“In hard covers my books are written for and appeal principally to an “A” readership, but they have all been reprinted in paperbacks, both in England and in America and it appears that the “B” and “C” classes find them equally readable, although one might have thought that the sophistication of the background and detail would be outside their experience and in part incomprehensible.”

Ian Fleming, letter to CBS, 1957

“I write what is referred to as ‘commercial fiction’. I’m convinced that if Casino Royale was delivered to a publisher today, it wouldn’t get published! Publishers want an easy-to-read style when it comes to thrillers, except in the cases they call “literary thrillers” such as Mystic River.”

Raymond Benson, interview with CBn, 2004

Query whether that comparison of the motives behind the supplies (and suppliers) of written Bond is entirely fair, although what it may illustrate [aside from crashing (if magnificent) snobbery on Fleming’s part] is a perception (correct or otherwise) in the changed nature of the demand.

Whether that perception is the product of the writer’s (both writers) own reflection on what he achieved and did not achieve – and contemplation of what he was seeking to achieve – or a demand imposed upon him by the publisher, one cannot immediately tell. Evidently, however, there is a difference in outlook. Regardless of origin, the shift in attitude to what was trying to be produced may assist any conclusion about whether Mr Benson succeeded in Mr Fleming’s job; he did not because the job was [simply] not the same one. Therefore, is comparison inappropriate because the motives and intent were not on a par?

Yet, whychange the motives and intent? Is there really no market for Fleming’s approach any more, and a greater one for Benson-esque output? Whilst I appreciate that it would be “odd” for Glidrose to commission a series of books that would be deliberately uncommercial (however much their weaknesses put the core Fleming material in a better light – a conspiracy theory too far, perhaps), what was their understanding of what commercial written Bond is? Selectively targeting one’s audience and grateful for whoever else tags along for the ride – which seems to be what Fleming was up to if that quote is anything to go by – or just trying to cover all bases instantly, and democratically, without evidently directing the product at capturing a particular audience other than undiscriminating and gullible collectors who would acquire anything “official” with the words “James Bond” on it?

Are the answers to be found in the fact of which of these authors gets regular reprints despite the antiquity of their work, and which does not – and, I believe, will not? [There is an essay on how Fleming, initially seen as terribly racy, if he courts popularity now it is for a charming/absurd ancientness, and when this switch in perception may have occurred: but this bain’t going to be it]. Not being sufficiently discriminating, was that the reason for the Benson “commercial fiction” not being a great commercial success? Are we to believe that the general – “commercial” – market would have been insufficiently intrigued by the potential cognitive dissonance that efforts to appeal to a select audience would have birthed, instead of feeding just more of the same old commercial stuff in, indistinct from the narrative capabilities and incapabilities of the bog standard?

Isn’t hindsight great?

Wouldn’t they have been better off conceiving “new old” in avoiding a mass market that Bond was never (apparently) intended by its creator to be (“new old” in the sense that a more conscious effort would have been made to appeal to Fleming’s perception of Fleming’s reader (y’know, like giving the old maggot some credit for coming up with something successful), not Mr Benson’s editor’s perception of Mr Benson’s perception of Glidrose’s perception of Eon’s perception of its 15-hour-Bond-movie-marathon overweight burger masticators)? Is it admirable, this apparent desire to give the general commercial market some “same old” and let it flounder along with mounds of similar stuff?

Or, more succinctly – who the hell dreamt this scheme up? Did he/she/it really think that it would be a sensible proposition to try to cram into an already brimful general commercial pap “C” appeal thriller market, rather than develop something that would stand out? Y’know, like Fleming tried, with his frustrations at attempting to write something and his insecurity that his wife’s clever friends despised his efforts at what is – if not literature – then trying to be literary.

This is not to put Fleming on some sort of pedestal as a “Great Writer”, more as a distinctive one. There’s more to this than a wide vocabulary, and more to this than “being Ian Fleming” which is a biological impossibility to emulate and therefore a trite position from which to attack – or indeed to defend one’s self.

What seems to have been ignored in the grand scheme is not that one sought a Fleming clone, or pastiche, but that some attempt was made to give the books as much distinctiveness as the Flemings had. This doesn’t mean one has to write like the man, nor be the man; just appreciate what he was trying to do. The perspective of Bond novels expressing attitudes and reactions to the events more than mere reportage of them is a key ingredient. The mass market appeal comes from offering something different, not something familiar (be it apeing a “commercial” style, or a film style), allowing that market to expand itself rather than absorb more of the same. If you overface it with the same diet, it will reject. The commercial market is encouraged to evolve, and it will react with greater interest to material that forces its evolution; anything that maintains it is merely sustenance but of no substantial value to its development. Consider Harry Potter; ostensibly children’s books but enough of unique content, style, attitude to interest the adult market – more than the “same old” children’s books. And they’re not “literary” by any stretch of the imagination.

Why consider these ideas here, by way of general preamble? Primarily because they have been generated by High Time to Kill and what it represents. I’ve tended so far to go easy on the Benson writing style (I assure you, compared to what’s coming, that was “easy”), but High Time to Kill is such a fundamentally frustrating book because of it. The main reason is that it is bold in its conception, and has a number of solid ideas that one seethes and starts bouncing off the walls in desperation that they didn’t get someone else to write it for him.

Its ambition is betrayed by its quite, quite dreadful expression. An ounce of uniqueness, or novelty, about the manner of delivery, coupled with its inventive structure, and this could have been a genuine contender to break out of the cycle of being hunted down only by the Bond fans. Instead, it’s a mess and exceedingly difficult to like. It really won’t do, y’know. “The Impossible Job” made just that more impossible. Lord alone knows whose fault it really is; but it’s Mr Benson’s name on the cover. Perhaps it’s someone in the lengthy frontispiece of “thankyous”; I’m tempted to blame the staff of the splendidly named Hotel Yak and Yeti, but I doubt it’s them really.

What’s of particular annoyance is that Raymond Benson (or whatever committee goes by the name of “Raymond Benson”) takes leaps with his confidence in structuring the story (far from perfect, but interesting) but the prose has barely advanced. Indeed, so much has he reachched with the one that the other appears to have gone backwards. Accordingly, the gulf between the two disciplines – structure and delivery – is far more marked here than in the opening two books. Therefore, whilst High Time to Kill exemplifies Mr Benson as a plotter, it exposes him horrifically as a writer. He doesn’t do his story anywhere near the justice its conception deserves. Strong skeleton, but gutless. It remains a skeleton.

The mystery is that, on reflection, Fleming’s plots, divorced from their delivery, can be unengaging. The plot of Goldfinger, for example, is terrible and, taken apart, suffers from gaping logical lacunae. Consider some of the rest: James Bond beats someone at cards. James Bond stops a diamond smuggling ring. Woo-hoo. But it was never what was done – it was how it was done. It is better to travel hopefully than arrive. I’m afraid Mr Benson appears to be all about the destination, and we can sit in economy class to get there. There’s a genuine shift in outlook here – a desire to emulate the plot driven commercial easy-to-read – and shoddily written – market rather than creating, or in this case perpetuating, a mystique.

Did they really think it was strong enough to survive? That cheapening the Bond series in this manner was (gulp) a good idea?

Too harsh? In truth, as Raymond Benson has said himself, he’s no worse and no better than the majority of commercial fiction writers – much of Clancy and Grisham, at the most successful end (and don’t even mention The DaVinci Crud; have you read it? Isn’t it dreadful?), contains staggeringly inept prose that one would not choose to inflict on anyone, and one is carried along by the plot alone – but it’s not much of an ambition to be “no worse and no better”. How does one stand out if that’s the extent of the perception of what one seeks to achieve? If that was the extent of the ambition, it would be churlish to propose anything other than he achieved it. But, still?

Note: Inevitably, this will contain substantial spoilers. Page references are to UK first edition hardback. The views expressed are not necessarily those of CBn. Not necessarily. But they’re honest.

High Time to Kill

Plot

(I’ve evolved this (i.e. changed my mind) and abandoned strengths and weaknesses, because it may come across as a bit out of “balance”).

You’ll have heard that it’s Bond meets Cliffhanger. It’s a lazy description, but about as strenuous a precis as the book merits so I’m happy. In truth, the story is misrepresented to you if that’s the expectation; the climbing doesn’t start until page 177. Most of that is effective: there seems a need for it to happen although I have wondered whether taking a helicopter up there would be quicker. I assume that anyone getting out of it would have to acclimatise anyway (and it may offend all sorts of gods and monsters and cause an international incident to bung a helicopter onto Kangchenjunga (albeit we could probably stuff Nepal in a fight, Skin 17 or not; as a world power they’re “not much of one”)). In essence, the mountain climbing plot seems plausible. No more implausible, anyway, than “James Bond does Top Gun” or “M is kidnapped” or whatever else rot the continuation authors have seen fit to inflict upon us.

Whilst all the larking about on the mountain is fairly engaging – without being particularly fascinating (but that’s probably more to do with the fact that mountain climbing has never interested me and never will), the majority of the book’s serious flaws are contained within the preceding 176 pages. Stretching the metaphor, it’s a hell of a trek before you get to the good bit and query whether it’s really worth it. The first hundred pages or so are a genuine struggle, and the three “set pieces” within them just don’t work. This may of itself create a danger that one views the mountain sequence more generously (and in hindsight, it exposes the rest of the book as pretty hopeless timewasting) because it is inherently more unusual than the early stages, but hey ho. Except insofar as it feels drawn out and a bit of an opportunity for Ray to whack us over the head with his research, on the whole the mountain bit is entertaining stuff that pretty much works.

On the face of it, it seems fresh to have a plot in which everything has gone wrong for everybody. That’s funny, and it seems novel: the book is preceding in such-and-such a manner and then this damn great mountain hoves into view and thwarts everyone. Interesting idea: the villains are as frustrated by their plot going wrong as Bond is frustrated in his mission; everyone has to readjust, scrabble about in a bit of a panic. An odd note is sounded by M’s rather ambivalent motive: expressing in relation to Skin 17 “I wouldn’t want Japan to have it” passes by without any sort of explanation.

On reflection, though, it’s For Your Eyes Only II – a defence device developed by the British, the purpose and effect of which is hinted at but never generously overexplained (in this case, maddeningly anorexically at pages 55-56), is lost and Bond and the villains are in a race to retrieve it (with some climbing involved), but the recovery of the “thingy” takes a definite backseat to the “real” plot – which, here, is the question of what’s going to kill Bond first – the traitor, the Union, Marquis or the mountain? Or the teams of competitors? Having had a fill of nuclear devices and warheads in the previous two books, it’s a twist on the expectations to let the hardware take a less significant role. The slight difficulty have is that Skin 17 is even more abstract than the silly Polaris typewriter machine and whilst I’m sure it’s super and that what it can do is accurate, it’s not that interesting. Still, the apparent idea of the story would be ill-served if it was nuclear bombs again, so this slightly out-of-focus plot device is probably a success. It does generate a really fine idea – the microdot on the pacemaker battery is a splendid conception.

