Spot on as always, Chris. I'd probably give the novel the same rating. Where do you think IFP will go from here?
Deaver has said it was only a one-shot deal. Do you see "Project X" carrying on, or do you think it will be another few years until we see another Bond novel, possibly rebooted once more?
I've seen names like Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follet, and Lee Child tossed around as potential authors. Others have said that it could be those who wrote the introductions in the latest Penguin editions; Deaver wrote the intro for Casino Royale.
Do you have any names that you think would be appropriate?
Wow! I didn't read your review Chris, just viewed the 6/10 rating. I am waiting for my copy. That really scares me as I have found your reviews spot on.
I really wish you would consider reviewing the Titan comics. I have found them the best Bond writing post Fleming.:p
This is where we leave you Mr. Bond. (Pilot, Apollo Airlines)
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,845MI6 Agent
Again, this is a classic AJB thread - there's much of interest here to the fan of Gardner and Benson alike!
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
Yeah, Chrisno1 s reviews are quite,something, great,to,read before of after reading a Bond novel. I might review some myself, so you should see a review to nobody lives forever and From Russia with love
“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. "
-Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
I have noticed, with some surprise, that I never posted a review of William Boyd's SOLO. Unusual as I wrote one when i read it. Seems I never bothered to post. It was either an oversight or
confirmation of disappointment.
Still, here it is, in all its glory and years late...
SOLO
8/10/2016
2013
Oh dear.
I’m coming to the party a little late. I’ll be honest and say that from the off there was nothing that excited me about SOLO. It has a rubbish title, a rubbish cover, the premise (featuring an imaginary country – not just the odd politician, casino or hotel, but a whole damn country) has me shaking my head and, without intending disrespect, I am not familiar with Mr Boyd’s work.
Sadly I now don’t want to be.
SOLO isn’t as bad as Sebastian Faulk’s quick knock-off job and I am grateful for that. However, while at times the prose summons faint memories of Ian Fleming, overall it is a thin enterprise which relies much on a long, dull and complicated chapter towards the end of the novel which attempts to resolve almost every thread of the narrative. This is a one-to-one conversation between OO7 and his mate Felix Leiter, a man who still seems to know more about the CIA than the CIA despite not working for them. I was reminded of the chapter in Casino Royale entitled ‘The Nature of Evil’ when Bond and Mathis discuss the devil of the detail. Fleming’s chapter resonates highly because the discussion centres on emotions, the sins of cold war politics and latent human psychology; all Boyd’s long esoteric conversation tells us is that James Bond needn’t have been on the mission in the first place as the CIA had all angles covered.
There is a villain (I think) but I had a hard time figuring out who it was. Initially it seems Bond is being sent to assassinate Solomon Adeka, the leader of the rogue African state of Dahum, but M isn’t clear. It’s never explained why M is reluctant to give Bond a defined objective. This reenacts the worst of John Gardner’s continuation efforts and from the briefing onwards I was searching for cross and double cross and wasn’t surprised when the twists and turns duly arrived. They clunked like empty whisky bottles and had no joy in them for this reader.
Later we find three more antagonists, the brutal Jakobus Creed, the lean Colonel Denga and the arms dealer and fervent political activist Hulbert Linck. None of these supposed bad guys have any menace to them. Creed is perhaps the most finely drawn, but after initially appearing to be an efficient, brutal, callous mercenary, his guard slips badly as he’s forced to allow Bond to orchestrate the defence of Dahum. This completely diminishes the character’s stature as it appears he’s hopeless at his own career and no amount of wielding corpses onto butcher’s hooks can restore it. Incidentally, Gardner also did this neat killer’s signature back in ‘Nobody Runs Forever’ and he did it better too.
There are two women for Bond to seduce. The most interesting of these is a skin-flick actress called Bryce Fitzjohn, aka Astrid Ostergaard, whom Bond clearly fancies, but also exploits. Bond recognizes the similarities in their make-up and their union felt very genuine. I enjoyed the scenes in which she featured. Bond is very natural in these London bound episodes. In fact the best of Boyd’s story occurs in the first few chapters when he is encapsulating James Bond’s home life as our hero reflects on his past through a series of flashbacks.
These scenes have purpose and imagination: Bond is suspicious of the motives of a stranger; he’s unable to relax; he’s bothered about his age; he’s turning into a habitué; he has money and time on his hands; he both likes and dislikes aspects of 1969 Britain; he’s haunted by the past. There is a brilliantly described break in to Bryce’s home, where he voyeuristically witnesses her undress, and several passages reminisce on the gaudy sleaze of 1960s fashion. I understood this world, one of colour and coincidence, where a chance encounter or a sudden decision can lead to boundless possibilities, moments of love and sex, intrigue and death, all rolling as one.
