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I suppose that in a sense Devil May Care did follow Colonel Sun, at least chronologically. Although Colonel Sun was published in 1968 the story itself actually took place in 1965, the following year after the events of TMWTGG which are referenced in the novel. I know that Faulks didn't reference the events of Colonel Sun in Devil May Care and I think even tried to say that DMC was Bond's first mission since TMWTGG but as it was set in 1967 during the "Summer of Love" it must have occurred after the events of Colonel Sun, whether he acknowledges it or not. To my mind Colonel Sun has a much better claim to being part of the Fleming Bond canon than Devil May Care has.
I agree with you. Some people may think that With a Mind to Kill is now the proper continuation novel after TMWTGG. There is a piece of me that considers Anthony Horowitz's novels canon with Fleming's. Either way, Solo is the true finale in that timeline, in my opinion.
Yes, there are so many different continuities now with the Bond continuation novels published since 2008 that it's gotten quite messy. That's one of the reasons I've always preferred the Fleming-Amis-Gardner-Benson continuity I grew up as a Bond fan under. It did keep things that bit simpler.
Win, Lose or Die is interesting with the concept of Bond going back to the Royal Navy. But I find that the villains, an organisation called BAST, don't work quite well. Gardner tries for the best of both worlds: a crazy set of idealists who want anarchy and are also the coldly cerebral terrorists we expect from SPECTRE. Add a bunch of ex-PLO leaders and mostly Middle-Eastern names and you get a mess of motivations. We are also introduced to them through a horrible failure of them trying to attack a ship in Iraq with comical plan of them hang-gliding down to the ship.
Bond then gets sent back to the Navy for 8 months before anything happens (preparation for a big wargame), where BAST try to kill him. He also has dinner with the chief of the Wrens on board, and nearly sleeps with her, but then she's a bit leaky with him and he completely shuts her out.
Then through the bugging of a public conversation (surely a phone conversation would be more believable) and the tacky use of BAST's catch-phrase Bond gets sent on holiday where he's to wait for an assassination attempt. Then we Bond falling in love in quite an unbelievable and heavy-handed way (we've got the "this is serious" too many times from Gardner). And then boom! Bond's bodyguard, the woman he loved, is actually BAST and was killed by her own car-bomb, turned against her by the dodgy Wren. (why she wouldn't have killed him before then I don't know).
Bond then gets sent somewhere to lay low before rejoining the Navy. We learn later that this actually BAST cover. BAST have gone through all the effort of setting of car bomb in Bond's villa in Naples to try to kill him, but when he's in their hands, they decide "no thanks." This is also when we believe that BAST have penetrated MI6 and their security codes.
Then Bond is sent back onboard for the war game, but sometime later we learn that the wargame is cover for a meeting between Thatcher, Bush Snr. and Gorbachev. Bond learns this even before going on vacation, but Gardner keeps this hidden from us in a twist that honestly isn't very effective, especially because this appears on certain synopses of the novel and also just isn't very shocking in itself. Then murders occur on board to the security team and Bond has to figure out who's responsible.
The rest of the story runs in an interesting manner, except for two things: we are supposed to see the Wren officer actually being BAST as a twist, even though Bond's bodyguard was still alive and we also know that she was sent by M. One of the Wren officer and the bodyguard had to be lying, Bond believes the bodyguard, so why doesn't he suspect the Wren? And also, the BAST leader is a fraudster who just wants to run away with the money and leave BAST high and dry, which is info that doesn't change much and also doesn't feel exactly credible.
Moving on to COLD, I can't really be bothered to do an in depth review but the pacing is quite off and I don't exactly understand what's going on.
The major issue that I have is that the Bond girl from Nobody Lives Forever, Sukie Tempesta, is actually a fascist who wants to live in a police state and kills 400 people in a plane bombing so she can live the reality. We don't see any of the same breezy, adventure loving girl that we saw in the earlier story.
