Live and Let Die - A Review
Sweepy the Cat
Halifax, West Yorkshire, EnglaPosts: 986MI6 Agent
The world in which Ian Flemming grew up in doesn't exist anymore, and nothing shows this up more than his attitude to the people of Jamaica and Harlem. Mr Big is a Harlem gangster, who controls his empire with superstitious fear. He has discovered a lost treasure beneath a Jamaican Island and is smuggling the gold into America. Bond's mission to stop him is made more urgent by the suspicion that he is also an agent of SMERSH. Fleming has achieved a strange mix in his observations, for me at least - from cringing to down right embarrassing. Dated racial attitudes aside, the story is a typical original Bond novel, yes "even better than the film".
Solitaire seems more believable, Mr Big is genuinely menacing, and the diving sequence has some real thrills. That dealt with, I can only recommend this book to all Bond fans, indeed anyone who likes a darn good well-written and pacy yarn. Infinitely more engaging than the film with Moore in the starring role. The books certainly show a vulnrable side to James Bond whereas in the films he is portrayed as invincible with an answer to everything and escape route to any given situation.
**** / *****
Solitaire seems more believable, Mr Big is genuinely menacing, and the diving sequence has some real thrills. That dealt with, I can only recommend this book to all Bond fans, indeed anyone who likes a darn good well-written and pacy yarn. Infinitely more engaging than the film with Moore in the starring role. The books certainly show a vulnrable side to James Bond whereas in the films he is portrayed as invincible with an answer to everything and escape route to any given situation.
**** / *****
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