Sadly by the time Bond has reached Africa and the author believes he had defined our hero, the characterisations become less detailed. The nominal heroine, Blessing Ogilvy-Grant, is your standard double crossing CIA agent who seduces Bond with ease, appears to be a baddie and eventually reveals her true colours at the point of termination. I hardly cared a jot for her, especially as at one point during a fire fight she goes screaming into the jungle and really ought to have been shot dead. This particular scene reminded me of the machine gunning in ‘Dr. No’ and I wondered, why it is that Ian Fleming can create tension and excitement with such a simple premise, but William Boyd can’t. The reason is simple: Fleming’s personas are established early and for the most part he abides by them, introducing nuances and background through the story, but essentially the narrative is driven by how these characters interact. So the excitement in ‘Dr. No’ derives from Bond and Honey’s shared plight, their reaction to it and their interaction throughout it, not from the entanglement itself. Boyd meanwhile chooses the opposite. He’s less interested in the people and more interested in the politic behind them. His characters (even in the London scenes) spend a lot of time talking about what they are doing and why, but not much about how that effects each other. Hence when we have moments of tension they tail off very badly because we simply don’t care enough about these people. And that applies to the dull as ditchwater climax as well.
Bond ‘goes solo’ in the final third and it’s good to see him doing some proper spying a la 1969, but not very much happens and while Boyd is keen to give us thorough descriptions, his lack of memorable metaphors is disappointing. I had no sense of place or atmosphere. Even in war torn Africa, everything’s written if you’d watched it on a newsreel or read it in a paper, snippets of detail with no encompassing sweep, no picture beyond the image laid before us. Subsequently the locations become startlingly bland. Perhaps Boyd’s most notable line (and one still prevalent today) comes when Bond buys weapons and ammunition from a Washington gun store: ‘he marveled just how easy it was to arm yourself in the land of the free.’
I could probably go on, but I feel my disappointment might turn to ire. This is a very sad episode. While the London scenes and the Normandy flashbacks showed great promise, overall the piece is rather unimaginative and for all its length, James Bond doesn’t do much of any importance, he’s simply the lynch pin for everyone else’s machinations.
I also found solo a bit dull, some good ideas, and I wouldn't have minded reading another where bond finishes off the disfigured south African villain ( forget his name now)
Really couldn't get on with carte blanche.
Oddly, I enjoyed Carte Blanche much more, I could Imagine DC as this literary Bond, and really
Enjoyed the villain's sexual fetish. A nice creepy touch. Unless I'm mixing up my continuing
Novels ( wouldn't be the first time )
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
The last six or seven Gardner's are all very similar, so easy to mix up. Bond
Constantly getting put into small teams. Always filled with double and triple
Agents.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Yes that sounds familiar, I haven't read them all, last one was scorpius I think or the one with the snakes on the beach. And that was many years ago now. I've just started reading the originals again. With a slight detour shortly through that Adam chances book.
Yes, I think it's a great idea to re-read the Fleming novels every so often. Just to
Get a flavour of the "Origins of the species " also I love the World Fleming sets
Up for us. It's great to get lost in it for a few hours.
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,757Chief of Staff
Oddly, I enjoyed Carte Blanche much more, I could Imagine DC as this literary Bond, and really
Enjoyed the villain's sexual fetish. A nice creepy touch. Unless I'm mixing up my continuing
Novels ( wouldn't be the first time )
I couldn't really get to grips with Carte Blanche....I expected SO much more and was just VERY disappointed with the whole thing
I read the early deaver Lincoln Rhyme books and enjoyed them, but they got very samey and predictable so I stopped, I just didn't find carte blanche particularly bondian and a bit drawn out, it just didn't gel with me, sometimes I just find some books a bit of a chew, I fly through the Fleming books and also Scott Mariani's Ben hope series I find very readable, I'd like him to do a bond story but I'm more than happy with horowitz at the moment.
Last year the well-known thriller writer Anthony Horowitz penned Trigger Mortis, the latest in a loose series of revisionist Bond novels by contemporary authors attempting to revisit and reimagine Ian Fleming’s 1950s hero for a modern audience. The first three entries have had rather mixed results; each has some gem of interest, but none has been paved with gold. Horowitz mines a similar seam.