The unfortunate downside of this idea to make the environment the threat to Bond, rather than another host of colossal whizzbangs, is that there is little “threat” in the book until the mountain climbing starts and various members of the mountain climbing team start being picked off. The motive behind the recovery of Skin 17 is basically preserving Britain’s image – interesting as a plot, although there seems yet another missed opportunity for Bond to reflect on the shabby pointlessness of risking his life for that; nowhere does this happen. The problem is that before the point of the book turns up over halfway through, there is no tension. Accordingly, because Skin 17 is so undernourished that it cannot be seen of itself to be an dangerous thing, and Britain or her interests are not directly in peril, to create a threat means deviating into directionless set pieces and underwhelming Helena Marksbury traitor issues Helena Marksbury that don’t Helena Marksbury succeed.

Overall, inevitably the greatest similarity is to Thunderball – the Union/SPECTRE pinching some British military hardware is a patent similarity, but there are a couple of hamfisted nods elsewhere – for example Bond’s quip “Someone probably lost a contact lens” – a direct lift from Bond’s “Someone probably lost a dog” from Thunderball “da movie”. Unfortunately this is the best joke in the book and is in essence the same joke in response to the same situation – crime syndicate pinching war stuff from Britain with the help of a traitor. There are also echoes of Blofeld’s attitude to the Lektor in FRWL (film) in Le Gerant’s determination to retrieve Skin 17 and keep his deal going, and GoldenEye in the rivalry between the fair (but unfair – see what he did there?) Roland Marquis and the dark (but shiny) Bond. The story rattles along nicely enough but one is basically waiting?waiting? for the mountain climbing to start.

The far more significant problems start at the?er?start. The book contains three particular incidents that require the mountain climbing to turn up to rescue it; if that hadn’t happened, this really would be a wretched effort.

Incident one: the opening. An unlovely take on Quantum of Solace, that tedious tale of betrayal, and gruesomely unsubtle in its devotion to its source. Involving Helena Marksbury in this (utterly unwelcome) sequel is an elephantine day-glo clue as to the “twist”; Bond and Marksbury betray each other to greater or lesser degrees during the book – that “certain degree of humanity” is lost, a quantum of solace of nil. That Benson fails to come good on this twist by refusing to make Bond as culpable as he should be is a hell of a lost opportunity. To introduce that theme, even though he handles it in an underwhelming manner, the involvement of “the Governor” character from Quantum of Solace may – may – be justifiable as an idea. But it creates a number of problems.

Well, two anyway.

The problems are exposed by the only two ways to read it: with knowledge of the “original” story, or with ignorance of it (I apologise for the triteness of that observation, but you’ll see the point in a moment).

“Knowledge”. In the original short story (which I’ve never liked because it is very obvious, tedious and substantially the least interestingly written thing that Fleming wrote) Bond and the Governor are not friends. The Governor is merely a cipher for the tale; it is evident that at the end, Bond is at best cordial, rather than chummy; they still don’t like each other. No explanation is given by Mr Benson for the “friendship” that he is keen to emphasise here. Additionally, QoS refers to a colonial life of many years past, and given the context, must refer to Britain’s position in the mid-to-late 1950s. Also, the Governor in QoS is pretty decrepit even then. This can’t be in the same time sphere. To give Mr Benson some credit, there’s acknowledgement of this with the Governor’s mock accusation that Bond is jacked up to the “fountain of youth” – although the double edge is that by this comment there is an acknowledgement that Bond must be older (retirement age, if not beyond) than he is actually represented otherwise in these books (at a guess, fortysomething). Anyway; sum total of “knowledge” approach – inconsistency.

“Ignorance”: There is no physical description of the Governor – he remains a cipher – but that’s simply not good enough when he is ostensibly the tale, not just the teller. He doesn’t come across as having any sort of character whatsoever. So poorly fleshed out is he that the Union threat to him strikes no chord of concern. At all. Additionally, there are at least four overt Fleming references in the opening half-dozen pages – QoS, Scaramanga, Mary Goodnight, Mr and Mrs Harvey Miller which, to the uninitiated, will be baffling, and is a terrible display of redundant Bond knowledge, and gives the lie to any suggestion that one need not read QoS to “enjoy” this. I cannot see anyone ignorant of James Bond not being puzzled by all this stuff. It’s ticking off the Bond references one by one, letting each thump to Earth with a solid clang. And they are primarily references to one of the more obscure Bond stories, so what on earth is that apart from pure swank? Sum total of “ignorance”: going off and reading something less (tragically) boastful instead.

Gardner abandoned Fleming (for better or worse – but he abandoned James Bond too, which was a key problem) but Benson seems so determined to hang onto the coat tails that it’s wearying how many references are chucked at one in the opening few pages. Laying it on a bit thick. Not a character worth bringing back, the Governor. He never meant anything, and he means even less now.

It’s just trying too hard to connect his Bond to Fleming. If Mr Benson doesn’t want to be compared to Fleming, why do this? It really isn’t a credible stance to whinge that he isn’t Fleming and shouldn’t be criticised when he brings it upon himself in this inglorious and baffling manner. Surely, if he did not wish to invoke comparison, wouldn’t it have been better to come up with “some new stuff”? Gardner tried. Habitually a bit of an effort, but at least he “tried”. A character other than the Governor would have sufficed; the tie to Quantum of Solace could have been recognised in passing rather than have it thrown at us. Mr Benson would have been much better off tying his Bond to the film Bond; there’s material in Benson’s output that’s the equal, and in many cases the better, of some of the pus that has been banged out by the infinite number of braindead committee-monkeys Eon have been conned into paying for. I accept that as damning with exceedingly faint praise – after all, the “scripts” of the Bond films are hardly something anyone with half a synapse should wish to aspire to unless they have troubling self-esteem issues – but it is praise.

To whom are these directed, these strange half-remembered bits? The reference to Scaramanga and Goodnight is a reference to the novel; subsequently referencing the DB5 later in the book, however, is a creature of the films. Falling between the two, not satisfying those who seek a literary Bond, potentially confusing those who know only the film Bond and distancing itself from those who know neither. Not surprising these things didn’t take the world by storm: the potential to satisfy no-one when seeking to satisfy all is immense.

Second incident that fills one with dread – the golf. As an incident it sets up the rivalry between Bond and Marquis, but in the nature of the detail of what is reported it reads as a facile introduction to the game, assuming one knows nothing of it. It comes across as a terribly podgy incident, descending into a tedious litany of golfing expressions painstakingly explained as if to a ‘B’ or ‘C’ – “[A] birdie, or one under-par? [A]n eagle, or two under-par”. You don’t say. This verges on “Golf is a game. Games is stuff done in spare time. Time is an abstract concept. A concept is an idea. An idea is what this lacks.”

Fleming, with his “A” market, wrote the Goldfinger game relying on an assumption that his audience knew what would be going on; there’s little or no explanation of the rules, it is a given. Let the Bs and Cs catch up. Similarly, the explanation of bridge in Moonraker is pretty impenetrable if one has no knowledge of card games. Here, however, everything is laid out on a plate and it’s facile stuff. They play golf, but one doesn’t feel it happening as Benson breaks off and explains what a “birdie” is for the billionth time. The suspicion is that he is not writing what he knows; it comes across as yet another thing Ray has researched but not experienced. In the same manner that one cannot know what it is to drive a car by listening to three lectures about how the internal combustion engine works, there is no evident participation on show here, or a willingness to draw the reader in by sharing it. Accordingly, he has substantial difficulty transferring it to us with anything approaching conviction. By way of comparison, whilst it has a questionable place within a James Bond story, Bond in the Tex-Mex horror in The Facts of Death was evidently written from familiarity, and it shows. Perhaps Mr Benson does not participate or enjoy English country sports; at the very least, he hasn’t transmitted it. Best advice would have been to have left well alone. He doesn’t do himself any favours here.

Additionally, it just doesn’t work as an incident. Aside from the apparent discrepancy whether Bond likes a flexible or firm shaft (fnarr), it is nakedly and clumsily expositional, a huge amount of snarly dialogue (as ever) being scattered about – and inevitably has unfortunate overtones with Goldfinger. This is hardly accidental in the way too cute setting of the game at Stoke Poges; naff. Why not fencing? Yachting? Polo? Cribbage? Snap? Slapsies? Something not seen before which wouldn’t waken the dead. Something that wouldn’t raise inescapable and unfortunate comparisons. Did he really think he had done enough in the past two books to go head to head? He can only be squished, and squished is what he is. Weird choice. Disastrous choice. Don’t want to be compared, Ray? Don’t do this, then.

Third incident, and the most fetid of the bunch: “The Road to Brussels”, chapter 6, is the most lamentable chapter in any Bond book. It is a monument to colossal feculence; that it contains plenty of car crashes is testament to its nature. For sheer awe-inspiring banality, for birthing the urge to crawl into a foetal ball and sob giant salty tears at the desecration, it has no equal. Not one. I don’t want to look for one, anyway. I couldn’t bear it. Please don’t make me.

If it was only the very boring writing it wouldn’t stand out from the rest of the very boring writing, so that can’t be it. Nope: the reason it is so noticeable is the idea – and the culpability for that can’t realistically be that of the editor, but the writer. This goes beyond an editor’s glitch in failing to eradicate a few Americanisms – this one is fair and square Mr Benson’s problem.

Bijou problemette one: it’s a car chase. These things happen, I s’pose. It is a Bond book; no credible objection to a car chase other than it being about the fiftieth one. Must be hard coming up with a crisp spin. Accordingly, what novel slant, what fresh hell has its creator devised for us now? The new angle of naked pointlessness – there is absolutely no reason for it to happen. It’s a chase just for the hell of it. Lot of exposition in the preceding few pages of the script, so time for things to start “blowing up”. Hmm. Why Mr Benson isn’t “writing” the films is a bit of mystery; he apes the Eon logic perfectly.

Second minty fresh idea: Bond only has to sit in car – “that scout thing” is back, fans of “that scout thing” – and shout things out. (I’m not making this up; please remove your jaw from the floor). “Prepare silicon fluid bomb?” “Ready rear laser..” “Count of three for one-second laser flash?” Christ it’s ghastly. I feel emotionally soiled reporting it.

