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No, not one that stands alongside Fleming's greatest, but I've always immensely enjoyed Diamonds Are Forever for its cracking adventure and colorful characters. It does no wrong and does much right. My second most read Fleming after (or maybe even most read alongside) Moonraker.
1. The Pipeline Opens
Very cool opening with Fleming using the violence of the animal world—scorpion versus beetle—as a metaphor for the violence among men in Bond's world. The way the predatory scorpion gets crushed by a larger force is also suggestive of how the pipeline leads up from the small fish to the bigger fish to the biggest. And it's all superbly demonstrative of Fleming's fondness for the natural world. I just love that line: "the broken insect whipped in its death agony."
2. Gem Quality
Amusing innuendo to launch the book proper after our desert prelude: "Don't push it in. Screw it in."
Bond thinks he'll pass the memo on to Tanner, who evidently takes the brunt of Bond's wrath whenever M has him working on something he disagrees with.
Late July. So soon after the Moonraker affair and Bond is in for another thorough beating.
Bond notes that "M seemed to be going through a bad phase of mixing in other people's business." Moonraker and now this. Rather I guess Fleming went through a brief phase of getting Bond tied up in adventures he couldn't justify as MI6 missions in any other way.
Nice way to shake things up for a mission: putting Bond into the enemy's camp, having him play a criminal himself. Outwardly, there is probably little to suggest Bond wouldn't look the part of the criminal with his rugged, scarred face.
3. Hot Ice
Fleming does a bit of work here to make Bond's mission sound more dangerous, having Tanner talk up the American gangsters.
I do like that Diamonds takes Bond to Las Vegas, which, while little more than a dirty joke today better seen on postcards than in person, must have seemed rather exciting and even dangerous to Europeans in the 1950s. A city devoted to sin. Makes sense Fleming would want to set an adventure here. And while we did just visit the US two books ago, this is an entirely different part of the States, a whole different setting and atmosphere to New York. Plus it's an easy opportunity to show us how Leiter is doing—and what writer wouldn't want to throw Bond and Leiter back together again? All makes good sense to me.
When Tanner asks Bond "Satisfied?" it almost sounds like Fleming's asking the reader: this ain't no picnic for Bond, just because he's in Vegas doesn't mean it won't be as hard or as exciting a mission as the others—you with me?
Peter Franks, the guy who looks more or less like Bond, is described as "rather good-looking" and "with a clean-cut swashbuckling face."
4. 'What Goes On Around Here?'
More phonetic dialogue like we saw in Live and Let Die. Fleming capturing different slices of life.
As @Revelator mentioned, Diamonds is unique for having a whole host of exquisitely described villains. Each one receives a fat paragraph of juicy details. Alias Rufus B. Saye (and their names!) is a giant, angular man, very neatly groomed and sporting black everything—from his steady eyes to the hairs on his hand backs to the clothes he wears.
Other than that—one of Fleming's all-time less eventful chapters.
5. 'Feuilles Mortes'
Tiffany characterized instantly from the way Bond finds her sitting—"astride a chair," "bare arms folded along the tall back," "her spine was arched," "arrogance in the set of her head and shoulders," "the black string of her brassiere across the naked back," "the splay of her legs..." Hot damn, Fleming can introduce a dame.
Typical Fleming, this casual mention of Bond skipping La Vie en Rose "because it had memories for him." A nod to the past, the briefest of glimpses into what he carries un-dealt with, without exhausting more than a phrase.
As with Gala, Bond seems to have an almost superhuman ability to read girls at first sight: "her brazen sexiness," "the rough tang of her manner," "the poignancy that had been in her eyes..."
Curious, perhaps, that Tiffany is given Bond's own blue-gray eyes and that they hold a "hint of authority" in them. Fleming certainly writes her as, if not a match for Bond, then certainly a challenge.
Ha! I love that Tiffany makes fun of the obvious plainness of Bond's name. At times you really get Fleming winking at himself and at the reader. If my memory serves me correctly, there are one or two meta bits later on in DAF where Fleming just seems to be having fun with the concepts of fiction and reality. Diamonds certainly isn't the only book where we find this.
Everything Tiffany says and does is said and done "unsmilingly" or "sourly" or "shortly"—entirely down to business. She's a great, refreshing change of Bond girl.
And when Bond casually hits on her, perhaps testing the waters—"The only person I could get into trouble would be you...and I wouldn't like that to happen"—her scornful response is "Shucks." She's so stereotypical hardboiled "dame to die for" American, yet a unique and well fleshed out character in her own right.
