Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun

Kingsley Amis wrote Colonel Sun (using the name Robert Markham) in 1968. This was the first of the many James Bond continuation novels. I have always avoided these novels because I don’t really approve of other writers carrying on the adventures of characters created by deceased writers. I have however made an exception in the case of Colonel Sun.

Kingsley Amis really was qualified to write a Bond novel. He was not that much younger than Ian Fleming. The world of postwar austerity, of ever-declining British power, of Britain becoming a subservient satellite of the United States, of that vague sense of dissatisfaction that Britain had won the war and was now much worse off than before, the loss of optimism and national self-confidence - these things formed the historical background of Fleming’s Bond novels and they explain much of the character of James Bond and of the novels. Amis was as familiar with this world as was Fleming. He may not have agreed with all of Fleming’s views but he certainly understood where Fleming was coming from, which meant that he understood where Bond was coming from. He knew what made Bond tick.

Amis had written what is still the best non-fiction book on Bond, The Bond Dossier. He understood the Bond novels.

Colonel Sun opens with an attempt to kidnap both M and Bond. Bond escapes. He then realises that the only way to crack the case is to get himself captured. The kidnappers have set an obvious trap for him in Greece but he’ll have to walk right into it.

MI6 have no idea of the identity of those behind this sinister plot. The answer turns out to be rather complicated. The potential for betrayals and double-crosses and misunderstandings and divided loyalties is enormous.

There is a girl of course. A Greek girl named Ariadne. Maybe Bond should not trust her but it soon transpires that he’s fresh out of reliable allies so he’ll have to take a chance on her. Ariadne is very much a Bond Girl, a worthy successor to the Bond girls created by Fleming.

The plot is complex but it feels reasonably Bondian. The only departure from the Bond novels is that suddenly Red China is a major threat, which by 1968 was becoming a standard feature of spy fiction. This is a Cold War thriller, which was not something that Ian Fleming was really into. Fleming felt that too much obsession wth the Cold War would have dated his books and of course he was right. But this is a Cold War thriller with a difference. I can’t explain the difference without revealing spoilers so I won’t.

Colonel Sun himself is a typical Bond villain in some ways, although less colourful than Fleming’s Bond villains. He does have the sadistic tendencies of a Bond villain. Colonel Sun is an enthusiastic disciple of the Marquis de Sade and a believer in de Sade’s philosophies.

Fleming’s interest in sadomasochism has been exaggerated but it was real and Amis puts quite a bit of emphasis on it.

This is a Bond who is still recovering, physically and emotionally, from the traumatic events of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Amis maintains the continuity from that book. This is also a Bond very much in tune with the Bond of the later Fleming novels and short stories. He’s lost some of his sense of certainty. He has developed a few moral qualms about the job. This is quite consistent with the way Fleming was developing the character in stories like For Your Eyes Only and The Living Daylights. You’ll get a lot more enjoyment out of Colonel Sun if you’re familiar with Fleming’s Bond stories.

There’s some sex, but no more than you get in a Fleming Bond novel. The fact that Bond gets emotionally involved with Ariadne is also perfectly consistent with Fleming’s Bond - Bond is a man who cannot have a sexual relationship with a woman without becoming emotionally entangled.

Amis’s style is close enough to Fleming’s to feel authentically Bondian.

It’s a fine exciting spy thriller tale. Highly recommended.

Ian Fleming's Octopussy and The Living Daylights

When Ian Fleming died in 1964 he left behind one unfinished Bond novel (The Man with the Golden Gun of which he had only completed the first draft) and a few short stories that had not been collected in book form. The Man with the Golden Gun was published in 1965 and the following year Fleming’s publishers, Jonathan Cape, released Octopussy which contains two of the short stories, Octopussy and The Living Daylights. For the paperback edition another story, Property of a Lady (a story Fleming absolutely hated and was embarrassed by) was added. Much later editions included a fourth story, 007 in New York.

The Living Daylights

The Living Daylights was originally published in The Sunday Times colour supplement in early 1962. It’s an interesting story because it focuses almost entirely on Bond’s motivations and his feelings about his work. That’s not to say that it’s by any means plotless (and there is a very neat twist at the end) but the events of the plot are used to tell us something about Bond the man.