Bond is never in peril. He doesn’t even have to drive this car; totally disassociated from the action. By way of technological advance, neither does he have to press buttons this time. Reminiscent of the BMW chase in Tomorrow Never Dies, in that Bond doesn’t actually have to do very much to “win”. There’s no risk, no danger, and no guile in escaping danger; accordingly, no interest other than disbelief at having to waste precious minutes reading it. You won’t get the time back, y’know.

Thirdly – and this is the worst aspect (it tops the second, and – agreed – that is a pretty incredible achievement) – there’s something eminently disturbing about it. The antagonists are on three motorbikes. However, in the course of dispatching them, Bond destroys two “innocent” lorries and it’s not clear whether their drivers survive. Is this because two lorries being damaged is more immediately “cinematic” than motorbikes, which aren’t as big and viscerally satisfying when they go down, kablooey!! But doesn’t Bond’s licence to kill only extend to those who would threaten the state – it is after all, the state who has granted him the licence? This just seems to be an act of wanton destruction; unlicensed (attempted) murder of the general public. Terrible. He may have a licence to kill, but this is not to be used wantonly. “That should get the attention of the police, thought Bond”, yeah, you an undercover secret agent ‘n’ all.

So, along with the traditionally, by now almost heartwarmingly anodyne manner of blank reciting of the incident, an exceedingly unfavourable impression is created about this entire (unnecessary) incident. The book struggles to recover. If you’re determined to persist with this rot, don’t read chapter 6 (you lose little: he goes to Belgium and meets his contact, Gina Hollander (and she can be safely ignored)). If you’re determined to read chapter 6, do it drunk; it dulls the pain. If you’re determined to enjoy chapter 6, isn’t there some sort of register the police make you sign? Please stay away from me and my family.

It would be inaccurate to suggest it’s all rubbish before the mountain climbing starts – it’s not: it’s predominantly rubbish. Couple of incidents pass by entertainingly, particularly the fight in the hotel room with Basil, which is increasingly vicious (Bond does get unpleasantly injured but this is quickly forgotten – still some sort of superhuman) and accordingly, viscerally satisfying. And redolent of OHMSS, given that Basil is a big black man and they trash the room – whether this is the subtlest of subtle clues as to the Union’s genesis?nah, that’s overgenerous. One odd point: frequently (if not entirely) Basil is described as “the black man” – why not just “the man”. There’s only two people having the fight, after all, and we know one of them well. Perhaps that’s inconsistent of me; after all, Fleming would probably have chosen even more provocative epithets.

Another moment of interest is the SIS Visual Library – nicked for TWINE (including the involvement of a BBC news reader, oddly). It’s a nice “visual film” touch, and at least stops M and Bond from playing their usual Benson game about “who knows more about the ostensible plot this time.” However, it is still script. Why is he so terrified of descriptive narrative? Also, is it really the case that, although the author wants to give some context, an archive would really present its information in such a History Channel fashion – this is an information archive, not a museum. As Mr Benson notes “The narration was terribly clichéd” which seems to undermine his purpose.

What else? This is a bit of a struggle?um?the hijacking of the tourist ‘plane is an effective sequence, and it’s just as well it works because of its critical nature to his sleight-of-hand construction. However, on the whole, the majority of the book is significant only for its crashing banality and excuses for film-like sequences of little genuine merit: a pointlessly Eonesque Boothroyd sequence – no reason for it, could have been done by descriptive narrative rather than dialogue; an attempt on Bond’s life by a sniper in Kathmandu which seems to serve little purpose other than “time for a chase and a bit of local colour”, which seems to involve trashing a temple in true Eon “ah, stuff the locals and respecting their ways – can we blow it up?” manner.

Then they climb the mountain.

Style

Structurally, there’s little else like this in the Bond books (although it is reminiscent of a few films and therefore not too alienating). As a departure from the written norm, the plan works. This is, in its framework, one of the more distinctive books; the preceding two were very much by the numbers (The Facts of Death especially, although arguably none the worse for it) and, after all, Fleming was at his most interesting when playing with form – From Russia with Love, as an example.

There are a number of interesting visual ideas – that the golden boy – in appearance and success – is the dark hearted one, and the darker child is the true hero. (This is something more successfully drawn out here than, say, in GoldenEye with its casting of the fairer Sean Bean against the dark Pierce Brosnan).

His killings are becoming more gruesome (really nice, sadistic deaths for the “bit dim” Dr Wood, the sinister baddie Glass and poor old Chandra), his sex?well, that’s becoming very silly, but he seems to be trying his hand at stretching himself in terms of manipulating the form, which is confident.

However?

By Christ, his editor should be ashamed. This book contains some of the sloppiest and most uninspired, clumsy prose since I had to grit my teeth and agree that my twin sons’ Batman rip-off for a school project was “really good”. But they’re ten. Unless Glidrose is into child labour, there’s really no excuse for the abject manner in which this story is flung at us.

There remains too much exposition dialogue; do people really talk this way? Bond is teetering on Basil Exposition territory – it’s still a script. An easy way to do it but it does make Bond come across as a fearful know-all (and given that this is a book in which Bond makes mistakes and faces the consequences (-ish) of them, it doesn’t quite ring true that in other respects, he is an oracle). The moribund determination to shun narrative in favour of dialogue can only undermine the purpose of exposing Bond’s frailties and poor judgment.

There’s still a lot of “these are my chums” – namecheckery ahoy for Paul Baack, George Almond, various others who may or may not be important to the world. It’s a bit-injokey, but fair enough – Fleming did it. But not in every single book. Additionally, the “character” (such as it is) of Baack gives rise to a pretty rum final twist, which doesn’t work. Bond not checking Baack’s body is unlikely and all it really achieves is an opportunity for Baack to say “It’s high time to kill, James” – ranks down there with “Wow, what a view”/ “To a kill” as crass shoehorning. It’s a shame that Benson feels he has to twist one final time (other than to give his buddy a moment of posterity) because on the whole, whilst similarly enamoured of the plot twist as Gardner, Benson’s major spin achieves something (whereas most of Garnder’s were terrible and nonsensical): the betrayal by Harding of the Union works because it has a consequence – it sets the mountain climbing plot into motion. As such, that’s a success. Shame that Mr Benson kept feeling the need to do the “Gardner unexpected turncoat” routine.

A fair few chapters – particularly when starting the long climb – pass by with ends of passages (or, indeed, chapters themselves) where Bond is musing on the Union getting ready to strike. When the “strikes” come, they are diverting and entertaining – but count the number of times Bond “waits” for them. Then, rather oddly, there is a truncated final approach – basically, having had a long time milling about (this demonstrates the tedium of acclimatising effectively – if unintentionally) there’s a very short burst during which a huge amount of climbing is done, as if Mr Benson was getting just as bored with it as I was.

“Minister of Defence”. We have a Ministry of Defence which is headed by a Secretary of State for Defence, supported by the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, the Under Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Defence Procurement (basically a government sanctioned arms dealer) and the Minister for Veterans. There is no Minister of Defence, as such. OK, the Bond films have never paid too much attention to veracity [one thinks, for example, of the obvious traitor Frederick Gray keeping his job as “Minister of Defence” (note the terminology – Benson’s choice of title is an indication of film Bond rather than book Bond) between 1977 and 1985 despite a change in governing political party], but in a Bond book the detail sells .

You might think it is a small point, and it is admittedly no more than a minor detail (albeit one repeated, gnawing away), but why it disturbs is this: if one cannot trust the accuracy of information such as this, given that it is very, very simple to check, why should one then trust the accuracy of anything else that is presented to us, and if one is prevented from so doing, when that detail is thrown at us (and a lot of detail is indiscriminately hurled at us during the mountain climbing episode – a brandname bonanza, a lot of name checking going on with the equipment – probably enough to make Milletts fetishists chuck their custard) one doesn’t take it on trust, one doesn’t engage with the material and – indeed – one skims over it, which cannot have been the writer’s intention. Given the amount of ostensible detail that is there, accordingly it becomes very tedious very quickly if one is prevented by mistrust at the potential accuracy in engaging with it on any level. One just looks at the info, cannot connect with it, moves on. Maybe Fleming has the advantage that his references are beyond many of us, antiquated and therefore we take them on trust. His stuff’s doubtless full of sloppy tosh, but at least one has the panache as a distraction. Mr Benson does not have that (or, more charitably, has been deprived it by an complete absence of skill on the part of Glidrose).

“Wood placed a blank compact disk (disc?) into the recorder and punched the computer keypad. The entire Skin 17 formula was saved on the disk. He removed the disk and placed it in an unmarked jewel box. Wood found a red marker on the desk and wrote “Skin 17 Gold Master” on the cover”.

There’s no joy, no flow, no art in this?this thing. It is bland recitation of events. It’s an audio-loop for the blind of the onscreen activity. Mr Benson may be “seeing” this and wishing to convey what he is watching – his predeliction for talking about his characters in terms of the actors who will play them is a dead giveaway – but I’ve seen the James Bond films and seek a different satisfaction, a different experience, from the Bond books. If I wanted the James Bond films, I would watch a James Bond film. This just isn’t meeting the Bond book requirement. Nowhere near. Due to the undemanding nature of the prose, no-one can be in any doubt about what is going on, but it’s really not challenging enough. It may work as commercial fiction and thus meet its underwhelming ambition, but it’s awfully plodding. He did this. Then he did this. Then he did this. Then he did this. Easy to read, I agree. Impossible to admire. It’s just nowhere near good enough. Simply using some words to tell the story. Fine. Just don’t pass it off as anything to do with the literary Bond. If the words “James Bond” weren’t on the cover, I might feel more generous (but then, it’s more probable that I wouldn’t have been conned into buying it in the first place).

Then?then there are the depressing turns of phrase. “Completely destroyed” – “destroyed” is a complete state. Something is either destroyed or it is not. Who the hell did they get to edit this overexcited imprecision? “Then he picked up the phone [sic] again and put in some coins” – why be so irritatingly vague – why not one pound? Fifty pence? What international denomination of currency is “some”? “She had sent him packing” is rancid in its vulgarity. A Russian “looked a lot like Joseph (sic) Stalin” Bit lazy there, Ray. “He had let his loins do the thinking for him once again” Ugh. And then it descends (just about possible) into the hollow qualifications of “somewhat” and “quite” as descriptions – look Ray and handlers of Ray, you’ve really got to try. “It was somewhat cold” tells one nothing more, without an explanation of the nature of the cold, than “It was cold”. The use of “somewhat” is so?underpowered. It is a misery of a word, a bad rainy day of a word, a February Tuesday of a word. It is vile, lazy and coy, the siren song of the intellectually featherweight. Ultimately, it means nothing. As for “?located in Buckinghamshire in the south of England”, that’s grotesque. This I assume is to distinguish it from the Buckinghamshire just outside Mombassa. Or the one on the Moon. As for the trite dialogue – “It’s all a big mystery that I’m still trying to sort out” (says Bond: does this really sound like James Bond?)- yes, well, quite. It would be no mystery (of whatever size) if you had. The inertness of the vocabulary is ludicrous.

