, sloppy writing and bad plotting. Period, end of sentence. I have loved books where I have personally hated the politics, and I've hated books with politics I agree with... something does not have to match my political philosophy for me to like it or dislike it. The Higson book is a silly, stupid book slapped together to capitalize on a cultural event.
Peace out.
On the sex, we’ve really not had anything truly racy since the Benson days (indeed, he might’ve gone a bit overboard). But that might prove your thesis. Benson was certainly no novelist. Gardner, on the other hand, presented bland, paint-by-the numbers sex, mostly off-page, that foreshadowed the modern continuation novels.
I don't, specifically - which is why I posed it as a question. It's not an irrational supposition, given that you're an American and very roughly half of all Americans voted for Trump, and neither am I saying it's an invalid position. However, your terse review, given that you are a Bond fan, might make a person wonder if that was what was behind it, just in the same way that the Telegraph (a UK paper) slated the book, because it carries the sort of views that runs counter to its editorial stance.
Your terse response despite the Ringo sign-off sort of makes my point - it's a book that provokes discord although I don't know, maybe some beatniks or trade unionists back in the day thought Fleming was really harsh on those Soviets, with all their 'cornfields and ballet in the evenings'. @Loeffelholz supported Trump when he was elected but despite our online spats I don't particulary read OHMSS thinking ha! ha! he's going to be furious about this - I'd rather he enjoyed it.
Anyway, it's not just the sex I had a gripe with - there is a sense with these continuation novels that they aspire to be film scripts or the like, and that they prefer not to go darker, deeper, grittier or weirder. They're scared of boring you, which is fair enough, but the problem with adhering to the beats of a page turner is the reader senses it, and the book loses its mystery, its pull.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
One thing about re-reading it was that, as it was a modern day it's a little tricky not to have Daniel Craig in one's mind's eye from time to time, and when you picture him in it it's kind of weird to have a Bond story in which there's no sort of grander important story for Bond- this is ultimately a very straightforward meet-a-baddie-and-beat-him, which is lots of fun, but also kind of feels a bit empty. The Bond films of recent have given me the desire for a bit more meat on the bones. The last two Horowitzes, and I'm sure lots of people will now say how terrible they were because that's the nature of being on a fan forum I guess, did at least aim for that.
That's an interesting review @Napoleon Plural and I enjoyed reading it. Thanks.
Interesting @emtiem you mention picturing Craig, as when I read the novel I didn't picture anyone specifically. What I remember feeling - certainly during that long chapter in Budapest - was that it read like a Jason Statham movie. Now, I am not suggesting Our Jason would make a decent Bond [he would not IMO] or that Mr Higson imagined Statham as Bond [he has written Young Bond and I assume he was following his tracks from there] only that the book's exploits lacked sufficient depth - as you suggest, an empty surface gloss only - and while I enjoyed reading it and it had flourishes of interest and penmanship, it is a surface gloss thriller, much like many a cinematic offering from Our Jason.
@Napoleon Plural , the only correct supposition is that I am a Bond fan, and THAT is how I responded to the book--note that what I attack is not the politics (I even say that Bond in this novel is NOT "woke," as some have charged), but the ridiculous villain, the cardboard treatment of Bond, and the poor plotting. It's "terse" because that's all I have to say about the novel--it isn't worth my time. And that's it. As Freud said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
One other comment about OHMSS - this one, I mean - is the 'twist' which I've alluded to earlier; there are two in fact, one involving the villain and the other, more short term, re a female protagonist. I won't reveal the twists, but my point is that this does seem to be a feature of recent Bond novels, but I'm not sure it fits with Fleming's world, where everyone and everything is pretty much as they are presented. Indeed, it's the world of James Bond that is so enticing and we want it to be as it appears, the reader can explore the world of guns, pre-martial no-strings sex, gourmet cuisine, travel, fast cars and so on... more a thing of the 50s, for sure. Unexpected things occur, but rarely the upending of the narrative, the casual about turn of the reader's assumptions.
I think books like Devil May Care, maybe Solo and certainly Carte Blanche did that, as it's Deaver's speciality. As a digression, note how these novels have very generic titles that would work well as a Bond film title, despite the fact there's virtually no chance of their ever being made into a film. It seems a waste of a good Bond title really, as the films seem to be running out, esp as titles now require a good song to go alongside it. Note how many Fleming titles were unique in this way - Casino Royale, Dr No, Moonraker, Thunderball, The Man With The Golden Gun set against From Russia With Love, Live And Let Die, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only - the latter all make for good song titles. The new novels have very generic titles.
I'm not sure Fleming ever had any twists in his novels, and the films rarely - there's the Spectre training mission in the pre-credits of FRWL which is a bit silly given it's meant to be Bond but gets a free pass as we like the film so much, then a similar twist in the opener of Never Say Never Again, which doesn't because we don't.
I don't care for these smarty pants twists personally but they seem to be a feature of these new novels a bit. Perhaps without the benefit of Fleming's prose, it's the main way to grab the reader's attention, but it's a bit of a short-term gain. To me, it's the sense that the writer is the reader is also Bond, it's all quite cosy so the moment he pulls off this trick, it underlines the distance between the three, the effect can be quite alienating.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I think 'twists' is a bit strong, it's often just a new bit of information in these novels, I can't remember much that upends the whole situation. Fleming would often leave the villain out of the story altogether until right at the end when Bond got to meet him: really you could call that twist in a similar way as often their nature/lair/plan would be revealed not long before Bond killed him.
I don't really know what you mean about the titles, either: Thunderball, FRWL, LALD, YOLT, DAF, TSWLM, FYEO... all of those are very generic and bear very little relevance to the plots of their respective novels. I know what you mean that it's a shame that some of these titles have been used up as Carte Blanche and Devil May Care are a couple of the best Bond titles out there for my money, but I can hardly blame them for wanting to come up with good titles! 😁