Bond plays it equally cool, giving her back in kind. I feel like he's both playing the part of the suave criminal here and demonstrating he can keep up with her pace. He's already fallen for her and had the brief thought that he doesn't want to play her heart. More to come on that later.
@Revelator: I see in your lovingly crafted essay above you relate Tiffany to the wisecracking dames of the early screwball comedies. Spot on! Thank you for sharing your essay there. I intend to read it in full before we're through with Diamonds.
Well, at least we got this image:
https://assets.mubi.com/images/film/25483/image-w1280.jpg?1445870985
And really, after reading Fleming's description of the place where the Moonraker is kept, it very much matches the same style of epic space and scale that made Ken Adam famous. The man really was perfect for bringing the world of Bond to life.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see a Bond film properly adapt aspects of the novel, with Bond meeting the villain over a simple game of cards, nearly dying during a cliff fall and racing to stop a speeding rocket for the big finale.
One of the great strengths of the classic Bond films was that even if the script, acting and story were deficient you still had Ken Adams's sets and John Barry's music to fall back on; at their strongest those elements could salvage an otherwise weak film.
Yes, it makes the 80s films quite jarring, in more ways than one.
Though at least John Barry was around for a majority of the 80s Bonds. And Maurice Binder also belongs up there with Barry and Adams, though he was winding down toward the end of his tenure. And Richard Maibaum was also a member of the classic team--he had a spottier track record, but in his defense, he also had to put up with co-writers of varying quality and the interference of the producers. From what I've read, he was usually in favor of retaining Fleming.
Segueing back into the books from the movies, am I right in thinking that the mud-bath from the pre-credits of the DAF film is a nod to the demise of poor Tingaling Bell in the book? There was nothing funny about the original Wint and Kidd...
Nice bit of continuity, referencing the Beretta M had given Bond at the end of Moonraker.
This chapter is mostly Fleming detailing the everyday experience of an intercontinental flight. Some of the details—like what you'll find in an airport gift shop in the 1950s—bear interest, but for anyone who has been on an airplane before, this is a fairly unexciting chapter. Wint and Kidd are briefly introduced however. Though I believe their names are reversed from the character types they appear as in the film. Which can be a bit confusing until you force your mind to identify them as they are in the book. Great pair of henchmen. One of the better things to come out of DAF.
7. 'Shady' Tree
I just love the description of Michael "Shady" Tree. With his red hair and calm "moon-shaped" face and big ears, he reminds me of Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine. And the detail about him drinking milk for his ulcers though he loathes the stuff. And the fact he's a hunchback. Then there are the empty "china" eyes that look "hired from a taxidermist." Yowza. And the high-pitched voice is the icing on the cake. What a character. Really makes you wish Fleming had done something more with such an amazingly described character. Fleming could just dash out and toss off great characters like this like nothing at all.
8. The Eye That Never Sleeps
Ah, good ol' Felix is back! His introduction here—surprising Bond with a gun in the back—actually feels similar to Felix's introduction in NSNA when he calls out and throws that ball at Bond to test his reflexes.
It's also great that Bond winds up working with Leiter on the sly here. Entirely unofficial.
Leiter reiterates how the American Mob is not to be underestimated. Tells Bond his job stinks. Stinks of "formaldehyde and lilies." Of death.
9. Bitter Champagne
Delightful banter between Bond and Tiffany over dinner, Fleming tossing out one golden line after another. I could fill this post with every single line that passes between the two. Some scriptwriter should just pluck this whole conversation for a dinner scene in a future Bond film. So far, the scenes with Tiffany have, in my view, been the only ones demonstrating Fleming firing on all cylinders in DAF.
"...he's so crooked, you shake hands with him you better count your fingers afterwards." Ha! That's a good one.
And the way Tiffany says "Listen, you Bond person..." just before tearing up. She is indeed one of the better drawn Bond girls. She also demonstrates a bit of that whiplash hot-and-cold mood-swinging that would really come into play down the road with Tracy.
10. Studillac to Saratoga
I like that we see Bond transposing a message into code in his hotel room during the day. Demonstrates that his job isn't all about the adventure and the dames. Like his office work in MR, there's the tedium too.
For dinner, Bond has two vodka martinis and Oeufs Benedict—close but no scramble. Still it's breakfast for dinner (with booze) which is indeed one of the greatest pleasures in life.
"Come Again"—great name for a race horse.
There we go: "scrambled eggs and sausages and hot buttered rye toast" with Leiter. And I believe this might be the first time Bond has beer? Unless I missed something? Miller Highlife...