Trigger Mortis takes place immediately after Fleming’s own Goldfinger and utilizes the bones of a short story the Master abandoned called ‘Murder on Wheels’, an episode to be included in a prospective James Bond T.V. series. Horowitz has genuine passion for Fleming and his enthusiasm about the inclusion of this story is well intended. My concern is that he dotes on it too much and that in doing so he has now actually written two adventures poorly bound together.
There was a reason ‘Murder on Wheels’ was a short story: it hasn’t got the meat on the bones to sustain a novel’s full structure. Horowitz invitingly expands the motor racing scenario, but in doing so he relegates the original story to almost a footnote, which begs the question why he bothered to include it in the first place. More on that later. It is heartening to note the fine stuff on display here, including some well annotated racing scenes, but the author commits another tactical error by failing to place the villain centre stage during these early confrontations [unlike say in the opening chapters onMoonraker, Goldfinger or even Gardner’s License Renewed]. This allows the exercise to lose much of its significance later in the novel as the actions seem only barely related. In fact, the further I read, the less I cared about the events at the Nurburgring and the Soviet spy Ivan Dimitrov. So unsure is the author he has tagged on a sinister prologue describing the death of a prominent U.S. rocket scientist which, unlike the motor racing, is much more relevant to the overall narrative.
Horowitz also brings back one of Fleming’s own heroines, Pussy Galore, and has Bond engaged in a frigid relationship, warmed only by sex, both partners equally desperate to end it. There was much press fanfare about this, but when The Mail on Sunday makes a statement like: ‘the return of the best Bond girl of them all, I’d have to question the reasoning. Pussy hardly features in Goldfinger and for the most part she is a willing accessory to a madman’s plan. Her sudden change of heart is as unlikely as her seduction by James Bond. Her character, while consummately well-drawn, wasn’t believable. Perhaps though, her sudden change of heart here is a reasonable reflection of her indifference to commitment.
In fairness Horowitz makes a decent stab at dissecting Bond’s home and love life. Added to this awkward domesticity is some stage-managed nastiness involving American hoodlums, nudity and gold paint at a Stone Age site, the Devil’s Own. All this early action though seems entirely irrelevant, merely another nod towards Fleming-ism, so much so we even have another softly spoken lesbian love affair for Pussy, this time provided by Bond’s racing instructor, the fetching Logan Fairfax. This grated with me too as while Horowitz has made much effort to affect Fleming’s world, one feels Bond’s creator would never have put the female of the species behind the wheel of a Cooper-Climax T43. It’s simply all too convenient in Horowitz’s world.
Once the motor race kicks off, the novel picks up considerably. A few exciting circuits of the Nurburgring later and Bond is attending a swish party at a grand castle and doing some surreptitious spying as he sips champagne. It’s all very grand, outrageous and good fun; very Fleming. I enjoyed the scenes at Schloss Bronsart. The introduction of both Sin Jai-Seong (the Korean bad guy, handily re-termed Jason Sin) and Jeopardy Lane (an American spy of dubious talents and many good looks) are handled well and there is an element of surprise and daring here. But too quickly Horowitz begins to make the same mistakes as all the other recent continuation authors. His villain becomes a pastiche of a Fleming creation – in this case Hugo Drax – and the heroine has to be a secret agent. This is a never spoken nod to the politically correct and wholly emancipated 21st century; Fleming’s women were rarely spies and when so rarely displayed such solid capabilities.
In fact, Jeopardy Lane is an excellent character. She is closer to Gala Brand, certainly in the sex-less friendship she strikes with OO7, but also in that she is intelligent, opinionated and prone to the occasional lapse which will put her and Bond in peril. Indeed, as I mention above, she felt a little too modern and that doesn’t sit well in a novel set in the late 1950s.
Jason Sin meanwhile is your typical rapscallion psychopath, a one dimensional deluded monster. I had little sympathy for him – I’m not sure the reader is supposed to – and his long winded tete-a-tete with bond only exposes the convoluted nature of his plan to destroy the Empire State Building. To do this, Sin plans to explode a device underneath the tower which will simulate the impact of falling debris from a Vanguard nuclear missile, one that will be destroyed in mid-air seconds before. I didn’t buy it for a minute. If Sin can successfully explode the missile, why doesn’t he simply explode it over New York in the first place? The potential ramifications would be the same, his aim of Soviet domination achieved; ah, but then there would be no long-winded train-borne climax for Horowitz to construct.
Before that extended and entirely forgettable enterprise we have the best section of the novel, where Bond plays Sin’s game of death and chooses his own execution from a stack of playing cards. This tense sequence is slightly spoilt by us already having seen it [a cinematic device Fleming would never have employed] and by Sin’s petulant displays; far better surely to have the adorable Jeopardy Lane seal Bond’s death warrant? After all she wouldn’t know the cards can be marked, would she? Mind, the nineteenth chapter, cryptically entitled ‘Six Feet Under’, is a proper tour-de-force of drama and suspense as our hero is buried alive in a bald coffin: “So dark in this tiny space. Blind. No room to move. The weight of the earth pressing down. No air.” There is a real sense of fear and futility. It’s a page turning scene indeed and reminiscent of the best of Ian Fleming.
The remainder of the piece, an extended chase through New York, is all a bit hit and miss. Much of it I could do without. Ends are neatly tied, nothing surprises. That sounds like a criticism, but I wouldn’t expect anything else in a Bond novel. Trigger Mortis is a comparative triumph compared to its immediate predecessors. It’s easy to read and I didn’t consider it poorly written. It isn’t as slack as Faulk’s Devil May Care, as intricate as Carte Blanche or as dull as Solo; in fact it’s very pacey and has a strong central character in an emotionally uncertain Bond, who only finds satisfaction in the danger of his work, but who fears his own death and the people who can administer it.
I feel I should say ‘Bravo!’ to Mr Horowitz. Trigger Mortis misses the florid speak of Fleming, but it doesn’t lack urgency and proceeds with some guile. It’s certainly on a par with the very best of Gardner as well as Kingsley Amis’s lone follow up Colonel Sun – a novel which feels better and better as more and more continuation stories appear. A touch less Fleming-fawning would aid this book’s impact, but I can’t argue that I didn’t enjoy it, for in the main I did. Bravo then, just.
Of all the recent continuation novels, Trigger Mortis is the one I look back on most fondly. But it really doesn't have the gloom of Fleming's stuff, none of them do. They have to be snappy page turners, with each chapter having a cliff hanger ending. And they can't help but be influenced by the films.
Of all the recent continuation novels, Trigger Mortis is the one I look back on most fondly. But it really doesn't have the gloom of Fleming's stuff, none of them do. They have to be snappy page turners, with each chapter having a cliff hanger ending. And they can't help but be influenced by the films.
I felt this one wasn't that influenced by the movies, which is maybe why I enjoyed it more.
I agree the idea and construction of cliffhanger endings etc has reduced the intensity of Bond-lit in the recent continuation era. The Young Bond novels particularly irked me with their episodic flavour.
For what it’s worth, my personal order, 'from best to worst':
1. Double Shot
2. High Time to Kill
3. The Man with the Red Tattoo
4. Zero Minus Ten
5. Tomorrow Never Dies
6. The Facts of Death
7. The World is Not Enough
8. Die Another Day
9. Never Dream of Dying
Chrisno1, I really enjoy all of these Fleming and continuation novel reviews you've done. I've never read a Benson, not sure if I ever will, but I do have a hardcover omnibus of his, titled "The Union Trilogy," which contains High Time To Kill, Doubleshot, Never Dream of Dying, and most importantly (at least so far as the reason behind my post goes) the uncut version of his short story "Blast From The Past," which was published in truncated form in Playboy.
I got the book solely for this story but have not read it yet. I don't see it reviewed above, so I'm wondering if you've read it? It's a sequel to YOLT, and I got it on that merit, only to discover that, rather than being a period piece a la the modern continuation novels, it's actually set in the same timeframe as Benson's other books. And humorously enough, Bond's son from YOLT is a grown man in it! So already one must have a healthy suspension of disbelief; Bond himself is ageless, it appears. On the plus side, apparently Irma Bundt appears as the villainess, complete with a disfigured face or somesuch.
This was the first piece of fiction Benson wrote (he completed it before starting on his first Bond novel), and he stated somewhere that he had no idea how long a short story was supposed to be, hence Playboy chopped up his manuscript for publication.
Edit: Wanted to clarify I've done a search in this thread and found a few mentions of this short story, but nothing much -- just wanted to ask you, Chrisno1, if you've read it and intend to include a writeup about it.
Also wanted to chime in on this review -- I've not read TM, either, but perhaps will shoehorn it in after I read GF, just to see the disparity between the real thing and a modern novel with modern attitudes. Anyway I wanted to post a link to this humorous and insightful review I found the other year at The Federalist, which not only points out all the bizarre, progressive missteps in TM, but also points out why none of these continuation novels have captured the vibe of Fleming:
I apologise if this is in the wrong place but I have just finished listening to the James Bond Ian Fleming books on audio book. I wonder if any one can tell me of good other James Bond books to listen to on Audio books? Thank you.