Bond has been given a new assignment and he’s very unhappy about it. A British spy, code-named 272, is making his escape from East Berlin. Unfortunately the East Germans know all about the escape attempt from a double agent (a double agent that the British discovered too late). 272 will have to cross an area of open ground to reach the border and it is certain that a KGB sniper will be there to kill him as he crosses that open ground. Bond’s job is to kill the KGB sniper first.

Bond can see that his job is necessary but it still seems to him to be too much like cold-blooded murder. And after all, that KGB sniper will simply be doing his duty by killing a dangerous enemy of the state, just as Bond will simply be doing his duty by killing the sniper.

Bond has three days to wait in Berlin. He spends those days desperately trying to keep occupied. He visits museums and art galleries. He visits the zoo. He amuses himself by watching (from his assassin’s perch) the young ladies in a women’s orchestra trooping in and out of the Ministry of Culture building just across the border. There’s a very pretty young lady ’cellist who catches his eye. She reminds Bond of the joys of life at a time when he is waiting to kill a man.

Bond decides that if he’s going to do this killing he’s going to have a very large Scotch first. His spotter, Captain Sender, gets all prissy about this and tells Bond he’s going to put him on report for drinking on the job. Bond expresses the hope that he will lose his Double-0 number as a result so he won’t have to do any more killing.

Sender represents a totally different approach to the job compared to Bond. Sender is the kind of man who loves following orders to the letter. Bond dislikes him intensely.

Much has been made of Bond’s sadism but this story shows a different side to his character. He can be ruthless but killing in cold blood really does affect him.

The Living Daylights could easily have been made into an episode of Callan. It has the same atmosphere of disillusionment.

The Property of a Lady

The Property of a Lady was written for Sotheby’s for their house journal and obviously they wanted an auction room story. The story concerns a double agent and a fabulously valuable Fabergé terrestrial globe about to be auctioned at Sotheby’s. In typical Fleming style the jewels being auctioned are described in loving detail.

But this is just a nothing story. It’s easy to see why Fleming considered it to be an abject failure. It’s just a way to pad out the collection. It would have been better to just forget this story which was what Fleming wanted to do.

007 in New York

007 in New York is a very short throwaway story (which was later incorporated into Fleming’s non-fiction book Thrilling Cities). It’s mostly just Bond’s impressions of New York - what he likes and dislikes about the city. There is a very very thin spy plot. Almost non-existent. You get one thing you don’t expect - a whimsical humorous ending. And you get James Bond’s recipe for scrambled eggs. It’s hardly a story at all, just a literary trifle, but it’s moderately diverting.

Octopussy

Fleming wasn’t entirely comfortable with the short story format and it didn’t really suit his talents as a writer. What he did do with some of his short stories was to take a less conventional approach compared to his novels. And that’s the case with Octopussy, written in early 1962. Bond is merely a peripheral character and the story would have worked perfectly well without him. Octopussy is the story of Major Dexter Smythe, described as the wreck of a Secret Service man.

Smythe’s utterly futile existence in Jamaica is divided between drinking too much and communing with his only real friends, the fish that live in the waters near his little estate. His favourite of all the marine creatures is an octopus he is trying to tame. He has christened her Octopussy. He hopes to find out what will happen if he can catch a scorpion fish for her. The scorpion fish is deadly to humans, but possibly not to an octopus.

Then a chap from the Ministry of Defence turns up. His name is Bond. James Bond. Smythe realises immediately that Bond is an MI6 man, and that means the game is up. His secret has been discovered. That’s very bad news but perhaps it doesn’t matter. Smythe has a bad heart and is living on borrowed time anyway (which of course was true of Ian Fleming in 1962).

Most of the story is a flashback to the end of the war, relating to certain events in the mountains of Austria. Those events have now caught up with Major Smythe.

It’s an odd story but an interesting one. Like Captain Sender in The Living Daylights Major Smythe is an example of a spy gone wrong. Sender is officious, petty and spiteful in a cowardly sort of way. Smythe was a decent enough chap who succumbed to temptation, which corrupted his soul. Octopussy is a study of the psychology of a spy gone to the bad.

