CommanderBond.net

This thread is intended for reviews and ratings of Diamonds Are Forever by members of the The Blades Library Book Club here.

Please do not reply directly to reviews in this thread, rather start a new thread to ask questions or post comments about reviews.

sorry didnt read the post all the way through

Well I plowed through this one. I think this may be the most underrated James Bond book by Ian Fleming. It literally is a thrilling read. While not his very best, it is a true gem, just with some rough edges.

Tiffany Case is one terrific leading lady by Fleming, one of his better ones, I think. A woman with a strong wall surrounding her for the most part, and one that you do not get to call all the shots with. She goes through quite a change in the story from being the frosty version we meet with Bond’s alias of Peter Franks to the much happier one during their nighttime escape and Queen Elizabeth trip.

‘“Listen, Bond,” said Tiffany, “it’d take more than Crabmeat Ravigotte to get me into bed. In any case since it’s your check, I’m going to have caviar and what you English call cutlets and some pick champagne. I don’t often date a good-looking Englishman, and the dinner’s going to live up to the occasion.”’

If there is one problem with this book, it is the obvious one, the villains. Yes, they are hardly some of Fleming’s best. Jack and Serrafimo Spang, the beginning and end of the pipeline from England/Africa to the USA, while described as being some of the toughest of the bunch, and made out to be quite the villains, are never given enough actual time in the book to show off exactly what they are. Serrafimo gets a few minimal scenes with Bond, and Jack is….to save for spoilers…hardly in the book much at all. Wint and Kidd are fairly good though. They receive a general amount of time to be shown as a threat to Bond, as odd as they both may be.

The location switching is often claimed as a huge fault of this book, I even used to always harp on that myself, but I’ve come to see that it really doesn’t bother me much at all. London and the USA are done fairly well for me, and I really, really love the moving around in this book. I like reading about the Tiara in the US, and the House of Diamonds, it just feels like a James Bond book.

Very excellent little aspect in this book about

Overall, I think Diamonds Are Forever has it’s best two chapters being the first and the last. I know that may seem odd, but I think it may be one of Fleming’s best ideas on how to open and close a James Bond book, and it works great for me. Brilliant continuation with something as simple as a scorpion.

A strong story overall, at times it gets murky, such as in the horse racing, and that sort, but I don’t think anything in this story detracts too heavily from the overall plot.

Death is Forever. Diamonds are Forever. And this book is Forever. 4/5

I agree with Qwerty. I think Tiffany Case is a great bond girl, much better than she was in the movie. They showed her sort of, I want it this way and thats that in the first scene with her in her apartment, but at the same time, they showed a frightened side when on the phone with her superiors.

I thought Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd were outstanding. They are my absolute favorite literary villains. I also thought the whole 'sucking the thumb' aspect was very interesting. It wasn't like something I pondered for hours, but it made me think about from the beginning whether or not and how Fleming would incorporate that later.

I also thought that although the movie's plot was 'technologically' more with today's , (and 1971's) time period, that the plot made it less interesting. I thought, and still think, that the biggest and most defining difference between the films and the books is the plot. If you look at the movies, almost every plot is a search for some form of world domination.

Then look at the books. Some plots were world domination, some were mass distruction, (Moonraker comes to mind), but some, (Doctor No sending missiles off course, Rosa Klebb getting the Spectre-lektor in the movie-, etc.) had very simple plots.

I thought the plot, final battle, bond girl, henchmen, villains, Bond, (I didn't think Connery was very good in this particular movie), and pretty much everything else was better in the book than the movie. I agree again with Qwerty in my thoughts that this book is more underrated than any other 007 book. I will mention I think that the movie is under rated too, however much I may dislike it.

Here ye here ye!

If thou art Jill St. John, please go hither and shoot the writers of Diamonds Are Forever because they screwed you out of a great role!

Again I am stunned by how emotional this Bond is. I no longer understand those who swear that Fleming's Bond was unemotional. This is a Bond who treasures his friendship with Felix, adores Tiffany, can talk freely about his hopes and dreams for the future, and still can kick butt with the rest of them!

What really gets me about this book is Fleming's attention to detail. Exactly one year ago as I type this, I was aboard the Queen Mary, the sister ship to the Queen Elizabeth, and the layout as described by Fleming is exactly how it is on the ships. Fleming has that deft hand that he does not go overboard with details, but the picture he painted is clear enough that you know exactly where Bond is, and what he is doing at all times.

That being said, I disagree with Bond's notion of the Saratoga Race Track. There was a time where Saratoga Springs was my summer home, and I know that area well. Me thinks Bond (and in turn Fleming) was a bit too hard on the town. True, there aren't as many people there when the race track is closed, but there is still plenty to do. At the time that Bond was there, and up until a few years ago, there was a lovely bar called Jacksland. I think Bond would have loved being there. It's quiet solitude is just the spot for him.

I also agree that the villians in this book are weak. I admit to expecting the pizzazz that Bruce Glover and Putter Smith brought to Wint and Kidd respectively, but even excluding that, Wint and Kidd were simply flat. The only halfway entertaining villian was Serrafimo Spang, and that because of the That gave him a great sense of character, in how out of touch with reality he really was, but still, compared to Drax, to Kananga, to Le Chiffre, there is no evil mastermind here.

On the travelogue and Tiffany Case aspects alone, I give this book the four. Had the villians been better, it would have been a five.

-- Xenobia

I'm guessing, though, that it was your hometown considerably later than 1956.

Even at the time of the novel. Saratoga Springs was depicted as a town in the midst of a change. The Saratoga Springs of Fleming's day was almost certainly a much-different town than when it was your stomping grounds.

This post has been edited by Leviathan: 11 September 2004 - 21:39

In chapter 10: "Studillac To Saratoga" Bond and Leiter stop off along the way for lunch....

Can't say I've heard of this beer-followed-by-coffee ritual. I used to drink beer, but I couldn't possible follow one with a coffee!

Incidently, according to Make Mine A 007 the US editions leave out the beer part.

After The Man with the Golden Gun, this is my least favorite of Fleming's novels. Which isn't to say that I don't like reading it, or even that I don't like it. It has the usual superb descriptive writing and the action sequences are often tense. Tiffany Case is the first great female character Fleming wrote. But for me Diamonds Are Forever is a book in search of a center. It lacks focus and a strong through-line, juggling travelogues with a zig-zag plot across the American gangland world that never gels. The absentee villains, Seraffimo and Jack Spang, heads of the "Spangled Mob" and its diamond smuggling operations from South Africa to Las Vegas, don't help. The sleazy depictions of American commercial/criminal life are unforgettable (to this day, whenever I'm in Vegas, I can hear Fleming's description of the "gilded mousetrap" in my head), and a few tense sequences such as a fiery train crash and Bond's confrontation with mob killers in their cabin on the Queen Elizabeth make for top-notch Fleming. But for me it just doesn't ultimately stack up to Fleming's other work.

Diamonds Are Forever reads a bit like Fleming dropped Bond into Mike Hammer's bare-knuckle wise-guy world to see how he measured up. An interesting idea, since in the early 1950s, Mickey Spillane's novels were the most popular crime novels on the market. And Fleming's dialogue for the American heavies isn't that bad—you might expect a British writer to overdo it more, but the dialogue is all quite believable. Bond isn't initially amused by the idea of going against American gangsters to investigate diamond smuggling since he sees U.S. mobsters as nothing more than a cartoon figures. Everyone who knows something about organized crime cautions him how dangerous these people can be; the incessant warnings start to turn into a bit of an annoyance, since the book never makes the Spangled Mob into a threat on the level of SPECTRE or SMERSH. They can be dangerous, but not like some of Bond's other adversaries.

The descriptions of places like Las Vegas and Saratoga take up large amounts of text, and for the first time Fleming lets his research and fascination with his subject get away from him. The grimy, unglamorous look at American life is often interesting, but it gets in the way of the flow of the story. The Saratoga sequence in particular feels gratuitous, and Bond does little more than act as an observer.

Tiffany Case is a treat in the book, and Bond's attraction to her maddening hot/cold return is a joy to read. She has a fully fleshed-out background, but the story leaves her hanging at the conclusion. I wanted to know a bit more about where she stands with Bond (although we do get to find Bond also gets to pal around with Felix Leiter (now a Pinkerton agent and not that bitter about the mauling he got in Live and Let Die) and tough-talking cabby Ernest Cureo. Even if the book is Fleming's first disappointment, it does show him advancing in character development. Shame about those villains, however.

This post has been edited by Double-O Eleven: 8 September 2006 - 19:14