Another lengthy excerpt of something Bond reads on the "darker" history of Saratoga. I wonder if this clipping is copied verbatim from a real newspaper article Fleming read. My guess would be yes.
A general impression: Fleming's chapter endings aren't half as impactful here as in the previous books.
It's a slow ease into the story so far. Not much greatness to speak of apart from Tiffany and a couple of colorful characters. But some of the best of Diamonds is yet to come.
I believe so, yes. Reading through the books again, I'm repeatedly amazed by just how many bits have been worked into the films in subtle or not so subtle ways (many of these instances/nods/echoes cropping up in the P&W scripted films). Another—very likely deliberate—echo that occurred to me reading DAF today is the cheating at horse racing subplot that made its way into A View to a Kill.
This line absolutely wrecks me, every time. Possibly my favourite part of the book.
The Irish tourist board wrote to Fleming to complain about his description of all the tat in the the airport gift shop. He replied that it was an accurate depiction.
As for Diamonds Are Forever--are its weaknesses due to the structure? In all of the previous novels, the main villain is introduced early on, setting up a struggle for dominance between Bond and the bad guy (even in MR, where Drax's villainy is obvious from the start). But in DAF, we have a string of crooks (the minor ones being more memorable than the major ones) who string Bond along from one location to another, and the reason for each change of locale seems contrived and unmemorable. When Bond finally gets to meet a major villain, it's an anticlimax--Spang gets only one scene "onstage." And for all of Fleming's attempts to verbally build up the Spangled Mob, he doesn't follow through. Only Wint and Kidd come across as truly threatening. I'm curious what folks here think would have improved the novel's structure and villains. What would you tell Fleming if you were his editor?
I was going to post my fully edited Moonraker thoughts but I keep getting alerts that the text is going over the limit and I'd have to split it all up into several posts.
Now things are starting to move with Bond and Leiter working together (sort of) on their own separate missions. Some beautiful descriptive writing surrounding the racing scene.
But—"...and, everywhere, that extra exotic touch of the Negroes, who except as jockeys, are so much a part of American racing." Don't worry, I'm not flashing the racism card, I'm just wondering what the hell life was like in London during the 1950s. Fleming writes about seeing black people in the United States as if he were one of the early explorers, pulling ashore a new land and discovering and documenting an indigenous people for the first time. Were there really so few blacks in London that the sight of them in the US amounted to "that extra exotic touch"? I mean, this was only just the 1950s.
Bond has a lot of bourbon whenever he comes to the States. I approve.
And finally, apart from us repeatedly being told how dangerous the American gangsters are, some real stakes enter the story with Tingaling agreeing to ride foul.
12. The Perpetuities
A misstep by Bond perhaps, agreeing to help Leiter make the payoff at the mud baths. Sure, Fleming needs it for the story, but all Bond had to do was keep his nose clean and keep moving his way up the chain. Why risk exposing himself to these people? What good does it do his own mission?
After the race, Bond even feels uneasy about the payoff. Fleming doesn't elaborate. It's a great scene—the mud baths—just no good reason for Bond to be there.
13. Acme Mud and Sulphur
Some great stuff in here, starting with Bond riding the bus full of sickly and crippled people. Upon emerging, he finds the baths to have a stench "from somewhere down in the stomach of the world."
The "clapboard buildings," the "weedy gravel path," the "dead-looking firs." I enjoy seeing Bond out of his element in places that offend his senses. Bond faces an enemy like no other: "the nameless things they did in this grisly ramshackle establishment." Much of Diamonds pertains to this idea of Bond stepping down into a world of filth and sleaze—a world completely beneath him. Even the help is an offense to Bond's sensibilities: the receptionist with the "sad cream puff" face and the man with the cauliflower ear hosing down the bather.
"Bond had a natural affection for coloured people," Fleming writes, perhaps by way of softening the way Bond cringes at the thought of putting himself into the hands of the black man working the baths, "but he reflected how lucky England was compared with America where you had to live with the colour problem from your schooldays up." And then he continues by having Bond reflect upon his calling Mr. Big a "n***er" in LALD and Leiter joking about people's "oversensitivity" to racism (something that must have been edited out of the 1950s American edition I'd read). I'm trying to decide what in Fleming's mind "the colour problem" actually is. He doesn't explicitly say, but the conclusion drawn by Bond and Leiter is that people are "oversensitive" to racism. Sort of reminds me of an 80s Stephen King short story in which (via his protagonist) King sort of apologizes for some of the racist remarks in his earlier works, but also justifies them by saying those were the views and attitudes he was raised with and that he can't just change who he is overnight. (King of course would go on to make much greater amends in later works, to be fair.) Here, Fleming appears to be saying, "Hey, we all like coloured people just fine, so ease off my back when I have my protagonist call them slurs." Fleming may even have been responding directly to comments made about LALD. Some of the material obviously came up in discussion when the rights to release that book in the US were being dealt with and I have to imagine Fleming was privy to all that. All in all, it's a weird segment that has nothing to do with the story being told in Diamonds. The aside is triggered by Bond cringing at the thought of being handled by a fat black man and fades out again with Bond cheered up by the memory of Leiter's wisecrack about people being "so damn sensitive about colour around here that you can't even ask a barman for a jigger of rum." I definitely think this is Fleming responding to whatever criticism he received over LALD. An awkward aside to be sure.