Final Thoughts

Of the four stories here one is worthless and one is a mere piece of fluff. That leaves us with just two stories worthy of consideration, The Living Daylights and Octopussy. Are they good enough to make the book worth buying? I’d say yes, if you’re a hardcore Fleming fan and you’ve read all (or at least most) of the novels. Recommended, but read the novels first.

Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger

Goldfinger was the seventh of Ian Fleming’s James Bond spy thrillers. The popularity of the Bond books had grown steadily since the publication of the first, Casino Royale, in 1953. By 1959, when Goldfinger was published, they were well on their way to being an international rather than a purely British publishing phenomenon. 

The Bond novels started out as reasonably realistic espionage thrillers but by the time Goldfinger appeared they were starting to become rather more fantastic and to feature villains who were more in the diabolical criminal mastermind mould rather than the evil super-spy mould. It could be argued that this tendency first became apparent in the third book, Moonraker.

Goldfinger begins with Bond conducting a very minor investigation of his own. Waiting for a flight out of Miami he encounters a wealthy American businessman named Du Pont with whom he had become acquainted a few years earlier. Du Pont has been playing cards with a mysterious British millionaire named Auric Goldfinger. He is convinced that Goldfinger has been cheating him and he wants Bond to find out how it is being done. The curious thing is that Goldfinger is fabulously wealthy and has no reason to be cheating at cards for relatively insignificant amounts of money. Bond is intrigued by the psychological implications of this.

Bond and Goldfinger are destined to cross swords again. Soon after the events in Miami Bond finds himself assigned to investigate gold smuggling. The Bank of England is concerned that this is going on on a very large scale and they suspect that Goldfinger is involved.

Bond’s next meeting with Goldfinger sets up a characteristic Ian Fleming literary set-piece. Games play a key role in many of the Bond stories. Most often the games involve gambling on the grand scale. In some cases (as in Casino Royale) the games are crucial to the plot. More often these games have a psychological importance. They are the means by which Bond takes the measure of his opponents. They are tests of will power and nerve as well as skill. They are in fact bloodless duels, and they are usually the prelude to actual duels. In this case the bloodless duel takes place on the gold course, for very high stakes. It was a literary device that Fleming utilised with immense skill and it produced much of his best, and most gripping, writing. 

Goldfinger has another game in mind, for stakes that stagger the imagination. He is planning a robbery on a scale that no criminal in history had ever contemplated. It will require the co-operation of half a dozen of the world’s most notorious organised crime organisations, including the infamous New York lesbian gang leader Pussy Galore.

Auric Goldfinger himself is one of Fleming’s great creations, an outrageously larger-than-life criminal genius whose obsession with gold is both a strength and a potential weakness. His chief henchman Oddjob is equally memorable.

The Bond novels are remarkably politically incorrect and Goldfinger may well be the most politically incorrect of them all. It’s not just a matter of a few details - the  political incorrectness is woven into the very fabric of the novel. It is Fleming’s entire worldview that will upset the PC crowd. There is absolutely no way such a novel could ever be edited to make it PC. You can either take it or leave it. 

I would not consider this book to be top-flight Bond. It has breath-taking imaginative scope but I felt that the climax was just a little contrived. I think Live and Let Die and Moonraker are better and more completely satisfactory novels. Nonetheless Goldfinger is a great deal of fun. Even second-tier Fleming is very very good. Highly recommended.

Ian Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever

Diamonds Are Forever was the fourth of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. By this time Fleming was well and truly in the groove and had things humming along like a well-oiled machine. Fleming, like all thriller writers, worked to a formula but in his case the formula allowed for a surprising (and often overlooked) degree of psychological and moral complexity.

This time Bond is not facing Russian spies or international super-criminals. His enemies are American gangsters and most of the story takes place in the US. No less an authority than Raymond Chandler was impressed by Fleming’s handling of the US setting.

As the title suggests diamonds are at the heart of this case. Large quantities of diamonds are being smuggled out of Africa. From there they apparently make their way to London and then on to the United States. Diamonds being one of Britain’s major exports the matter has been deemed important enough to be put in the hands of the Secret Intelligence Service. M is not entirely happy about this but he has his orders and he assigns Bond to the case.

The trail will eventually lead Bond to Las Vegas, allowing Fleming to include the gambling scenes which were one of the trade-marks of the Bond novels. Fleming was no gambler himself but he had very quickly decided that high-stakes gambling added exactly the right touch of glamour and danger to his stories. Here, as always, Fleming handles the gambling sequences with consummate skill.

Initially Bond finds it difficult to take American gangsters altogether seriously despite the warnings of his old CIA buddy Felix Leiter. Bond’s contempt for men he considers to be little more than jumped-up small-time hoodlums will prove to be something of a mistake.

Bond villains need to be colourful and larger-than-life and so Fleming gives his chief villain these necessary characteristics by making him a wild west fanatic who owns his own western town including an 1870 steam locomotive called the Cannonball. This locomotive provides a suitably inventive ingredient for the book’s major action set-piece.

There is a girl of course, and Tiffany Case is by any standards a very suitable Bond girl. She is blonde, beautiful, possibly dangerous and psychologically damaged. The James Bond of the movies has a casual attitude towards women and this is one of the major differences between the novels and the films. The Bond of the books is in fact a man who falls in love rather easily, and he falls hard. He also has, surprisingly (if you’re only familiar with the movies), a rather old-fashioned and romantic view of women. Bond not only believes in marriage, he also yearns for children. That he has not married (at this stage of the Bond cycle) is due primarily to the fact that he takes marriage very seriously and he fears that his career is not likely to be compatible with such a commitment. Those who glibly assume that Bond is something of a misogynist will find Diamonds Are Forever rather a surprise. Bond’s view of women might not fit today’s politically correct climate but they are far from misogynistic. Bond is protective of Tiffany Case but also in many ways far more respectful to her than are most modern movie thriller heroes.

The Bond of the books is also a long way from the wise-cracking Bond of the movies. He has little time for wise-cracks, and little inclination for them. He is also far from being a sadistic killer. He will kill without hesitation and without compunction, but only when it is necessary. It is an unpleasant but unavoidable part of the job. On occasions, when dealing with particularly vicious enemies, he may take a certain grim satisfaction in killing but it is never a matter for glib wise-cracks. The books are violent, violent to an extent that outraged many contemporary reviewers, but the violence (on Bond’s part at least) is never casual.

Fleming took spy fiction quite seriously and while he may not have deluded himself that he was writing literature he certainly believed that it was possible to write what he called  “thrillers designed to be read as literature” and that is what he attempted to do, with considerable success. Fleming was no hack writer. His books are polished and superbly constructed. The action scenes are important and skillfully executed but he gives even more attention to the process of building up the tension, this giving the action scenes the impact they require.

Fleming was always a believer in the virtues of properly researching a novel and his researches for this one were extensive enough to form the basis for his 1957 non-fiction book The Diamond Smugglers.

The story is nicely book-ended by scenes set in the thorn scrub of west Africa, providing a neat contrast to the glamour of Las Vegas and the opportunity for some philosophical musing on death, diamonds and eternity. The opening scene with the scorpion establishes the book’s mood particularly well.

Those who like their thrillers well-laced with unfashionable political incorrectness will not be disappointed but here again Fleming proves to be more complex than he is usually given credit for being. While their morality may not be today’s morality they are from being amoral.

Diamonds Are Forever is spy fiction done with both skill and style (not to mention a great deal of entertainment value) and his James Bond is a fascinatingly complex and contradictory hero. Highly recommended.

Live and Let Die

Live and Let Die was Ian Fleming’s second James Bond novel and it’s a considerable improvement over his first effort, Casino Royale.

This time Bond finds himself not only up against his old foe, the Russian spy assassination agency SMERSH (Death To Spies), but against a new and even more formidable enemy, voodoo. And these two threats are combined in one man, the sinister Mr Big.

Mr Big is a half-French and half-black giant of a man who runs the underworld in Harlem, and in fact controls the black underworld throughout the United States and in the Caribbean as well. Mr Big had worked with Allied intelligence agencies during the war but switched his allegiance to Moscow and now combines espionage with crime.

Mr Big can rely on unquestioning obedience from his black underlings since they believe him to be the dreaded Baron Samedi himself, the most feared of all the voodoo gods. Or at the very least they believe him to be Baron Samedi’s Zombie.

Mr Big has come to the attention of the British Secret Service in a rather curious way. Huge numbers of gold coins have started turning up, mostly in the US. The coins date from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries but none were minted later than 1650. This has led M to the conclusion that someone has discovered the legendary treasure trove of the infamous English pirate Sir Henry Morgan, believed to be buried somewhere in Jamaica. What’s really causing concern is that this vast treasure seems to be being used to finance Russian espionage in the US, and there are indications that the notorious black crime lord and known SMERSH agent Mr Big is behind the plot.

The possible Jamaican connection is the reason the CIA have called on the help of the British Secret Service. This will be a joint operation with the CIA, which is likely to cause some problems since the CIA is not supposed to work within the US itself and the FBI is likely to be at best unhelpful, at worst openly hostile.

But Bond will be working with his old friend Felix Leiter of the CIA which should make things somewhat easier.

Finding Mr Big is easy enough but there’s a complication in the form of a beautiful white Haitian woman known as Solitaire. Solitaire is the descendent of French colonial planters and is believed to have the second sight. Mr Big employs her to check on whether his underlings are being truthful with him or not. Solitaire can always tell if a person is lying. She is so valuable to him that Mr Big intends to marry her. Solitaire is being kept by him as a virtual prisoner and Bond soon discovers that she wants out. But can he trust her? And what kind of hold does Mr Big have over her?

Mr Big has agents everywhere and Bond has only been in New York for a short while before it is obvious that he is being shadowed, and when Solitaire flees with him it is obvious that Mr Big will stop at nothing to get her back, and to arrange a suitably artistic death for Bond. Mr Big considers himself to be a true artist of crime.

The action moves from New York to Florida and eventually to Jamaica. As in so many of the Bond adventures there will be plenty of action both on land and at sea, and under the sea. Bond will have to run the gauntlet of sharks and barracuda driven mad with blood lust (caused by Mr Big’s habit of throwing large quantities of blood and offal into the sea around his island lair with just that intention).

Fleming pulls off a real tour-de-force of an ending in this one. The action is non-stop and voodoo is an ever-present threat.

Fleming prided himself on the quantity and quality of research he did for his novels. Not being an American I can’t myself say how accurate his research on the US was but he certainly makes great use of American locations, and especially of American railroads (which Fleming considered to be far more exciting and far more romantic than the railways of Britain). Trains always make great locations for thrillers and Fleming uses them with great skill in Live and Let Die.

Of all the Bond novels this is probably the least politically correct - much more so than the 1970s movie adaptation of the novel. But political incorrectness is not something that bothers me and Mr Big is a superbly realised villain, a true diabolical criminal mastermind, intelligent and exceptionally dangerous. And I adore any thriller that involves voodoo.

Solitaire is a memorable heroine. Fleming liked his heroines to be exotic and she certainly fits the bill in that respect. He also liked his heroines to be somewhat ambiguous - Bond has to take a very big chance indeed in trusting her. And Bond’s interest in her is certainly more than merely professional - he is captivated by her beauty and by her mystery.

Live and Let Die was adapted for film in 1973 as the first of the Roger Moore Bond movies.

Live and Let Die sees Fleming really hit his stride with the Bond series. The plot is outrageous but is combined with Fleming’s habit of describing espionage in a grittily realistic way, and with generous helpings of sex and violence. It’s a potent cocktail and one that Fleming was exceptionally good at mixing and this is a real crackerjack of a spy thriller. Highly recommended.

Ian Fleming's Moonraker

Moonraker was the third of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, appearing in 1955. By that time Fleming had the formula well and truly nailed and the result is wonderful entertainment.

A mysterious businessman has announced plans to build a missile that will ensure Britain’s defences. He is prepared to finance the project himself as a kind of gift to the nation. The rocker, known as the Moonraker, will be able to reach any city in Europe (which in 1955 made it a super-weapon).

Sir Hugo Drax is very mysterious indeed. In fact no-one is absolutely certain of his identity. During the German breakthrough in the Ardennes in 1944 a British headquarters was destroyed, and a badly burned man was found among the wreckage claiming to have total amnesia. He was tentatively identified as a former dockworker from Liverpool. After the war this man made a fortune speculating on precious metals and by the early 50s he had been knighted and with the announcement of his Moonraker project had become a sort of national hero.