When it’s in English. There’s a slipping in of some references – “granola” (whatever that may be; sounds unpleasant), the Stoke Poges membership referred to as “dues” (fees, man, fees), somebody “snickered”, a reference to a device or state of mind or country (I know not which) called a “burlap bag” and vomiting described as “heaving” – which whilst (potentially) being in English, aren’t English. The overwhelming impression is slapdash, of “that’ll do”.

No. It. Won’t.

What else? Slightly odd that he feels the need to translate into English the food that Bond and Gina Hollander are served – to anyone with an ounce of an acceptable education it’s evident what the stuff is; let the Bs and Cs aspire to catch up; don’t do it for them. The dull metronome style, the painstaking and largely unnecessary description of matters well within the experience of those to whom it should be directed, renders this potentially energetic Bond book into an everyday story of spying for really simple folk. It’s Bond for the thick.

This ill-advised casual attitude to what is being artlessly churned out is at its starkest in (repeated) clumsy constructions: consider this, a paragraph after Bond has been fired on by a sniper from a Bhuddist temple (don’t ask):-

“No, I’m coming with you.”

Chandra made a face, then went into the temple. In Nepal, there was a fine line between Hinduism and Buddhism.”

The dismal cliché aside, that reads really poorly; some action. Stop. Dull desire to show off knowledge without finding a stylish way of doing it. Stop. Then back to action.

This phenomenon often happens. Paragraphs meander; their endings rarely tie up with how they began – it’s terribly frustrating and genuinely offputting. It doesn’t give one any confidence that Mr Benson, his editor and Glidrose, collective culpability, know what they’re up to here. Another example? Bond watches Marksbury eat and then ruminates on her mouth and kissing it; however, the image remains with the reader (because it’s in the same paragraph) that the mouth is still full of food. Urr. Another example? The descriptions of Stoke Park start with a character description (Bond’s choice of Callaway clubs (would he choose American clubs?)) and then suddenly switch into a lengthy tract about the location. Another example? The start of Chapter 5. Unless these are genuinely admirable micro-records of the structure of the book – starts off in one way, takes a distinct deviation halfway through (which would be brilliant, but I’m being way too generous) – this constant inability to construct, or in editing reconstruct, a coherent paragraph is shocking.

Apologies if this comes across as relentless abuse. Deserves it. Absent of writing, absent of rewriting, the pervading impression is of being carelessly abandoned rather than carefully nurtured. It’s just there, flung onto the page. As an experience, it has all the enjoyment of one’s puppy dying.

“ ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘I was convinced you were screwing that woman and was a little pissed off at you. Well, I’m glad you’re OK. You’re like a tomcat, you have nine lives.’

Bond grinned but didn’t address Niki’s concerns.

The chief of police stepped in and said something in Greek to Niki.

‘I have a fax coming in, I’ll be right back,’ she told Bond as she left the room.

Bond sighed heavily, then took a sip of coffee. He was feeling better. The lack of food or sleep for so long, and his ordeals on the boat and in the sea, had taken their toll. Niki’s comment about Hera had irritated him too. It was yet another example of why Bond usually hated to be paired with a partner, especially a female one.”

“Secrets of the Dead”, The Facts of Death
© Glidrose Productions

The paradigm exposed. In illustrating the nature of The Facts of Death, indeed the entire Benson-Bond enterprise, the few words above provide more comment than any review can aspire to.

In these lines, consider the juxtaposition of film Bond to literary Bond, the smirking smoothness of the films in that first exchange, and then, forced into the text at the end, a reference to the bleak desolation of literary Bond’s ultimately futile and solitary existence. Does it work? As an overall concept, I still can’t decide. What doesn’t work here, with this specific illustrative passage is the clumsiness of the clash of the two concepts (the prose style aside). Why should literary Bond have “grinned” in the manner that he did, if the latter passage records his true feeling? But why should film Bond descend into the torpor at the end? It comes across as two different people reacting to one event.

This is the core struggle in The Facts of Death; the concept of merging the natures of the film Bond and the literary Bond. If delivery of some sort of casserole of the film Bond and literary Bond was the demand, was this just overambitious? Oil and water?

An example, the end of chapter 3. We have literary Bond reflecting on his “lonely, wretched life” in an extremely effective and engagingly written passage which – unfortunately – is only effective if one knows the literary Bond. The essential problem is this: where throughout the rest of the tale, Bond quipping away in Eonese with every other character, sci-fi supercars whizzing about and Istanbul about to get it in the neck (again) do we see the loneliness and wretchedness exemplified? The reason the end of chapter three stands out, even though in a positive way it does come across as writing and not merely recording events, is that it does exactly that: it stands out. Taken at a distance, if I were reading this book not having seen a James Bond film and not having read a James Bond book, I fear that I would lose track of that core concept: James Bond himself. Accordingly, is it only because I know the two ideas exist – a “fan” – that I can understand what is going on here? If I were to be just a fan of the films, what could such a passage speak to me? Or if solely the books, what of the rest of it? I’m reminded of first watching Goldfinger and then popping along to a local library to borrow Goldfinger and encountering angry confusion; these are separate concepts, and kept well apart.

Until now, it would appear. Did Glidrose take a look at the Eon billions and decide they wanted some of that, please? Well, who wouldn’t?

Given the divergent path the films took, and sensibly took unless the films were to be marketed only to middle-aged alcoholic chirrotic snobs, it’s difficult to reconcile these two ideas, film Bond and literary Bond, and throughout The Facts of Death, we have them side by side but, I fear, never really meeting. I just wonder whether, on the evidence of this book, the task is not only beyond Mr Benson but beyond anyone. (Here comes the comparison, sorry) Fleming didn’t have to do it, Amis certainly didn’t do it and Gardner appears to have disliked the films with a passion and, arguably, wasn’t much fonder of the books. My concern is that it is in Mr Benson’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the whole literary and cinematic Bond – the exhilarating Bedside Companion is testament to the enthralling devotion – that he took an unwise (detrimental?) opportunity to try to combine the two things. In other words, this series of books reflects and is another example of the adoring, all-encompassing flavour of the Bedside Companion, the enthusiasm at being comprehensive in both Bond media, this time in fictional form. Whether that’s the intention, it’s definitely the impression. Is there any momentum in the theory that a more confident, more established writer would have refused the task because of its inherent difficulty?

Let me put something as a rhetorical proposition: Mr Gardner tends to give off signals that he wasn’t that taken with James Bond; Mr Benson the precise opposite. The question I want to float here: whereas Mr Gardner appears to have gone out of his way not to know things about James Bond, and there are downfalls in detachment which led to evident lack of interest and could be summed up as “Brokenclaw onwards”, did Mr Benson know too much, and is that the downfall of his work?

Even if you don’t agree, humour me with that. There’s another influence of the Bedside Companion which is potentially less laudable; I’ll come to that.

I recognise that in the last review / destruction masquerading as critical review that one key aspect of Zero Minus Ten I did not comment upon was Mr Benson’s handling of Bond himself. One might consider that to have been a curious omission. It was deliberate (he writes, hastily covering up for forgetting in a manner notable only for its abject shoddiness); Zero Minus Ten was largely a tick box exercise of a Bond book, in much the same way as GoldenEye was largely a tick box exercise of a Bond film; both executed finely as far as they went, and there’s a pervading sense of “this is what the audience expects of this”, rather than “here’s something very new” but with Mr Benson, as with Mr Brosnan/Ms Broccoli, yet to develop “their” Bonds. Note the plural.

So just as Tomorrow Never Dies, whatever its faults, was an attempt to extend the concept (even if one disagrees with how it dealt with 007, it comes across as considerably more self-assured than GoldenEye, which is only (and irritatingly) self-aware, a key difference), what The Facts of Death will be taken to stand for is development, evolution, confidence and…

Progress?

Note: Inevitably, this will contain substantial spoilers.

The Facts of Death

The Plot

Strengths: In using the tension between Greece and Turkey as the background, this appeals to the vogue that has pervaded Eon since (but not including) Moonraker, being that, apparently concerned (with some justification) that Bond is a shocking anachronism, they play the James Bond series as hyper-reality. Each film from For Your Eyes Only onwards has overtly used a contemporary situation (usually political) against which an exaggerated Bond adventure can be played out – plot driven, ignore essential flaw in using a psychopathic homophobic racist bigot as the lead character, let’s just play at fantasy with the real world, stretch it to allow our formula to fit. That’s what is happening here. The Facts of Death very much fits the Eon model of grand scale and wide threat, as for that matter did Zero Minus Ten. In the nature of the plot, then, this is very “film” and its great advantage over Zero Minus Ten is that it is maintained throughout without awkward digression into a self-conscious exercise in what a Bond book must contain (which comes across anyway only as an accident of whatever Fleming felt like writing about rather than design).

Accordingly, to an extent freed from the perceived structures of a Bond book, the plot sings along merrily and sticks around rather than wandering off into distracting and unhelpful narrative that is in constant need of rescue (compare its immediate predecessor). It also happens to come across as classic Eon formula Bond, with whizzbang car chases, a villainous organisation killing their own for betraying it (the Decada being “SPECTRE goes Super Size on the maths”), super luxury yachts, suitably cringingly inane Boothroyd scene, absurd gadgetry, the capture and near torture of Bond (more PG13 than the General Wong incident in the preceding book), weirdo mad sect doing weirdo mad things, underwater stuff, comedy deaths, interesting – and again, extremely vividly realised – locations (although I have my reservations about Texas), the usual adolescent quippery when it comes to the sperm subplot and mad cackly villain spilling the beans. And the obligatory Istanbul. There’s a hell of a film in here; how far it departs from the Eon formula really is moot, but it would still be a hell of an archetypal James Bond film. It’s easier to be generous to the exercise as a film than as a book.

As a small point, using the Markov assassination, perhaps the most Bond thing to have ever happened in “real” life, as the inspiration for a killing is, itself, inspired and extremely amusing.

Weaknesses: Is it meant to be a book? The freedom from the perceived structure of a Bond book only serves to expose those moments where it has been designed as a Bond book, but this is more a stylistic comment than a plot one. In short, its strengths are when succumbing to being a film and not prose (and those moments are entertaining).