I apologise if this is in the wrong place but I have just finished listening to the James Bond Ian Fleming books on audio book. I wonder if any one can tell me of good other James Bond books to listen to on Audio books? Thank you.
hey Joshua!
There has been a series of BBC radio plays based directly on Fleming's books, you may like to listen to those. They have adapted eight of Fleming's books so far. Each is ninety minutes long, with actors reading the dialog, sound effects, music and narration.
They will provide a slightly different perspective on the stories Fleming told, and may help you pick up on details that you missed listening to the audiobooks.
See this thread for those Radio Plays. Barbel gives YouTube links for most of these Radio Plays in post 10.
Most importantly, Joshua, how did you like the books?
Please share some observations in the What Are You Currently Reading (that is Bond related)? thread.
Listening to the audiobook counts, you now know Fleming's stories!
Comments
Deaver has said it was only a one-shot deal. Do you see "Project X" carrying on, or do you think it will be another few years until we see another Bond novel, possibly rebooted once more?
I've seen names like Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follet, and Lee Child tossed around as potential authors. Others have said that it could be those who wrote the introductions in the latest Penguin editions; Deaver wrote the intro for Casino Royale.
Do you have any names that you think would be appropriate?
I really wish you would consider reviewing the Titan comics. I have found them the best Bond writing post Fleming.:p
-Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
Still, here it is, in all its glory and years late...
SOLO
8/10/2016
2013
Oh dear.
I’m coming to the party a little late. I’ll be honest and say that from the off there was nothing that excited me about SOLO. It has a rubbish title, a rubbish cover, the premise (featuring an imaginary country – not just the odd politician, casino or hotel, but a whole damn country) has me shaking my head and, without intending disrespect, I am not familiar with Mr Boyd’s work.
Sadly I now don’t want to be.
SOLO isn’t as bad as Sebastian Faulk’s quick knock-off job and I am grateful for that. However, while at times the prose summons faint memories of Ian Fleming, overall it is a thin enterprise which relies much on a long, dull and complicated chapter towards the end of the novel which attempts to resolve almost every thread of the narrative. This is a one-to-one conversation between OO7 and his mate Felix Leiter, a man who still seems to know more about the CIA than the CIA despite not working for them. I was reminded of the chapter in Casino Royale entitled ‘The Nature of Evil’ when Bond and Mathis discuss the devil of the detail. Fleming’s chapter resonates highly because the discussion centres on emotions, the sins of cold war politics and latent human psychology; all Boyd’s long esoteric conversation tells us is that James Bond needn’t have been on the mission in the first place as the CIA had all angles covered.
There is a villain (I think) but I had a hard time figuring out who it was. Initially it seems Bond is being sent to assassinate Solomon Adeka, the leader of the rogue African state of Dahum, but M isn’t clear. It’s never explained why M is reluctant to give Bond a defined objective. This reenacts the worst of John Gardner’s continuation efforts and from the briefing onwards I was searching for cross and double cross and wasn’t surprised when the twists and turns duly arrived. They clunked like empty whisky bottles and had no joy in them for this reader.
Later we find three more antagonists, the brutal Jakobus Creed, the lean Colonel Denga and the arms dealer and fervent political activist Hulbert Linck. None of these supposed bad guys have any menace to them. Creed is perhaps the most finely drawn, but after initially appearing to be an efficient, brutal, callous mercenary, his guard slips badly as he’s forced to allow Bond to orchestrate the defence of Dahum. This completely diminishes the character’s stature as it appears he’s hopeless at his own career and no amount of wielding corpses onto butcher’s hooks can restore it. Incidentally, Gardner also did this neat killer’s signature back in ‘Nobody Runs Forever’ and he did it better too.
There are two women for Bond to seduce. The most interesting of these is a skin-flick actress called Bryce Fitzjohn, aka Astrid Ostergaard, whom Bond clearly fancies, but also exploits. Bond recognizes the similarities in their make-up and their union felt very genuine. I enjoyed the scenes in which she featured. Bond is very natural in these London bound episodes. In fact the best of Boyd’s story occurs in the first few chapters when he is encapsulating James Bond’s home life as our hero reflects on his past through a series of flashbacks.
