Anyone had a read of this yet?
Thanks, harrypalmer, for the inquiry. I read
Devil May Care (DMC) and have been thinking about it. I guess that's a good sign that it's memorable.
Y'know, I kind of find it hard to look at it objectively. There have been so many Bond movies and books so when I read DMC I just remembered things that we've seen or read before. For example, there's a Bond/Moneypenny scene with the usual banter, and he learns that he's been signed up for deep breathing and relaxation exercises:
"You wait till I get back from Paris," Bond said, as he headed towards the lift. "then I'll give you cause for heavy breathing."
"'Deep breathing' was the expression, James. There's a difference."
"Or if you insist on splitting hairs I shall have to resort to something firmer. A good spanking, perhaps. so you won't be able to sit down for a week."Now compare that to Bond's line in
Thunderball: "Now don't you start on me, Penny. Any more ticking-off from you and when I get out of this place [Shrublands] I'll give you such a spanking you'll have to do your typing off a block of Dunlopillo."
I guess the pastiche is inevitable. And from that there's a sense of silliness to it all. I got the feeling that Faulks couldn't quite take the job seriously and he ended up doing a pastiche. The villain alone is another example: Dr.Julius Gorner is his name. He's not a relative of Dr. Julius No but he's got enough PhDs to qualify him as a megalomaniac villain. He also has a physical oddity--his left hand is "completely that of an ape. With hair up to the wrist and beyond."
The plot has something to do with Gorner operating a heroin base somewhere in Iran. His goal was to turn England into a nation of addicts, but that was too slow, so he’s resorting to the backup plan, a nuclear “accident” in the USSR for which Britain will be blamed. This is really a variation of the plot in the film
Octopussy (in that film, the accident was set for a US air base in Berlin). The novel takes place mostly in Paris in the late 60s. There are references to the hippie movement, and M has taken up yoga (I think Faulks went overboard with the M character). As for Bond, he's going through a mid-life crisis at the beginning of the novel--which means he is going through it 007-style, drifting through the best hotels and restaurants of several European capitals. Here we find Faulks sticking to all the familiar stuff: the hair stuck in the doorway of the hotel bathroom to detect intruders; the Sea Island cotton shirts; the custom-built Bentley; the meticulous tastes in cigarettes and cocktails.
The overall quality is definitely a vast improvement over the stuff that Raymond Benson was churning out. You really sense a pro in the writing, a confident storyteller, but what we end up having is a book too familiar. For this centenary year, I guess that's what the Fleming publishers aimed for. The novel is defintely serviceable for Fleming nostalgists and it's a decent imitation of past Bond adventures.
Y'know, I kind of find it hard to look at it objectively. There have been so many Bond movies and books so when I read DMC I just remembered things that we've seen or read before. For example, there's a Bond/Moneypenny scene with the usual banter, and he learns that he's been signed up for deep breathing and relaxation exercises: