/ Literary 007 / 1958 - Doctor No /

Summary

Written by Evan Willnow on 24 Apr, 2002

31 March 1958 brought the release of Doctor No, a novel that carried James Bond back to Fleming’s home turf of Jamaica and set on an adventure that Raymond Benson called ‘one of the most exciting and suspensful’.

Licenced To Thrill: BBC Radio Dramatisation Of Ian Fleming’s ‘Dr. No’

Another centenary celebration event planned for April 2008

M called this case a soft option. Bond can’t quite agree. The tropical island is luxurious, the seductive Honey Rider is beautiful and willing. But they are both part of the empire of Dr No…

The doctor is a worthy adversary. with a mind as hard and cold as his solid steel hands. Dr No’s obsession is power. His only gifts are strictly pain-shaped.

Back of Coronet paperback edition

BOND AWOKE lazily. The feel of sand reminded him where he was. He glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock. The sun through the round thick leaves of the sea-grape was already hot. A larger shadow moved across the dappled sand in front of his face. Quarrel? Bond shifted his head and peered through the fringe of leaves and grass that concealed him from the beach. He stiffened. His heart missed a beat and then began pounding so that he had to breathe deeply to quieten it. His eyes, as he stared through the blades of grass, were fierce slits.

It was a naked girl, with her back to him. She was not quite naked. She wore a broad leather belt round her waist with a hunting knife in a leather sheath at her right hip. The belt made her nakedness extraordinarily erotic. She not more than fiveyards away on the tideline looking down at something in her hand. She stood in the classical relaxed pose of the nude, all the weight on the right leg and the left knee bent and turning slightly inwards, the head to one side as she exanined the things in her hands.

It was a beautiful back. The skin was a very light uniform caf� au lait with the sheen of dull satin. The gentle curve of the backbone was deeply indented, suggesting more powerful muscles than is usual in a woman, and behind was almost as firm and rounded as a boy’s. The legs were straight and beautiful and no pinkness showed under the slightly lifted left heel. She was not a coloured girl.

Her hair was ash blonde. It was cut to the shoulders and hung there and along the side of her bent cheek in thick wet strands. A green diving mask was pushed back above her forehead, and the green rubber thong bound her hair at the back.

The whole scene, the empty beach, the green and blue sea, the naked girl with strands of fair hair, reminded Bond of something. He searched his mind. Yes, she was Botticelli’s Venus, seen from behind.

Chapter 8, Doctor No