Major weakness of the plot is the (ostensible) villain’s attitude to it; it’s a bit difficult quite what the Decada intends to achieve with its ten-point plan of destruction; a series of little incidents of violence and then…then what? The films, they often aren’t clear either – I mean, what is it that Carver is going to do with his fifty years of broadcast rights? – but they tend to paper over these sort of cracks by hurrying along to the next bout of blowing things up; on immediate reading, and then instant re-reading of the exposition in this book, it’s too easy to query, as is queried in chapter two – “What were these people after?”. Not too sure that question receives a terribly straight answer. Seems to be suggested that war between Greece and Turkey and accordant disruption in NATO will ensue but this is vague – as is why the latter is any sort of objective – and the villain’s attitude seems to be “Yeah, well, life eh? What a bummer. Tsk! Never mind.” Additionally, the background story about the germ warfare being waged against major cities seems to pass by unnoticed (probably because we’d spot too great a similarity to the scheme in the film of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service); whilst a toll of the dead is kept, it’s a bit too offhand to suggest any real panic going on. Maybe that’s just me, but that could have been far more explicit, especially as that plot device becomes particularly important towards the end.

“In the end of the book there is a rather maudlin plea for peace, and I guess that’s the viewpoint I wanted—and needed—to take.”

-Raymond Benson
The CBn Interview

Agreed. It is maudlin and seems unnecessary but it does cohere with the Eon view of international politics (always rogue elements of respective governments, James Bond savey Worldy and it never, ever rains) rather than the literary Bond despair at how futile everything turns out to be. But, given the depth of research that Mr Benson again patently undertook, it was probably sensible not to offend either host. One moment in the historical fact-dump does grate; there is a description in chapter 11 of Britain as an “objective party”, which is curious considering that Cyprus is largely Britain’s fault, and given the (considerably more accurate) note earlier in the tale that it does not recognise the Northern Cypriot Republic.

I’ve suggested above that I have issues with “Texas”. Plot-wise rather than stylistically, the major problem is this: in the first briefing M reveals that SIS know that the frozen sperm is carrying toxins and that it is getting to Athens, so does Bond really need to go to Texas at all? There’s no genuine mystery that is solved whilst out there, and it just seems to be a bit of a digression for the hell of having Felix Leiter turn up for a bit. The connections between Hutchinson and Romanos could as easily have been made in Greece (and, indeed, are). Whilst the Texan interlude is a pleasant enough read, and gives Mr Benson the opportunity to write about what he knows (a good idea? See below), as a pure plot device, on reflection it looks extraneous. Not too sure what the raid on the Suppliers’ HQ adds either, except for some swearing and Felix Leiter doing wheelies in his wheelchair (hmm).

The Style

Strengths: Cohesion is its key; it is far less interrupted by what its author believes it should be (the major defect in Zero Minus Ten, the attempts to cram in “James Bond novel” elements, which are to its detriment because the absence of authorial style cannot disguise this).

The prose doesn’t appear to have advanced very far beyond necessary to tell a story, and quite what one is to make of the editing when something like “…at the end of a winding mountainous road that leads to nowhere, is a quiet, forsaken village called Anavatos” appears – patently, the road does lead somewhere, then (one can see what is trying to be conveyed but it is a bit of a struggle and one has to be quite forgiving), but what The Facts of Death displays is that Mr Benson is trying out his own stuff, going where he wants his Bond story to go rather than where it is “right” that it should go, rather than ensuring all boxes are ticked. Therefore, regardless of whether it is successful, it is evolution and it is interesting to stand back and watch a writer try to develop. Particularly by referencing the writer’s own background in Texas, there is an attempt to infuse the narrative with what he knows about, rather than what he ought to know. Accordingly, whilst Zero Minus Ten is a James Bond story, The Facts of Death is far more successfully a Raymond Benson James Bond story, and as far as that goes, there’s a level of attachment which the Gardner books, with their annoying standoffishness, never really achieved. The personal element arrives and although I query Texas as a necessary plot move, that’s only on reflection; whilst it’s onscreen, it seems to chug along merrily. Again, whether for good or bad, far more of the writer emerges here. Anyone could have written Zero Minus Ten; only Raymond Benson could have written The Facts of Death. That must be regarded as progress; whether for good or evil depends on one’s perspective, but objectively the progression can be recognised.

Accordingly, it’s presumably a reflection of this investment of the personal that makes this story work to the final point of the last page; Mr Benson clearly could care less what happens here (again, this level of interest in the product stands in definite contrast to Mr Gardner who, although substantially a better prose stylist given his experience, seemed to drift off… a bit… then came back… traitor… um how do I end this?)

As minor points, whilst the narrative style remains resolutely unexceptional and unthreateningly functional, at its best, and there’s still way too much dialogue (Bond and M still trying to outdo each other with historical knowledge; last time around it was the Opium wars, now it’s Cyprus), there is some greater attempt to use narrative and it’s less nakedly “film dialogue” than Zero Minus Ten, even if it’s more nakedly “a film”. It is when the style is reportage of onscreen incident rather than (still) self-aware with “having to shoehorn a bit of literature in at this point” that the style whizzes along, the read with it.

Weaknesses: Stefan Tempo. If it’s some time since you read The Facts of Death, I’m willing to wager that you don’t remember Stefan Tempo. That, of itself, reveals much. In brief, the plot is engineered so that Bond, to defeat a Decada attack, has to enter Northern Cyprus with some Greek commandos; on landing, all are surrounded by naturally suspicious Northern Cypriot soldiers. Forward steps Stefan Tempo from Istanbul and everything is rendered ooja-cum-spiff. Stefan Tempo is Kerim Bey’s son.

The issue with Stefan Tempo is not, however, just as a plot device (however much this disrupts any sort of attempt one could make at fixing Bond’s age). It is this: Tempo is a Fleming character. So, rather than relying on any other characters he himself has invented, the writer engineers a situation where the only apparent way out is to fall back on Fleming (and as asserted in the initial piece about ZMT, how can this not avoid unsought-for comparison with Fleming?). Nods to the past, OK, fine, fair enough, have to accept that I suppose… but this is more than an incidental nod, beyond the echoes that littered Zero Minus Ten. This is the direct progression of the plot because of this character.

There are two ways of looking at this. Either the writer found no way out of it but this, which – to be blunt – is cheating on an Agatha Christie scale (ie the character never to appear is the murderer/here, a rabbit pulled out of a hat); bit lazy, frankly, and a curious lack of confidence in his burgeoning ability to devise interesting plots – or this part of the plot was deliberately designed to build up to this moment and…and…and what? Establish Bond knowledge? Is there some insecurity on the part of the author that we don’t think he knows his stuff, and he needs to keep pressing his “Bond knowledge” credentials? How can he sensibly think that, after the Bedside Companion? This is the less laudatory influence of “too much knowledge” I mentioned earlier; who is he trying to convince with this? Convince whom, and about what? If he was uncertain why there might be negative reaction to his hiring as Bond author, did he mistake suspicion that he did not know what he was doing (an untried writer must experience that, surely?) for suspicion that he did not know what he was writing about? Who on earth could doubt the latter, but the perception created by Stefan Tempo is that he has shoved him in there as a misconceived (paranoid?) reaction to cure the non-existent mischief in the latter perception; trouble is, it just exacerbates the damage to him on the (very real) former.

The exercise is a flawed one, because there’s absolutely no explanation how Stefan Tempo – the son of a British agent – gets to be high up within Turkish intelligence. None. At all. Surely that undermines the credibility of what is happening, for the sake of an in-reference which the audience will be left scratching their heads at? It wouldn’t happen in a film – they wouldn’t let it happen in a film. So what do we have? Bond in a fix; along comes a Fleming character because the writer knows that a Fleming character is available, and, somehow, gets him out of fix, plot moves on. And if, in considering whether you do remember Stefan Tempo appearing, you can’t, and wonder why I’m banging on about it, then that exposes it at the other end; the appearance isn’t sufficiently memorable to be of any importance whatsoever. Nothing is done with the character to make it a remotely valuable moment. Up he pops, back he goes. Query the insecurity in the writer’s own ability that, to the detriment of his tale, he felt compelled to do this.

As for “knowing too much” being potentially detrimental– if he had forgotten that Stefan Tempo existed, or not known, could there have been a more plausible way out of it? Clearly – a message passed via SIS to Istanbul in some way, via M to her counterpart and A.N. Other agent turns up, whose history to that point can be deserving of as little detail as Tempo received. Was the Tempo temptation too great? It looks that way; although it solves a narrative problem, it creates distinct difficulties stylistically. A monkey off the back, but replaced by a gorilla?

That’s not the only example. The stylistic problem with Texas: Bond reminds himself that he went to the Panhandle in the case involving “the last heir of Ernst Stavro Blofeld”. The reference gnaws, for differing reasons depending on one’s perspective. If one accepts that the book is a film, and one need no knowledge of the literary Bond to read it (indeed, my ultimate conclusion – have a preview – is that it’s better not to have such knowledge to get the most out of this), then it’s likely that one would know about Blofeld as the most famous film villain but…is there any actual point in this reference to a Gardner Bond if all one has seen is the film series? On the other hand, if one does know the literary Bond, there’s a flaw here in referring so overtly to For Special Services and then, in the passages with Leiter, not making any reference to Cedar Leiter. The Bedside Companion suggests that Mr Benson isn’t sold on Cedar Leiter – he’s not alone in that – but this looks like picking and choosing between what is used and what isn’t, and the attempt to create “Bond consistency” in making the reference is damaged by not following it through to its natural conclusion – which must be a reference to Leiter’s daughter, like it or not. Not having the reference to the Panhandle at all, and it is extraneous, would solve this.

Perhaps , if setting a book in Texas, he felt he would be damned if he didn’t refer somehow to For Special Services; but given that this is best seen as a cinematic exercise, would anybody really care? It’s in trying to merge the two things that they actually start to fall apart…

The other stylistic problem with the Texas bit is what the Tex-Mex meal represents.

Bond was never literature, it was a disappointed man using a fantasy persona to sound off about stuff he did and didn’t like; there was (dread phrase) attitude (sorry about that). It is a character created out of reaction, and practically out of frustration at what the world could not give him. And he was writing both what he knew and what he wanted to know, what he wanted to be, creating aspirational fiction – in the women, the label fetishism, the food…- not only for his audience but (absolutely critical, this) for himself – Ian Fleming wasn’t James Bond; he strove to be James Bond too. Accordingly, there appears to be some misconception about what Fleming was doing; he wasn’t writing just what he knew; he was writing what he wished to be. That’s the key error here; this writer has interpreted Fleming as writing only what he did know and therefore – quite legitimately as far as that goes – taking that as the model; he, Mr Benson will write what he, Mr Benson, knows. But he stops at that. Has he misunderstood the nature of what Fleming was doing? Does he actually think that Fleming was living like Bond?

And yet consider Fleming, raging against the dourness of the post-war Labour government welfare state (just read that chapter in Casino Royale when Bond and Vesper share the meal; the comparative luxury of that to what – Fleming included – the British audience were being subjected to at the time….) As fiction disguising domestic political commentary on the twenty years after the end of WW2, there’s little to compare to Bond. It is British post-war sensibility of the despair of a once-elite deprived of their lifestyle, it is written out of deprivation and disillusionment and decay.

None of which, I daresay, were factors in the upbringing of Mr Benson. This is why the shoehorning in of Bond’s despair dotted sporadically around his books rings hollow and comes across as mechanical; to write it, one has to have been there, and it will permeate the whole approach to a story, not just be brought in at appropriate junctures to jolt the reader about a bit. This is why no-one else can be Ian Fleming. No-one else is sufficiently angry and annoyed at how it’s all turned out to be so… pointless.

Accordingly, in the Tex-Mex, Mr Benson is doing the honest thing and writing about what he knows; but where’s the aspiration in this? Where’s the repressed craving for high living? This is comfortable middle-class American plentiful (and excessive) satisfaction rather than the demonstration to the reader of experiences just that extra inch out of their reach – and, through political frustration, the author’s reach – and rendering them into salivation not at the description of the meal itself, but at the prospect of actually having such a meal. Tex-Mex is too easy to acquire, there’s no need to strive for it; whilst it’s amusing to see blue collar Bond, it really isn’t Bond y’know. Whilst it brings Bond down and de-classes him, and puts him within our actual experience (and query how interesting that really is), in its non-challenging, non-aspirational way, all it exemplifies is the “turbo everyman” that Eon have turned Bond into, so that their films play in the suburbs and there is some (ugh) point of connection (good grief) between hero and spectator. It’s at a point behind where it should be headed to; what isn’t captured here is that even in its “reality”, Fleming’s Bond was staggeringly unreal. The Fleming Bond was a story of constantly chasing potential experience, predominantly things from the past, with the despair being the product of a realisation that it is futile. The food in Bond is, as a result, terribly important in reflecting this starting point of utter lack of pretence at reality; and Tex-Mex, because it is available, doesn’t achieve it, and puts the literary Bond at a point he has never been, and was never intended to go. In Zero Minus Ten, there was absurd food, teetering on the edge of beyond our grasp. At that point, I believed Mr Benson recognised what it stood for. Now, I’m not so sure. In short, the food displays no evident attitude, none of the significance it needs, and therefore comes across, however well intended, as a bit of a misfire.

There are other stylistic curiosities, to comment upon briefly. As one may observe from the opening quote, there’s a fair amount of cussin’ kicking around, and the odd F-word appears here and there. Ah well; maybe that’s veracity given their context (American mouths). What else? Well, there’s the frankly Scooby-Doo all the gang’s here dinner party at Quarterdeck and the baffling relationship between the Messervy M and Bond. My impression from the Flemings was that Bond and M tolerated each other on a professional level. The few occasions upon which M refers to Bond as “James” are those where M is attempting to encourage Bond to perform an act of unsanctioned murder or subterfuge, not some sort of social nicety. In short, I can’t see where and how M became Yoda or – worse – Bond’s dad and no convincing exposition is attempted. Given that the Fleming M notably despised Bond’s social activities and the effort Mr Benson exerts to try to convince us that his Bond is the literary Bond, honest, how M and Bond are therefore in the same social circle is unconvincing.

Nor is any genuine explanation attempted of how M became an actual father. On an artistic basis, I don’t think that works but I guess there’s nothing to contradict it in Fleming. But would Messervy, given who he is, really call his daughter Haley? Might as well call her Shazza or Chardonnay or something of equivalent gruesomeness.

Although the Quarterdeck party does appear to suggest a solution to the world’s most underwhelming mystery about whether Admirals Messervy and Hargreaves are different people by… no, that’d spoil things.
The thing that rings truest; the new, female M is as much of a cretin and a security risk here as she is portrayed in the current films. So far as that is a direct fusion of film and literary Bond, it’s absolutely bang on.

As far as the major action sequence is concerned, it’s a film car chase; Bond himself is never in peril and it comes across as a run through the gadgets his Jaguar is deemed to possess (including, in no less absurd a manoeuvre than “invisibility”, holographic projection). In that vein, it has the same structure as the chases in Goldfinger, The Living Daylights and Tomorrow Never Dies, the fun action sequence involving the souped up automobile, show the audience the technology, Bond protected by “pressing some buttons”. How this entire comic incident reconciles with the description at the end of chapter three defeats me. That’s the only reason I put it under “weakness”; as an incident in a film, it would be a monumentally enjoyable strength, and conforms to the film concept that when in peril, no fists, just press things and set off a few bangs and then knob a bird. There is something to get Bond out of what he needs to get out of. Taking a back seat, and with the end of the chapter in which this car chase appears, that is a literal back seat, to the technology. A car that drives itself. A car that heals its own bullet wounds. A car with paint that changes colour.

What’s absent from the sequence, indeed the book as a whole, and something that was present in Zero Minus Ten with the General Wong and Australia episodes, is a sense of Bond himself suffering. OK, Hera does threaten him with surgical knives aboard the yacht – villainous redhead threatens Bond with scalpels aboard boat; that’s You Only Live Twice, isn’t it? – but, as with the films, there’s only very rarely a palpable sense of (physical or psychological) threat. The fight in the pitch black with the thug is funny, the opening and the ending helicopter bits are exciting too – but, unlike walkabout in ZMT, there’s little to wonder at how he gets his way out of such scrapes.

The Villains

Strengths: A far more vivid set of characters than the anaemic Guy Thackeray; Konstantine Romanos is fundamentally potty and (especially) Hera Volopoulos gratifyingly unpleasant, as is the manner of her death. There’s an inkling of Fleming in making vegetarians subject to suspicion, although this is treated as an offshoot of the villainy (and leads to tragic “eating meat” innuendo) rather than, as one would tend to suspect with Fleming, the cause of it, the silly old banana trying to be provocative again.

Weaknesses: A curious volte face from the previous book; whereas Thackeray was a weak character, his scheme (if not the motivation) was clear. Here, interesting villains do…some stuff which might bring about some other stuff. And there’s something else going on in the background and they might be involved in that too. There is, though, a common weakness in both principal Benson villains to date: as with Thackeray’s alcoholism, Romanos getting a bit of a bang on the head and believing himself to be reincarnated Pythagoras is a short-cut to presenting reasoned explanations for what it is he does. There’s a cursory reference to the Greeks “following [Romanos] to victory” but it’s all a bit offhand. Still, it is interesting to see the leader of the crazies getting usurped at the end. Shame the man has to drink gin and tonic though; what is he? Some kind of pretentious lunatic…oh. A wasted opportunity by not exploring further how this ostensibly respectable senior academic is poisoning the minds of his students (but it’s the same wasted opportunity with unexplored issues about the influence of the similarly “public” Elliot Carver); still, a notable improvement in character, if not purpose.

The Girl

I forget where I read it, and apologies if this is a half-hearted attribution, but I think it was a comment passed by someone who knew Ian and Ann Fleming, and that circle they mixed with; that in his fantasy world, Fleming wanted to dominate women in a manner he found himself frustratingly incapable of doing in reality, given the personalities involved. Bear that in mind and by jiminy, you can see it. He was writing inherently pliable women he could imagine exploiting.

There is some weakness in Fleming’s women that Bond constantly seeks, and finds; it’s the broken wing appealing to the predator, not to the Samaritan (which is where the fetid The World Is Not Enough goes so very wrong in its set-up of the Bond/Elektra relationship by having him trace the tear down the screen; he doesn’t want to sympathise, you clowns, he wants to manipulate to his own ends). OK, so the very first Bond girl may have been an agent, but she is a fundamentally useless agent, and Fleming revels in bringing the woman down; Gala Brand is more professional but frigid and a wet fish; others have imperfections in their bodies (Honeychile, Domino), are lesbian (Pussy, Tilly), aren’t too right in the head (Tiffany, Tracy – although this probably counts for Pussy and Tilly too) or are – in practical terms – spineless simpletons (Solitaire, Kissy, Liz Krest). None of these are the current Eon way – it’s always super agents and “real women who can hold their own, she’s like a female Bond (yawn).”

In Zero Minus Ten, Sunni Pei was chugging along nicely until it was revealed that she has kung-fu superpowers (hmm); here, Niki Mirakos appears to have no flaws and is doubtless a scion of modern Greek womanhood. Problem is, like many recent Eon girls, she is terribly boring precisely because of the reverence the creator has for her; lacking (I assume) Fleming’s personal overt contempt for women, and desire to see them sexually dominated, Mr Benson isn’t creating a literary Bond girl here because it would appear he has no fear of the sex, which is what drove Fleming to do what he did with them and create the characteristics he drew out. Accordingly, there’s nothing to play with and little to engage with other than that she is tall, has brown hair and can fly a helicopter (and does this on numerous occasions). She, like Sunni Pei, is lacking that key characteristic of – itself – being somehow lacking, somehow there to corrupt and exploit. I suppose one cannot alienate half of the cinema audience, though.

Hera is substantially more fascinating, and is by far Benson’s most interesting character to this point (including Bond who, even pre-Doubleshot, appears to have a split personality); a classic violent redhead in the Fiona Volpe / Helga Brandt mode – indeed, a direct copy of Helga Brandt in one extended sequence – and there’s a huge amount going on there; psychopathic bisexual treacherous vegetarian, none of these are particularly appealing. The only real weakness is in the dismal cheating that goes on by having the Number Killer referred to as “he” until revealed as Hera; oh come on, that’s just, well, a bit rubbish. But still, if you walk away with one thing from this film, it will be Hera Volopoulos.

Film or book?

Just go back to that top quote; the damaging Stefan Tempo issue aside, it does draw out the key stylistic issue about The Facts of Death (besides being an example of the liberated language): the compression of literary Bond and film Bond. This tries to be the bond between the two, ho de ho ho, but I can’t see it working. But, critically, that really is no fault of Mr Benson; there is genuine effort to try to make it work but ultimately, where it is strong, it is when it is film Bond and where it is weak – the literary Bond bits. I remain of the view that this is best considered a novelisation; damn good one, too.

Worth reading?: Certainly, but it would be worth seeing more. At its strongest when not struggling with its schizophrenia and finally giving in to its nature as the transcription of a very strong Eon film. It rattles along for the most part without the self-consciousness of Zero Minus Ten and it is precisely when it isn’t trying to be “a James Bond novel” that it’s at its most successful. There are serious problems which undermine it as a literary exercise, or as a continuation of the literary series, more in what isn’t done than what is. There are some splendid “visuals” throughout – the car that changes colour (amongst other things) would be a fun film highlight – but it’s hard to find much that comfortably sits as a novel. More overwhelmingly whole, and more overwhelmingly Benson than the previous go, and never less than interesting although that’s frequently more so because of what it tries to do than what it succeeds in. Still, well worth a summer read.