Sir Hugo Drax just happens to belong to the same club as M, the head of the British Secret Service, and M had noticed something peculiar and disturbing- Sir Hugo cheats at cards. It’s peculiar because he is so wealthy he has no need to do something so petty, and it’s disturbing because in 1955 being exposed a card cheat could still mean social ruin. So it has the potential to become a matter of national security and M asks James Bond as a personal favour to find out how he does it and find a way to cure him of this unfortunate habit before a scandal erupts.

This sets up the obligatory gambling scene without which no Bond novel would be complete. Fleming was fascinated by the dangerous glamour of high-stakes gambling and always liked to find a way not only to include such a scene but also to make it integral to the plot.

The very next day a double murder takes place at the headquarters of the Moonraker project and Bond finds himself working undercover as Drax’s chief of security. Naturally there’s a beautiful woman involved, in this case a policewoman from Special Branch also working undercover in Drax’s operation. Her name is Gala Brand. At this stage of course it is still assumed that Drax is a patriotic hero and that some outside group is trying to sabotage the Moonraker. Bond will soon discover there’s more to Sir Hugo Drax than meets the eye.

Fleming’s success with the Bond novels was based on making use the traditional ingredients of the spy thriller but adding extra sex and violence and most importantly, adding extra glamour. He more or less created the stereotypical secret agent as handsome, charming, sophisticated, witty, cultured and as an all-round bon vivant. Fleming loved to drop the names, not of famous people, but of famous and luxurious products. The pages of the Bond novels are littered with references to luxury products. He was sometimes mocked for this but on the whole it was a very effective technique. Spy thrillers are after all escapist fantasies so you might as well make the fantasy as exciting as possible.

Bond also differed from earlier heroes of this type such as Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond in being sexually amoral. Bond is as patriotic and as courageous as Hannay and Drummond but you can’t imagine those earlier spy heroes indulging in the sexual adventures that Bond gets up to.

Fleming’s Moonraker bears little resemblance to the outrageous 1979 Bond movie of the same name. By 1979 technology had moved on and the Moonraker rocket of the novel would have seemed very dated.

The novel is immense fun and if you’ve never sampled the delights of Fleming’s spy fiction it’s as good a place to start as anywhere since there’s no particular need to read the novels in sequence. Highly recommended.

From Russia with Love, Ian Fleming

Recently I’ve found myself involved in an extraordinary number of discussions on the topic of James Bond, and more specifically on the subject of Ian Fleming’s original novels. Since it as years since I’d read any of the novels I got hold of a copy of From Russia with Love (one of the bond novels that I’d never read) and sat down and read it.

Fleming’s spy novels are not quite as I’d remembered them. While they certainly emphasise a fairly glamorous and action-packed side to espionage I found this one to be darker than I’d remembered.

And while the 1960s espionage thrillers of people like John le Carré and Len Deighton were in many ways a reaction against the glamorous depiction of spies it’s worth pointing out that Fleming was just as obsessed as they were with making the background as authentic as possible. While an organisation like the Soviet SMERSH (an acronym for Death To Spies) which served as Bond’s nemesis sounds lie something goofy the author made up it wasn’t. SMERSH really did exist.

One thing that was more or less as I’d remembered it was Fleming’s somewhat bizarre attitude towards women. It’s long been rumoured that Fleming’s sexual tastes were a trifle outré. The scene where the two gypsy girls must fight to the death to decide who gets to marry the man they both love tends to support this.

But once again it’s not quite that simple. The mistakes Bond makes in this adventure come about because he is unable to treat the Russian spy Tatiana as a mere sex object. He goes and falls in love with her.

And while there’s a pulpiness to the content at times the style isn’t really pulpy. Fleming was more than just a hack.

Overall From Russia with Love was a rather better book than I’d been expecting. Yes there is sexism there that will make modern readers a bit uncomfortable, but compared to the sexism in some of the other crime and espionage writers of the 50s (Mickey Spillane comes to mind) I think it’s possible to overlook it and still enjoy the ride. The 1963 movie version is one of the best of the Bond films.