I do like that the mud baths are described as "coffins" and that Bond has to climb into his own. Surely an image that must have contributed to the Slumber Inc. scene in the film.
14. 'We Don't Like Mistakes'
"So you're going to Las Vegas," says Bond. "Funny coincidence department." I really dislike when Fleming points out the coincidences in his writing. Don't draw attention to the coincidence/contrivance, just power on ahead.
I do dig Leiter giving Bond the lowdown on Vegas over their Maine lobster dinner (with extra dry martinis). Fleming really paints a picture of the town. My favorite image is the dealer's arm sticking up out of the desert with a deck of cards fanned out in its hand. Beautiful. And just the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say show, don't tell. That's showing us how mean the Mob is. Of course, Leiter gets right back to telling Bond how this isn't England and you have to be extra careful about these oh so very dangerous American gangsters. Yet again.
15. Rue De La Pay
Fleming keeps up his amazing scenic description work, referring to the desert below Bond's plane as "the blasted, Martian landscape."
I love how in the 1950s automatic doors are cutting-edge: "operated by seeing-eye photo-electric cells."
And an oxygen bar. I didn't realize they had those in the 1950s. Though it sounds terribly unsanitary just having a coin-operated rubber mouthpiece you put on your face and breathe into. At the airport no less! May as well have a sign reading "Pick Up Your Next Illness Here! Only 25¢!"
"ATOMBURGERS!!" We're definitely in 1950s Las Vegas. Details like these are part of what make Fleming's Bond adventures such a joy to read. The travelogue (and time portal) aspects.
Ernie Cureo. He's a good one. I like his joke about the guy who "left Vegas with a hundred Grand." Pause for effect. "Only thing, he had half a million when he started to play." Ba-dump chhh!
Coincidentally, Artistic Licence Renewed has just published an article on Saratoga Springs by New York historian Frieda Toth, who writes:
Moving on to booze...
You can still buy Old Grandad bourbon today--the 100 proof version is rather good.
The "color problem" was a frequently used phrase in the 50s and 60s, and seems to have had a very vague definition, applied indiscriminately to all sorts black/white racial tensions and problems. What's odd is that in LALD Bond never actually uses the n-word to describe Mr. Big. So why the revision? Probably just to sneak in that stupid jigger joke, which shows how racially insensitive Fleming could be. And yes, that passage was definitely edited out of my old and beloved Berkley edition of DAF. I wish someone at Jonathan Cape had persuaded Fleming to leave it out from the start.
The only scene in the film with genuine suspense, danger, and even terror. Any scene that makes the viewer frantically wonder "How the hell will Bond get out of this?" is good. The resolution might disappoint some folks, but I don't think there was any other way for Bond to escape.
Yes, one thing that is apparent from reading the novels is the journalistic side of Fleming, the innate obsession with detail and using information of place and person to paint a vivid picture on the page. It was actually quite logical for him to shift to fiction.
"The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture...whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not." Yup, Las Vegas is absolutely designed this way. You can't walk anywhere—to the bathroom, to the buffet, to the elevators—without passing through the slots and the tables. Every which way you turn, an opportunity to fork over your money.
Great description of the vulgarity of the gambling machine and the gamblers tearing at the handles "as if they hated what they were doing."
"Bond munched his steak as if it was Seraffimo Spang's fingers..." Yowza, there's a visual.
17. Thanks for the Ride
Tiffany dealing Bond—pinched by LTK with Lupe. Especially the part about Bond forcing something to happen with the villain. Love all these little bits of Fleming you don't generally realize are actually in the films.
Haha, I like that when Tiffany invites Bond to cut he doesn't decline, forcing her to execute a single-handed annulment to put the cards right again. Kind of a jerk move when you think about it. Just let her deal the cards.