In this book there also isn't really much work done by Bond. He gets sent over to America to examine a plane crash, then meets an FBI agent, gets sent for a sting operation, fails, and then gets invited 4 years later to parachute in and stop a COLD meeting, fails, gets captured and then saved firstly by Sukie keeping him around for her wedding to the COLD leader and then later by a gangster with cold feet.
Like BAST, COLD tries to have both the wacky ideology but also the cold operating procedure. But I don't see how the Tempestas, gangsters in every sense, gain if they can't run their normal operations based on vice (drugs, prostitution, murder, etc.) in a world were that sort of thing is clamped down heavily upon. A poor finale for Gardner.
I hope that you enjoy that one, @QBranch. I think it's John Gardner's best Bond novel from the 1980s. It has a great Flemingesque villain in Vladimir Scorpius. Definitely one of my favourite Bond continuation novels.
That's good. It's definitely one of his best Bond stories in my opinion. Having a great villain always helps. There's a nice Fleming reference with "Father Valentine" too. 🙂
On to the Penguin edition of QoS which contains all nine short stories.
Guess you're talking about the new one?
M - "Don't make me spell it out, James. We both know what your Double O prefix means." M calling Bond James and saying what they both know seems odd. As does
earlier when M slaps the table irritated. (It had been 16 years the government banned smoking in the offices.) No mention of reaching for an imaginary pipe. Is that the source of his irritation and feeling ill at ease, something that has been in effect for sixteen years?
It's not the kind of writing and work I want to see more of.
Fine Bond can't kill in cold blood: but Fleming has run with this narrative to the point of ridiculousness. Shooting Scaramanga in the car would be cold blood, shooting him as his cover burns away and he and Hendriks plan to kill him is self-preservation, where I'd believe Bond at the top of his game would see and utilise. What was his plan getting on the train? That he'd get a fair fight?
Bond is just stupid in this one: he also eavesdrops on the gangster meeting for no reason: Leiter's already bugged the room, why risk your cover and the operation for curiosity that will be absolved in an hour anyway?
Sadly Bond loses all personality: and no not back to CR. In CR we learn Bond doesn't have the time to have a personality, he's too much of a professional, and then Vesper's death sort of show him the pointlessness of being so high strung, so he cools the professionalism a bit and becomes more and more human. Here, Bond's at zero professionalism, but he doesn't show much of any humour, or interest and his banter with Felix isn't as good as before. He's got the worst of both worlds. Maybe because he's playing Mark Hazard for much of it, but the only interesting bits of Bond are him turning down the knighthood, and him wishing he took Scaramanga alive.
Scaramanga is similarly stupid. Why hire a "copper" that's involved in the burning of crop fields if that's your plan? And why do so when the guy clearly believes you're a criminal? Why shoot some guy if you're telling the copper everything is respectable? This novel (apart from Goldfinger) also has the highest "just shoot him" quotient. When Hendriks informs FS, why not act immediately and stop Bond from reporting straight away? Does not he think Bond maybe already reported to Goodnight in the hotel room? That he hasn't been consistently reporting?
And never mind the villain plot. If Moscow wants Cuba sugarcane prices down, then why does Hendriks get involved in the scheme? I was thinking the guys in The Group who where betting on it going up where going against the grain as well, Hendriks acts as if they've betrayed the rest of them.
The rest is just disappointing. Sabotaging bauxite mines and smuggling marijuana aren't even Scaramanga's ideas, he's just doing it off of the KGB's wants. The only stuff Scaramanga is up to by himself is the casino business. And he's trying to get funding for his failing hotel (from a human trafficker to become investor #7). That's it. Quite underwhelming for the world's best assassin.
Could have been back to basics, but is ultimately a sad conclusion to the Fleming novels with probably the worst of the 12
Lucky Luke ???
Then, last week, I randomly chose GF ( probably my best read of this novel, marveling at Fleming's imagination), and as soon as I was done that, I plucked TB off the shelf, which I'm also enjoying immensely (whereas in the past, I have had issues with this novel)...
Not surprised Bond didn’t want to sleep with her…
Well depends on the man I suppose. Felt out of character for Bond though.