These scenes have purpose and imagination: Bond is suspicious of the motives of a stranger; he’s unable to relax; he’s bothered about his age; he’s turning into a habitué; he has money and time on his hands; he both likes and dislikes aspects of 1969 Britain; he’s haunted by the past. There is a brilliantly described break in to Bryce’s home, where he voyeuristically witnesses her undress, and several passages reminisce on the gaudy sleaze of 1960s fashion. I understood this world, one of colour and coincidence, where a chance encounter or a sudden decision can lead to boundless possibilities, moments of love and sex, intrigue and death, all rolling as one.
Sadly by the time Bond has reached Africa and the author believes he had defined our hero, the characterisations become less detailed. The nominal heroine, Blessing Ogilvy-Grant, is your standard double crossing CIA agent who seduces Bond with ease, appears to be a baddie and eventually reveals her true colours at the point of termination. I hardly cared a jot for her, especially as at one point during a fire fight she goes screaming into the jungle and really ought to have been shot dead. This particular scene reminded me of the machine gunning in ‘Dr. No’ and I wondered, why it is that Ian Fleming can create tension and excitement with such a simple premise, but William Boyd can’t. The reason is simple: Fleming’s personas are established early and for the most part he abides by them, introducing nuances and background through the story, but essentially the narrative is driven by how these characters interact. So the excitement in ‘Dr. No’ derives from Bond and Honey’s shared plight, their reaction to it and their interaction throughout it, not from the entanglement itself. Boyd meanwhile chooses the opposite. He’s less interested in the people and more interested in the politic behind them. His characters (even in the London scenes) spend a lot of time talking about what they are doing and why, but not much about how that effects each other. Hence when we have moments of tension they tail off very badly because we simply don’t care enough about these people. And that applies to the dull as ditchwater climax as well.
Bond ‘goes solo’ in the final third and it’s good to see him doing some proper spying a la 1969, but not very much happens and while Boyd is keen to give us thorough descriptions, his lack of memorable metaphors is disappointing. I had no sense of place or atmosphere. Even in war torn Africa, everything’s written if you’d watched it on a newsreel or read it in a paper, snippets of detail with no encompassing sweep, no picture beyond the image laid before us. Subsequently the locations become startlingly bland. Perhaps Boyd’s most notable line (and one still prevalent today) comes when Bond buys weapons and ammunition from a Washington gun store: ‘he marveled just how easy it was to arm yourself in the land of the free.’
I could probably go on, but I feel my disappointment might turn to ire. This is a very sad episode. While the London scenes and the Normandy flashbacks showed great promise, overall the piece is rather unimaginative and for all its length, James Bond doesn’t do much of any importance, he’s simply the lynch pin for everyone else’s machinations.
Oh dear, oh dear…
5 from 10
See also:
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/33508/bond-novel-reviews/
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/34464/bond-continuation-novel-reviews/
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/36035/bond-continuation-novel-reviews-vol-2/
http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/31479/two-weeks-of-bondage-reviews/
Edit:
I misprinted this.
It should have been : 3 out of 10
Books look good.
I thought Solo was one of the better latter Bond novels...miles ahead of Benson's for me, TP -{
Really couldn't get on with carte blanche.
Enjoyed the villain's sexual fetish. A nice creepy touch.
Novels ( wouldn't be the first time )
Constantly getting put into small teams. Always filled with double and triple
Agents.
Get a flavour of the "Origins of the species " also I love the World Fleming sets
Up for us. It's great to get lost in it for a few hours.
I didn't think all of Benson's novels were bad...I thought they were probably 'misguided' or 'cheap knockoffs'....
I couldn't really get to grips with Carte Blanche....I expected SO much more and was just VERY disappointed with the whole thing
basis.
Bond has lost the villain on the chase to the airport, no he hasn't he's in the mini.
The villain is dealing with a south African arms dealer, no he isn't it's Bond in disguise etc.
I haven't read any of his other work so I don't know if it is a conciet of Deaver's writing but I found it very irritating.
Time period is best. -{
Anthony Horowitz
(2015)
Last year the well-known thriller writer Anthony Horowitz penned Trigger Mortis, the latest in a loose series of revisionist Bond novels by contemporary authors attempting to revisit and reimagine Ian Fleming’s 1950s hero for a modern audience. The first three entries have had rather mixed results; each has some gem of interest, but none has been paved with gold. Horowitz mines a similar seam.
Trigger Mortis takes place immediately after Fleming’s own Goldfinger and utilizes the bones of a short story the Master abandoned called ‘Murder on Wheels’, an episode to be included in a prospective James Bond T.V. series. Horowitz has genuine passion for Fleming and his enthusiasm about the inclusion of this story is well intended. My concern is that he dotes on it too much and that in doing so he has now actually written two adventures poorly bound together.