Stay tuned… Next up in this series: High Time To Kill.

“If those Bond curmudgeons didn’t read the books for the sole purpose of picking them apart, they might see there’s some pretty good stuff in them. Look, I’m not Ian Fleming and never will be.”

-Raymond Benson
The CBn Interview

Hands up, I admit it; I’m a Bond curmudgeon (whatever one of those is). Curmudgeonly in many things. But, credit where it’s due, and more credit than I’ve previously felt necessary to give him, Raymond Benson recently gave an exceedingly tolerant interview to CBn and this set me wondering whether, in a determination to believe that there is no other Bond writer but Fleming, I’ve misunderstood the motives, both Mr Benson’s and those commissioning his work, behind producing six Bond books between 1997 and 2002.

In preparation of something else, I’m tearing my way through the Bensons and have wondered: perhaps I just misjudged the lad; perhaps he wasn’t quite that bad. I suppose the ultimate conclusion is that I’ve seen worse.

Given the apparent intent behind this series of continuation books, about which Raymond Benson is remarkably and most entertainingly candid, I pose one question: are these literary Bond, or are they novelisations of as yet unseen Bond movies? Given the interview, it appears to have been a deliberate move to stay in sync with the films; effectively try to piggyback on their success, rather than on the success of Bond as a literary hero.

I’m still not too sure of the answer, but let that be the driving force behind what is to come, the issue to return to. I guess that raising the question means that I’m still not sold on the idea that they present any sort of extension to what Ian Fleming was doing; rather, they are an “unofficial” adjunct to the Eon series. If one starts from that position, the books may be more credible. But even then, not without their problems.

Please consider this: I came to Bond via the books, not the films. The films are (very much) secondary; they’re generic action pictures with some high spots. They’re not directed with any particular flair, and the dialogue generally comes across as serviceable. Many are terribly lazy, relying on audience expectation of formula to get away with a number of lame ideas. This, I appreciate, is a minority access point. The Bond market is one where the vast majority are attracted by these incredibly successful films. A trite point, maybe, but I would ask for tolerance in my reaction to Mr. Benson’s style. I came to expect the literary Bond to mean certain things. I have come to expect the Bond film style to mean certain different things. Overall, he may have been more successful in replicating the one that the other.

I’m only going to refer to the original stories; the novelisations answer their own question and the short pieces don’t really help address the core issue. And if I start banging on about “Fleming did/did not do XYZ” feel free to hurl things. Or just hurl. But, again, I’d ask for a pause for thought. Perhaps it is time to grow up, move away from “He’s not Ian Fleming so he can’t do this” to “This is Raymond Benson, and this is what he can do…” As far as literary Bond is concerned, just as with the heirs of Connery, trying to be the original is the impossible job, the improbable job even. Perhaps it’s time to judge it on its own merits, such as they appear to be.

But even in that, a question. Was Mr Benson, in drawing so much on Fleming’s characters, which appears to be a decision he took rather than one imposed on him, inviting the comparison anyway? If not intentionally, in writing about characters and incidents originally devised by Fleming, and described by Fleming, in seeking continuity of “Bondworld”, was the principal achievement by such action merely feeding ammunition to those who would deride him? If he had not actively sought comparison to Fleming, and I believe him when he states he did not, tactically it may still have been better to leave Fleming’s material alone. It is difficult to (say) read the Draco of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and then the Draco of Never Dream of Dying and not compare. Accordingly, it’s a fundamental problem with the Benson approach that he would not have us consider him as Mr Fleming, which is a fair request, and yet insist on overloading with Fleming characters and references and incidents; these two positions don’t appear justifiable. In so relying on Fleming, comparison was inevitable. Difficult to escape it. Strategically, it may have been better to create more and rely less; the opportunity for unfavourable echoes of the past may have been significantly reduced.

If the apparent intent of the publisher was to shadow the films (female M, the obligatory Boothroyd and the promotion of Moneypenny to a substantial character; the cars), would it have been wiser (and easier to escape the looming shadow of Fleming) for Mr. Benson not to have decided personally to use so much Fleming and to have stuck to film characterization, abandoning references to the past? In his desire to create continuity both to Fleming (which does not appear to have been the desire of the publisher, if the interview is accurate) and to the films, did the books merely fall between the two media and satisfy neither? Were they written by someone who knew too much? Would it just have been better to go one way or the other and not both? Were they, ultimately, overambitious?

I’m just throwing out questions, but it strikes me that the more successful of the Benson books are those that best balance these two different concepts; where they go too far either way, there’s a collapse. Either the style becomes exceedingly detached reportage, as if describing scenes played out on a screen, at which point as a literary exercise the book is terribly weak, or the plot starts to turn on incidents buried in Fleming, at which point there’s a bit of a sense of showing off to a few mates. Damned difficult to balance the two; by and large I believe him to have succeeded when the books are viewed as a whole (save one) but I return to the initial question; is that combination really the continuation of the Fleming series…?

Without wishing to appear too pretentious, but for the sake of comparison within themselves, I’ll advance piffle some suggestions on plot, style (references to He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named are unavoidable because there are invitations to compare), the villain, the girl and try to answer the question – film or book?

Note: Inevitably, this will contain substantial spoilers.

Zero Minus Ten

The Plot

Strengths: There’s genuine entertainment here. More than the recent films, the plot seems fairly consistent and it’s fun to see Bond working for some “bad” guys. There’s a patent sense of urgency to the conclusion, and genuine panic for Bond when he is abandoned in Australia shortly before the denouement; the only man in the world with the knowledge to stop things and he can’t. Obviously he’s going to get out of it, but whilst the “walkabout” is ongoing one does actually care how, and that he does. Structurally, placing that period in the wilderness at a point when the clock is already ticking definitely works. Query whether it makes the ending a bit rushed, but this detachment from the countdown is a definite highlight.

The background to the plot obviously dates the story but I don’t see a particular problem in knowing that in 1997 James Bond saved Hong Kong from a nuclear explosion; indeed, to watch recordings of the handover ceremony and imagine the desperate fight in Victoria Harbour going on at the same time – fun. On basic plot alone, this is well worth a read.

Weaknesses: There seems to be a hell of a lot of padding. The mahjong game takes forever and seems directionless (see below) as does the Triad initiation ceremony (which doesn’t really appear to add anything, and interrupts the flow of the action for a fair old while). Perhaps these are more style issues, but there’s a detachment from the thrust of the narrative that makes them stand out. Story wise, although it’s novel to have Thackeray die twice, once Li Xu Nan becomes, albeit with reluctance on both sides, Bond’s “ally”, it’s evident what the twist will be. All the other characters have been exhausted or killed off or have only had a tenth of the attention paid to Thackeray paid to them, and there’s nobody left to be the villain.

The style

Strengths: So terribly, terribly good at “place”; the descriptions of Hong Kong and Kowloon and China (especially) and Macau are vibrant and display a genuine enthusiasm to present detailed research. The Triad ceremony, although I have reservations about its structure and ultimate necessity, is a key example of this effort. Other issues – the Boothroyd scene, the largely “family” atmosphere of SIS, although there is some sparkiness to the new M – seem to be style points imposed on Mr Benson and in so far as these are intended to reflect similar scenes in the Eon films, he can count them as a stylistic achievement. I can’t stand the Q branch scenes in the films, but that’s a pet peeve; what Mr. Benson does here tremendously well – throughout all his books – is capture the spirit of those exchanges, worthwhile or not.

Indeed, it’s in reflecting the Eon style rather than the Fleming style that the book is at its best. Consider Bond’s entrance to “Shamelady”; irritation at the coy fan-boyishness of the name aside, he arrives home, not via the literary Bond route of driving up to the gates in a souped up American car and sitting in the dark to contemplate his sorry lot, but by performing a HALO jump into the bay. That’s how James Bond comes home. That is fab – can’t you just hear the Bond theme going full pelt at that moment? Such a monumentally outrageous entrance by film-Bond that it out film-Bonds film-Bond (and as the opening, is a very clear indication of the nature of the book… so literary Bond or film? Film). Great fun.

Weaknesses The first major weakness is that a lot of it appears terribly mechanical, as if there were certain ingredients to get in there regardless of how well they are folded into the enterprise. The mahjong game is a key example here; Bond plays the villain at something, the villain cheats. Likewise the Triad ceremony; some lengthy of sinister foreigners doing sinister things (and whilst it’s hugely entertaining that ultimately it’s an Englishman doing the most sinister stuff, which goes beyond way Fleming’s limitations!) these two incidents just appear to be shoved in there.

Now, obviously, Fleming was not averse to a bit of travelogue, but consider where it is most successful, and why. Much of You Only Live Twice is, indeed, descriptions of showing Whitey back in Twickenham how funny and suspicious in their blood-guzzling and chanting ways the foreigners can be, but once the plot is under way, once Bond has seen the Shatterhands’ photos, we then proceed with plot, uninterrupted by any such further digressions. Where it’s unsuccessful is in Diamonds are Forever, where it’s plot, then lengthy description, then more plot, bit more description and the thing comes across as disjointed. And that’s the problem here; the story of Zero Minus Ten is getting underway, and then it’s interrupted by the long mahjong game, and then it gets going again, and then it’s interrupted by a long Triad ceremony. And then it gets going again. Accordingly, two problems; the story wanders off for a while and it becomes rather hard to get back into it, and what comes across is a bit of a struggle to get it motoring again; also, the passages look like filler, not of the same consistency as their surroundings and robotically included.

As a result, whilst these things are of some interest, the interest in the story they have rather artlessly interrupted is lost and, my view, they cause more damage than benefit.

I have another issue with the mahjong game; I have to admit I got lost in it. I don’t doubt that its reportage is in total veracity, and accurate to the nth degree, but I wasn’t too sure, in a game spread over two chapters or so, that I was enjoying what I was reading. Perhaps that extra step, of considering what could be lost from the (presumably) accurate record of a game, rather than thinking one needed everything. A bit of a shave here might have upped the tension, made the incident far more economical, snappier and not so much of an intrusion. Yes, the card game in Casino Royale is reported in great detail, but the card game in Casino Royale is the plot; for proper comparison, read again the bridge game against Drax, or the Goldfinger golf – we don’t get every moment, as we appear to with the mahjong. As I’ve suggested, I don’t doubt for a moment Mr Benson’s knowledge; but here, as a tutor of mine once said, knowledge is not power; the use of knowledge is power and I’m not convinced how well it’s been used.