Interesting move: immediately air-mailing the winnings to Universal Exports. Makes sense, just an expected move for Bond.
18. Night Falls in the Passion Pit
I like this little scene in the barbershop where Spang snaps at the girl and orders her fired. Finally a bit of real characterization with the villain. Interesting setting too. I'm just not sure why he should be so nervous at this point. Because Bond didn't follow orders and took some more money off him? Who's Bond to him?
Good old-fashioned car chase here with Bond firing his gun out the broken back window.
The first death of an ally (?). Bond takes it real personal, "murder tucked away in the back of his mind."
19. Spectreville
"Nice little car you once had." Sounds like an early variation on "Nice little nothing you're almost wearing."
I like how, whenever he's been captured, Bond always puts up a fight, no matter the odds. If he knows he won't be killed outright, he figures may as well give it a shot. Worst that can happen is they'll break some of my ribs or smash in my nose in retaliation. Why not do some damage while I can?
He does pretty well here.
Spang's own personal train fitted out with chandeliers, mahogany walls, paintings—similar to Trevelyan's Soviet train in GoldenEye.
I also like these moments where Bond knows he's completed his mission and all he has to do is report back to M, but he's trapped in the enemy's clutches.
The boots. 80%. Again, this is—what?—a month or two after Moonraker?
20. Flames Coming out of the Top
Love this flashback to LALD: Bond dreaming or hallucinating from the pain and the blackout that he's underwater being thrashed about.
Lighting the building on fire with petrol—LALD.
Fleeing on the handcar—AVTAK.
Tiffany pulls Bond's Beretta out of her waistband and he feels "the warmth of her on the metal." Nice detail.
Great sequence with Spang chasing Bond and Tiffany down the tracks. Wonderful picture. Truly nail-biting.
"'——' said Bond, once." Perfect.
@Birdleson, when I get to that part I'll have to be on the lookout for it. The copies of the novels I have didn't get rid of any of the n words in Live & Let Die, so I'd be shocked if anything from Diamonds was removed, no matter the racial content.
The most curious thing, evidently, is that this LALD conversation between Bond and Leiter apparently isn't in any version of LALD. Fleming cooked it up for DAF.
That's odd.
Diamonds Are Forever must certainly represent Fleming’s slowest start as a writer at this stage in the series, struggling to keep pace and the interest of the reader (or this one, at least) as he opens the novel. While it’s clear that he was attempting to add a new flavor by not having us open with Bond immediately, the effect is very strained and diluted here when we are thrown without much context into a meeting between two employees of a smuggling pipeline.
The image of a scorpion slowly targeting and striking at its prey is a nice image to open with, as is one of the predator becoming someone else’s prey. It’s very much a microcosm of Bond’s world, and how agents in the field must hide in the shadows waiting for the right moment to kill, sometimes leading to them blowing their own cover and assuring their own demise. I can appreciate that and, knowing Fleming, the theme of this scorpion and the predator/prey dynamic the scene represents will possibly be referenced again or recreated with humans as the participants later on.
The rest of the chapter gives us a peek into what may be going on with the diamond smuggling, and what the shape of this outfit is that Bond is likely going to face head-on in the book. A group of leaders are not named but feared by a doctor who wants more pay for his immense risk in getting the diamonds down the pipeline to the next carrier. I really like the image of a dentist using his job to get the diamonds from mine workers and collecting them for a later parcel, something we also see adapted in the movie in a minor scene.
Chapter 2- Gem Quality
When James Bond is finally introduced to us, I breathe a sigh of relief (you never know how much you miss him until he’s absent from the novel’s opening). Fleming creates his fastest and more economical briefing chapter yet, giving us only the necessary details before Bond’s part in the action is clear.
I like that much of the beginning of the chapter is spent depicting the revelation on the part of both Bond and M about the passion of diamonds and the allure they have that makes them more than just decorative pieces or value items to exchange for a fluctuating price. Fleming, being the detail-oriented man he was, also gives us a lot of background about diamonds, how they differ from cut to cut and just how big an impact they have in so many industries even outside those dealing with jeweling and finance.
Diamonds Are Forever continues the trend of the previous novels as well, where a continuity of Bond’s past adventures is kept up to help the readers fill in the blanks of what he has been doing since. Two characters who got their debut in Moonraker, Bond’s secretary Lil Ponsonby and the man over at Scotland Yard, Ronnie Vallance, are given the promise of more to do, especially the latter who is in deep with the diamond smuggling business. M also presses Bond for information about how his two weeks leave in France was, placing the plot of this novel directly after Moonraker just as that book was shortly after Live & Let Die and that book much the same in relation to Casino Royale, but for a space of some months and not weeks. Bond concedes to experiencing some boredom on holiday, and you can tell that his mind inevitably wanders to Gala Brand and all the fun and passion he’d missed out on following the striking ending of the previous novel that left him alone and empty handed. In a last reference, Bond comments derisively about how M may be forming a habit of getting into other peoples’ business where he doesn’t belong, this being the second time that he and MI5 and the Yard have collided on an operation and with just weeks separating them.