There was a reason ‘Murder on Wheels’ was a short story: it hasn’t got the meat on the bones to sustain a novel’s full structure. Horowitz invitingly expands the motor racing scenario, but in doing so he relegates the original story to almost a footnote, which begs the question why he bothered to include it in the first place. More on that later. It is heartening to note the fine stuff on display here, including some well annotated racing scenes, but the author commits another tactical error by failing to place the villain centre stage during these early confrontations [unlike say in the opening chapters onMoonraker, Goldfinger or even Gardner’s License Renewed]. This allows the exercise to lose much of its significance later in the novel as the actions seem only barely related. In fact, the further I read, the less I cared about the events at the Nurburgring and the Soviet spy Ivan Dimitrov. So unsure is the author he has tagged on a sinister prologue describing the death of a prominent U.S. rocket scientist which, unlike the motor racing, is much more relevant to the overall narrative.
Horowitz also brings back one of Fleming’s own heroines, Pussy Galore, and has Bond engaged in a frigid relationship, warmed only by sex, both partners equally desperate to end it. There was much press fanfare about this, but when The Mail on Sunday makes a statement like: ‘the return of the best Bond girl of them all, I’d have to question the reasoning. Pussy hardly features in Goldfinger and for the most part she is a willing accessory to a madman’s plan. Her sudden change of heart is as unlikely as her seduction by James Bond. Her character, while consummately well-drawn, wasn’t believable. Perhaps though, her sudden change of heart here is a reasonable reflection of her indifference to commitment.
In fairness Horowitz makes a decent stab at dissecting Bond’s home and love life. Added to this awkward domesticity is some stage-managed nastiness involving American hoodlums, nudity and gold paint at a Stone Age site, the Devil’s Own. All this early action though seems entirely irrelevant, merely another nod towards Fleming-ism, so much so we even have another softly spoken lesbian love affair for Pussy, this time provided by Bond’s racing instructor, the fetching Logan Fairfax. This grated with me too as while Horowitz has made much effort to affect Fleming’s world, one feels Bond’s creator would never have put the female of the species behind the wheel of a Cooper-Climax T43. It’s simply all too convenient in Horowitz’s world.
Once the motor race kicks off, the novel picks up considerably. A few exciting circuits of the Nurburgring later and Bond is attending a swish party at a grand castle and doing some surreptitious spying as he sips champagne. It’s all very grand, outrageous and good fun; very Fleming. I enjoyed the scenes at Schloss Bronsart. The introduction of both Sin Jai-Seong (the Korean bad guy, handily re-termed Jason Sin) and Jeopardy Lane (an American spy of dubious talents and many good looks) are handled well and there is an element of surprise and daring here. But too quickly Horowitz begins to make the same mistakes as all the other recent continuation authors. His villain becomes a pastiche of a Fleming creation – in this case Hugo Drax – and the heroine has to be a secret agent. This is a never spoken nod to the politically correct and wholly emancipated 21st century; Fleming’s women were rarely spies and when so rarely displayed such solid capabilities.
In fact, Jeopardy Lane is an excellent character. She is closer to Gala Brand, certainly in the sex-less friendship she strikes with OO7, but also in that she is intelligent, opinionated and prone to the occasional lapse which will put her and Bond in peril. Indeed, as I mention above, she felt a little too modern and that doesn’t sit well in a novel set in the late 1950s.
Jason Sin meanwhile is your typical rapscallion psychopath, a one dimensional deluded monster. I had little sympathy for him – I’m not sure the reader is supposed to – and his long winded tete-a-tete with bond only exposes the convoluted nature of his plan to destroy the Empire State Building. To do this, Sin plans to explode a device underneath the tower which will simulate the impact of falling debris from a Vanguard nuclear missile, one that will be destroyed in mid-air seconds before. I didn’t buy it for a minute. If Sin can successfully explode the missile, why doesn’t he simply explode it over New York in the first place? The potential ramifications would be the same, his aim of Soviet domination achieved; ah, but then there would be no long-winded train-borne climax for Horowitz to construct.