The other issue about the game is that as an event, and given its prominence in the book, it seems inconsequential. Its ending adheres to the Chandler maxim of “if in doubt, have men enter the room carrying guns”, albeit here they’re carrying kitchen knives, but as an event it’s only touched on very briefly later on; this rather suggests that this sudden massacre was a convenient way to get the plot restarted after the lull the mahjong game causes.

Curiously, the game is never mentioned again, given that it is evidently set up as an example of the villain cheating, and occupies a significant portion of the book. There’s another issue; we don’t get an insight into why the villain cheats. Bond appears to wonder at one point whether he cheats to establish that he can, like Sir Hugo Drax; but we’re given no reason beyond that, which is remiss and makes the villain and his motives hard to grab a hold of.

With a reference to a Fleming character and a common incident from Fleming’s work, it’s accordingly not that easy to see this on its own merits. What is it trying to be? It can’t be Fleming – its creator admits it. It looks too much like a “tick-box” exercise. Whilst it’s an obvious cross-reference to have Bond gambling against the villain and cheat the cheater, there doesn’t appear to be much comeuppance for the villain as a result; nor is there that point at which the villain knows he has been cheated and is powerless to stop it (key things about the Drax and Goldfinger games). So, whilst I appreciate that the game was “essential”, and it’s utterly authentic, I’m not too sure it’s shoehorned in that well and the nature of the prose isn’t enough to let the writer get away with it.

Second major weakness — it’s a film: OK, that’s a bit sudden, and in so far as that appears to be the market aimed for by Glidrose here, it succeeds, but page after page of expositionary dialogue is terribly wearing. I just find it unlikely that Bond and M, however much they are sizing each other up, would have a lengthy chat about the Opium Wars, or that a Triad leader would reveal so much about himself and his motivations, almost instantly, to a man he wants to kill. Fundamentally, there’s too much chat and no background. I find the conversations really unlikely but on the basis that one cannot put prose descriptions onscreen, I guess they were inevitable. The opportunity to show the research skills could have come via another method; it just seems like a lost (or abandoned) opportunity to ditch the dialogue and explore the extra dimensions a novel could give. The other irritating thing is that everyone knows key information at all important points (and not before). Accordingly, a lot of the dialogue is terribly stilted in the rush to impart vital info. Put bluntly, there’s nothing Bond doesn’t know here; the writer doesn’t deliver any information outside of Bond’s knowledge (which is very close to the know-all Bond of the films).

Another way of approaching it? Why not have the first chapter, or couple of chapters, set during the Opium Wars? Would have made for a highly unusual start for a Bond book, expanding its ambition into the epic and, in my eyes, would have started Mr Benson off with real style, something utterly unique and without comparison, to stand or fall on its own merits. Also, such a move would have been to extend the responsibility for delivering narrative beyond the relatively few characters that appear, and could have meant more convincing dialogue. Just a suggestion.

As minor points, I’m not too sure that the scene in Portsmouth couldn’t have been dealt with by reference, rather than having a “real-time” action sequence; although it was probably necessary to have a “real-time” action sequence at that stage of the book, because otherwise there’s a load of chat going on and the cinema audience will be getting restless unless there’s a gunfight of some description.

Interesting to note references to Gardner’s women at one point. Interesting and… flawed, because then one has to wonder what this book is. If it’s there to appeal to the Bond market, weaned on the genuinely (and deliberately) shallow films, then by God, it succeeds. But these references to Gardner’s women… Who’s read those books? Where’s the public appeal? Is it film Bond or is it literary Bond? Corking along as film-Bond, requisite punch-ups and choppings and blowing things up and then one hits that and, apologies for making the same point, it doesn’t stack up as an exercise in literary Bond. Very curious artistic decision.

So, yeah, Mr. Benson is not Mr. Fleming; hardly a revolutionary view. Yet there’s some evidence of trying, if not to ape directly the Fleming style (which year on year is ever more evidently the product of its time), then to cover similar ground – the absurd food, the gruesome sadism (the beating meted out by General Wong is especially visceral, and Bond’s reaction to it by far the most satisfying literary Bond moment of the enterprise) and the sexual content. On that last point, it’s interesting to read that Mr Benson thinks the literary Bond should be racy; I agree, but my view is that it’s not no-holds barred “filling” (a lovely image), but the raciness of a repressed Englishman living out fantasies in the 1950s and finding ways around it by experimenting with the perverse; there are other ways of being hardcore than being… hardcore. Accordingly, Sunni Pei’s private dance works as literary Bond; not too sure the repeated shagging does; seems a bit unoriginal. It goes beyond Fleming and Gardner in its graphic nature, but I always took literary Bond to be more sensuous and erotic than purely graphic. But then, I’m comparing again, so if judged on its own merits I guess it’s OK, and perhaps one can take the increased sexual detail as an advance by Mr Benson.

The villain.

“I always pictured Jeremy Irons as Guy Thackeray, by the way.”

-Raymond Benson
The CBn Interview

Strengths: Whilst it’s an interesting first to have an English villain for a book (or at least one of English blood), and a fun parallel to have “the English” both create and then destroy Hong Kong through acts of violence, I’m not convinced that Thackeray is that strong a villain. It’s an interesting idea to make Bond’s nemesis a faceless corporate suit, but it should have remained an idea, really; there’s no colour here. A Jack Spang, basically. I guess the one strength is that the villain’s ultimate plot is plausible, and could be easily played in a film without having to resort to too much pantomime cliché of the Dr Evil type – avoidance of cackling nutters being a current Eon trend – but I’m not a fan of the character. What he’s up to is more interesting and far more arresting than who he is; this reinforces the book as a novelisation of a plot-driven film – who cares about the characters as long as things are happening – rather than a character driven literary Bond entry.

Conversely, the three albino brothers is a really arresting touch – can really “see” them (film-Bond?) – and it’s a bit of a shame that they don’t have more to do. Lui Xu Nan is far more interesting, and the attention paid to him suggests the Bond/villain relationships of yore and so it’s effective sleight of hand at first instance to concentrate on him and let the reader forget about Thackeray for a bit. All the more disappointing that the most complex “new” character is sidelined towards the end in favour of a practically absent and uninteresting villain.

Weaknesses: My major issue with Thackeray is that he’s out of focus; whilst his plot is relatively clear, the ultimate motivation is weakly explained. Making him an alcoholic, whilst this is a convenient shortcut to depriving him of needing a reason by suggesting his reason is overborne, isn’t that special a “tic”, and it’s a bit unclear why, if he is so soused, nobody has uncovered the cheating at mahjong already. The weakness also appears conveniently forgotten when he is pontificating or running and jumping. Odd. Again, this determination to give the villain a foible appears mechanically bolted on without being terribly well fused in.

The physical description seems scant. Yep, I can see Jeremy Irons doing it but I can also see Alan Rickman or Bill Nighy or any sort of rangy Brit doing it. Thackeray just doesn’t seem altogether there. Perhaps this is subtle personification of the alcoholism, I don’t know. Not a favourite. True, lunatics living in volcanoes is going a bit far for literary Bond (if that’s what’s intended) but then villains such as Le Chiffre were just this human side of utterly grotesque. If what is intended is something akin to film-Bond, anyone coming to this after subjecting themselves to Max Zorin (say) or even Eliot Carver (the two Eon “corporate” villains) is going to wonder where the villain is. Whilst I’m tempted to state he is the weakest drawn literary Bond villain, I must remember not to compare and accordingly, he is Benson’s strongest “so far”; but things can only improve.

On the film-novel analysis, it’s interesting from the Benson interview that he is thinking about his characters as being portrayed on screen; subconsciously at least persuaded in his purpose by the visual Bond rather than the written one.

And as for the horribly self-conscious comments Thackeray makes about whether he should just shoot Bond instead of being in an action movie and using elaborate methods of execution, they’d work in smart-alec film dialogue, just about (given that Eon’s current theme is to hate the James Bond character and urinate over its legacy). But, whilst it has a parallel with the “Cowboys and Indians” routine delivered by Le Chiffre, it comes across as too knowing, too self-aware, for a book.

The Girl

Strengths: The scene in the Zipper club and the subsequent private dance Sunni Pei performs are fun, and early on in the relationship, she appears to be in genuine peril and worth rescuing. The scene with the mother at her apartment is a departure, certainly for the film women; some attachment, some family. Interesting. Albeit mum’s quite quickly forgotten about (one must keep the plot moving), it adds.

Weaknesses: Save for being an interesting plot device to put her in peril, Sunni Pei’s attachment to the Triads and status within their organization seems to be underdeveloped; there never seems to be any doubt in Bond’s mind that he will trust this girl, despite her connections to a violent criminal organization.

Bit of a shame that she becomes a bit of a loose end once the action moves to Australia; just another Bond girl. Also, it’s irritating that we find out at exactly the same time as Bond (this constant desire by the author that we know no more than Bond, and no earlier) that she is trained in martial arts etc., although that’s more to do with the approach taken to dialogue-heavy exposition rather than a flaw in the character itself.

On the whole, more memorable than the villain and conforms to the “broken wing” theory, given that she is ultimately a prostitute. Interesting, if not terribly crucial to the plot towards the end. Character runs out of significance, becomes the standard damsel, which is a bit of a shame because early on she is something novel.

Film or book?

Film: The heavy dialogue is a key issue here. Would be a fun film, too. If done relatively straight it would solve Eon’s current problem in being unable to make the final half hours at all interesting, because the ending is pretty exciting. Beef up the villain, cut loads of the exposition, query the family friendliness PG-13ness of General Wong (despite it being substantially the best bit) and go for it.

They won’t make it because of the date issue (although one could see it as Die Another Day, with Thackeray replaced by a North Korean loony and the Hong Kong handover replaced by NK and SK peace talks, or something), but they could have made it. Odd spots of showing off “Bond knowledge” aside, which do jump out at one, this wouldn’t alienate the casual reader too much, but it’s probably the casual reader who has seen a few Bond films. Nothing wrong with that; there are loads out there. As an extension of the Eon series, it pretty much works and is a decent place to start with written (albeit not literary) Bond if the only experience to that point is the Eon series.

Worth Reading? — Yeah, on balance; interesting plot, some fun ideas, but some parts look too mechanical in trying to be literary Bond; works better as a film. As a book, (not insignificant) prose issue aside, with its distractingly redundant bits, it’s a bit like Diamonds are Forever; some really interesting ideas, but too much detail of too little consequence and a villain conspicuous by his absence. Abandon hope all ye who expect literary Bond, but as a curious hybrid nearer to the films than the books, worth a shot.

Stay tuned… Next up in this series: The Facts of Death.