I like that Fleming consistently linked Bond’s exploits to create a framework for the life of this man. By not avoiding to mention all that happens to Bond or just casually implying things in minor ways, the author makes the past books and what happened to Bond in them mean more as we can see how he grows from those experiences.
Ultimately, the premise sparked by this chapter, of Bond replacing a criminal in a diamond smuggling pipeline, is an exciting and promising one. As in the film it seems he’ll be rubbing shoulders with all sorts of sordid and morally ambiguous types with real character. I like that M really tries to give Bond a clear picture of this mission before he has the agent accept it, and we can sense the worry he has for the Double-O as he steps towards another dangerous mission (and he probably still feels guilty about putting Bond on the scent of Hugo Drax and nearly getting the chap killed for it). But we can sense Bond’s boredom and the distaste he has for going back to his office and looking over intelligence files, so I don’t think the decision was a hard one for him to make.
Chapter 3- Hot Ice
As the chapter begins Bond finds himself grilling Tanner about just what has eaten M’s goat and gotten him so dramatic about the coming mission. Even after the Chief of Staff points out why M is cautious, Bond seems to still discount his boss’s worries and treats the job as just another one he must do. In some ways, I don’t like how Bond reacts to this news so offhand. This is a man who has underestimated literally all his past missions and enemies, only to his own detriment. He treated Le Chiffre as a small case and after he won the baccarat game he was naïve to think his problems were over, leading him to being caught in a trap through his nonchalance. He thought Big was all superstition and overblown in his power until he actually met the guy and realized how much he’d underestimated his resources and mind. And with Drax, Bond initially kept reprimanding himself for slanting a good man and national hero to his country, going so far as to repress all the red flags he’d gotten about the millionaire until it was too late to act in opposition to him. So I really don’t like that Bond is essentially falling into the same old trap as usual here, almost showing that he’s learned nothing. How many jobs does he have to take before he realizes that it’s not a good practice to constantly underestimate every enemy he faces, especially with the nasty results of those past jobs?
As Vallance gets into the mission at the Yard and what Bond will need to do to get into the pipeline, I like how the spy’s thoughts drift to his wartime assignments that make him uncomfortable in recollecting them. Fleming gives us little hints of Bond’s operational past and his history with this line of work to make his credibility solid, but doesn’t dig deeper to keep the mystery and to cement the agent’s character as one who represses thoughts which he would rather forget.
In yet another minor reference to Moonraker (this time a blink and you miss it one) Bond discusses his worries at being caught in the customs in America by something called the “Inspectoscope,” a device that was detailed in one of the files he was leafing through in the previous book that was designed to detect contraband moving through airports. Again Fleming keeps building his spy world into a dimensional space that feels grounded and connected, using material mentioned only casually in a past novel to be fleshed out or realized more concretely later. The files Bond has to read about for his job ultimately become less bits of filler that Fleming added to give some sense of depth to the work the spy does, but instead take on a sense of reality and relevancy. Bond needed to read up on the device for moments like this, where its functionality runs in direct opposition to his ability to smuggle diamonds successfully into America. The Double-O will require the past knowledge he gleamed from the file to find a way to counteract the Inspectoscope without risking the entire mission from the very start.
The chapter closes with the interesting premise of Bond having to play under a bit of a disguise, with Vallance calling in an associate to alter his appearance to avoid him being flagged as a man of interest for his uncharacteristic scar. I’m sure it also helps that Bond will look different for meeting Saye at his shop than he would in his meeting with Case, so that word about his particular appearance doesn’t flow from one to the other and blow his cover. That then allows him to look as he usually does when he goes to see Case, because his scar could be explained in a rather satisfactory way as a mark he got from a past job gone wrong in another life.
I quite like the description we get as the novel ends that depicts Bond not looking himself. The big sign we are to take that he doesn’t look quite the same man is in his eyes and mouth, which now look studious. This can only imply that the man usually looks far opposite of this depiction, a bit more rough around the edges and not at all the schoolboy lost in his text. In short, the contrast paints the picture of Bond as he really is, a soldier with a sharpness to him that betrays no sense of discernable warmth or innocence. He’s not the bespectacled man behind the desk working over operational plans with some maps and data sheets, he’s the man who makes those plans a reality in the field where he risks it all.
Chapter 4- ‘What Goes on Around Here?’
In one of Fleming’s shorter chapters, we get introduced to Mr. Saye, a man who may or may not turn out to be a person of consequence to the plot. It’d be a helluva Chekhov’s gun if he wasn’t, so here’s hoping.
I guess the point of the chapter was for Bond to feel the guy out, though he doesn’t seem to get a read out of him anyway. Largely, Dankwaerts gives Saye a test that he fails, apparently because he didn’t know two types of diamonds were made up in his list. I think one could just as easily rationalize that Saye wanted the meeting to end and didn’t bother with correcting the Yard man on his slip-up to avoid extending the trivial and obnoxious interruption into his day, but nonetheless Bond’s ally sees it as a confirmation of criminality.
Chapter 5- ‘Feuilles Mortes’
Fleming crafts what becomes a very successful chapter that aims to build up the character of the novel’s main “Bond girl,” Tiffany Case. It’s very fitting that the name of this chapter is translated from the French for “The Dead Leaves,” because the woman very much feels like the fall season in decline; someone who was once fiery and passionate has faded in energy and color and now gives off a very cold and distant feeling. In many ways Tiffany represents the man Bond thinks he is, someone who is able to take his heart out of the equation and think dispassionately about a job. More often than not, however, his heart gets caught up in it all and his coldness gives way to the warmth of sacrifice and compassion. For him it’s more of an act, whereas it feels like a lifestyle and act of survival for this woman.
The whole chapter is played against the backdrop of music emitting from a record, and with Bond and Tiffany having different experiences of it. When Bond is given the run of the record he notices La Vie en Rose and makes a conscious effort to skip over it as the betrayal of Vesper and his mixed feelings for her rise up in his mind. In the scene I get the feeling that Tiffany is also experiencing memories as she listens to the record, which she says she loves, maybe to remind herself of what once was or who she used to be. There’s an inherent regret in her, a lack of assurance in position, like she is unhappy with where she is and what she must do and is looking for another way out. Bond points out this poignancy of the woman after they meet, and that feeling of displacement and dissatisfaction in her lingers. I also like how he compares her eyes to the chatoyance of a diamond, not only connecting her in an ironical way to the very reflective objects she coldly smuggles, but also showing that some life lives behind her lids that could give him hope for passions not expressed.
There is a very high promise for the character of Tiffany as she is introduced here, and at the very least she is intriguing in how focused on the job she is with little hint of anything beyond absolute indifference to all other extraneous details. She’s getting paid for work that she wants to ensure goes off without an issue, and is quite cold and demanding about how her partner is expected to help her achieve that end. I think she also uses a lot of suitably crafty and cold tactics to feel out those she is working with, like how she first meets Bond near nude to get a read on him as he’s distracted and tantalized by what he sees, placing him purposefully in a raw and vulnerable moment. As Bond says, she’s a woman who knows her beauty and can use it as a weapon against men because she doesn’t seem interested in making lovers out of them. She can afford to toy or trick these men because once the job is done they will move on from each other and there won’t be any moment where passion will be exchanged. Her near asexuality makes her able to use sex on the lustful in their weaker and most base human moments without feeling that passion or connection herself.
Overall Tiffany is somewhat refreshing as a lead girl at Bond’s side, if only because the first thing we hear from her point of view isn’t how handsome and interesting Bond is, or how he looks strikingly like a more cruel Hoagy Carmichael; instead the woman laments yet another criminal she has tied herself up with and goes off to complete her communiqué with her secret employer. She’s not sex focused, and is instead prepared to stand Bond down. The Double-O’s body language is fascinating as this woman challenges him, especially the moment where she cruelly downplays his flirting and he raises himself from his position at the wall to close in on her. If we have learned anything from Bond’s character it’s that he hates it when beautiful women act indifferent to his attraction to them, as with Vesper and largely Gala Brand too (who he found too authoritative at first), and you once again get the feeling here that he wants to bust through Tiffany’s coldness and show her what kind of man he is, even if he’s selling something she doesn’t want to buy.
Throughout the rest of the chapter Fleming continues to feed us what the smuggling job is like and what is expected of Bond while involved in it. The hurdle of the customs is run through and I think it’s implied by Bond’s comment about liking golf and Tiffany’s push for him to bring his clubs on the plane that the diamonds will somehow be smuggled in the form of golf balls, though I could be wrong.