Before that extended and entirely forgettable enterprise we have the best section of the novel, where Bond plays Sin’s game of death and chooses his own execution from a stack of playing cards. This tense sequence is slightly spoilt by us already having seen it [a cinematic device Fleming would never have employed] and by Sin’s petulant displays; far better surely to have the adorable Jeopardy Lane seal Bond’s death warrant? After all she wouldn’t know the cards can be marked, would she? Mind, the nineteenth chapter, cryptically entitled ‘Six Feet Under’, is a proper tour-de-force of drama and suspense as our hero is buried alive in a bald coffin: “So dark in this tiny space. Blind. No room to move. The weight of the earth pressing down. No air.” There is a real sense of fear and futility. It’s a page turning scene indeed and reminiscent of the best of Ian Fleming.
The remainder of the piece, an extended chase through New York, is all a bit hit and miss. Much of it I could do without. Ends are neatly tied, nothing surprises. That sounds like a criticism, but I wouldn’t expect anything else in a Bond novel. Trigger Mortis is a comparative triumph compared to its immediate predecessors. It’s easy to read and I didn’t consider it poorly written. It isn’t as slack as Faulk’s Devil May Care, as intricate as Carte Blanche or as dull as Solo; in fact it’s very pacey and has a strong central character in an emotionally uncertain Bond, who only finds satisfaction in the danger of his work, but who fears his own death and the people who can administer it.
I feel I should say ‘Bravo!’ to Mr Horowitz. Trigger Mortis misses the florid speak of Fleming, but it doesn’t lack urgency and proceeds with some guile. It’s certainly on a par with the very best of Gardner as well as Kingsley Amis’s lone follow up Colonel Sun – a novel which feels better and better as more and more continuation stories appear. A touch less Fleming-fawning would aid this book’s impact, but I can’t argue that I didn’t enjoy it, for in the main I did. Bravo then, just.
6 from 10
Of all the recent continuation novels, Trigger Mortis is the one I look back on most fondly. But it really doesn't have the gloom of Fleming's stuff, none of them do. They have to be snappy page turners, with each chapter having a cliff hanger ending. And they can't help but be influenced by the films.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I felt this one wasn't that influenced by the movies, which is maybe why I enjoyed it more.
I agree the idea and construction of cliffhanger endings etc has reduced the intensity of Bond-lit in the recent continuation era. The Young Bond novels particularly irked me with their episodic flavour.
Chrisno1, I really enjoy all of these Fleming and continuation novel reviews you've done. I've never read a Benson, not sure if I ever will, but I do have a hardcover omnibus of his, titled "The Union Trilogy," which contains High Time To Kill, Doubleshot, Never Dream of Dying, and most importantly (at least so far as the reason behind my post goes) the uncut version of his short story "Blast From The Past," which was published in truncated form in Playboy.
I got the book solely for this story but have not read it yet. I don't see it reviewed above, so I'm wondering if you've read it? It's a sequel to YOLT, and I got it on that merit, only to discover that, rather than being a period piece a la the modern continuation novels, it's actually set in the same timeframe as Benson's other books. And humorously enough, Bond's son from YOLT is a grown man in it! So already one must have a healthy suspension of disbelief; Bond himself is ageless, it appears. On the plus side, apparently Irma Bundt appears as the villainess, complete with a disfigured face or somesuch.
This was the first piece of fiction Benson wrote (he completed it before starting on his first Bond novel), and he stated somewhere that he had no idea how long a short story was supposed to be, hence Playboy chopped up his manuscript for publication.
Edit: Wanted to clarify I've done a search in this thread and found a few mentions of this short story, but nothing much -- just wanted to ask you, Chrisno1, if you've read it and intend to include a writeup about it.
Also wanted to chime in on this review -- I've not read TM, either, but perhaps will shoehorn it in after I read GF, just to see the disparity between the real thing and a modern novel with modern attitudes. Anyway I wanted to post a link to this humorous and insightful review I found the other year at The Federalist, which not only points out all the bizarre, progressive missteps in TM, but also points out why none of these continuation novels have captured the vibe of Fleming:
http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/06/shaken-but-still-stirring-60-years-of-james-bond-novels/
There has been a series of BBC radio plays based directly on Fleming's books, you may like to listen to those. They have adapted eight of Fleming's books so far. Each is ninety minutes long, with actors reading the dialog, sound effects, music and narration.
They will provide a slightly different perspective on the stories Fleming told, and may help you pick up on details that you missed listening to the audiobooks.
See this thread for those Radio Plays. Barbel gives YouTube links for most of these Radio Plays in post 10.
Most importantly, Joshua, how did you like the books?
Please share some observations in the What Are You Currently Reading (that is Bond related)? thread.
Listening to the audiobook counts, you now know Fleming's stories!