There are also some very funny little references to Fleming’s past or future work with his spy novels in this chapter, beyond the mention of Bond and Vesper’s song from their time dining at Royale. In the first example, as Bond tries to figure out what the “T” in the girl’s name stands for, he guesses several names, two of which are Teresa and Tilly, the names of future Bond girls in the novels. Secondly, when Bond first tells Tiffany what his real name is, she comments that he might as well call himself “Joe Doe,” a funny way of Fleming stating through the woman’s character how dry and bland his hero’s name is (the very reason he originally used it).
The chapter ends with us in Tiffany’s point of view as she makes a call to her mysterious employer. Fleming has done a really strong job up to this point in the novel of building up the delicate machine behind the smuggling operation, which matches how real life crime (when done successfully) is carried out. There are a series of agents that each have an isolated job that ignorantly disconnects them from other parts of the operation to avoid the risk of the entire outfit being compromised when someone knows too much and spills their guts. Fleming’s attention to detail and his journalistic knowledge of how smuggling was done comes through and grounds our story in reality, making the stakes even higher for Bond.
Chapter 6- In Transit
Fleming does indeed fire the Chekhov’s gun of Mr. Saye, revealing to us that the man is tied up in a complex conspiracy of crime that stems many separate gang outfits in America. Even after getting this information, Bond continues to downplay the threat of the gangs, still unaware of the trouble they pose (you’d think Mr. Big’s group in New York would’ve learned him).
As Bond prepares to catch a ride that will shuffle him off to the airport, I like that Fleming again references the previous novel and how M gave Bond his gun as a souvenir from the mission. This book in just the first fourth of chapters into the plot and is already the most referential and inter-connected of all the Bond novels, feeding into the events of each book before it in both overt and subtle ways. As a first time reader of it I am surprised just how much Fleming really invested in keeping continuity with his stories, and I’m interested to see if such continuity is steadily kept later on.
As Bond heads off to insert himself into the pipeline, I feel his anxiety. He mentions a feeling of loneliness, because although he knows he could call MI6 and pull out if it got too hot, he lacks the ability to surrender with cowardice or surrender and he also doesn’t want to force M to have to throw the case over to Hoover’s feds in embarrassment. Much like the actions he took to stop Drax, Bond must work to protect both his dignity and that of his boss.
The driver that eventually picks up Bond is interesting, as you can tell he’s done the job for a long while and knows all the tricks. The spy really seems to enjoy the character that is the chauffeur, and takes a moment to address him as “my man” as they part to make him drop his theatrical final smile. I like this side of Bond we see at times, who watches men putting on performances and strives to make them crack. I relate to this, as I would probably try to do the same thing.
As Bond sits in the airport lounges he finds Tiffany not far away from him and in the exact position he said he’d sit if he were making sure someone wasn’t having second thoughts about a big job. There’s still a trust barrier between these two that Bond wants to break, but it’s more a question of if the girl will let him get that far. Amongst the assortment of passengers for the flight, Bond thinks he’s being studied by more than Tiffany, sniffing out two Americans who could be connected to the Spang outfit. Fleming doesn’t yet prove or disprove Bond’s paranoia, instead letting it sink in as we viscerally feel the voyeurism too.
When our hero finally touches down in America the first leg of the book concludes and the real mission at hand takes form.
PussyNoMore thinks it's a sacrilege that these editions have been censored.
Why can't people get their heads around the fact that these great works were of their time and leave it at that?
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
Edition I read: 2008 Penguin, which was apparently a giveaway with The Times and has an ad for the forthcoming Devil May Care on the back.
Where I read it: A holiday cottage in the Cotswolds.
James Bond
I’ve already mentioned that my favourite part of the book is when Bond skips ‘La Vie en Rose’ as he listens to music in Tiffany’s room. He lives so much in the present, it’s nice to see that he is human and occasionally looks to the past.
And the future. We see him planning seriously for life with Tiffany; no 'then more bed, then less bed' stuff here. He even discusses having kids - but not until he retires, and we know he reckons he won't live that long.
He does fancy himself a bit, with his rather patronising assumption that Tiffany, once committed, will be his responsibility forever. Let's see how that goes for you, mate.
I love the idea of the boy Bond playing nursery blackjack. I bet he was a right little demon at it.
The villain
There isn't one big villain here. Along with Bond, we are often told not to underestimate these gangsters, but they never feel terribly threatening or memorable in the way that Le Chiffre, Mr Big and Drax did. Jack Spang is pretty anodyne and his brother feels just as cheap as Bond estimates.
Wint and Kidd are sinister from their first appearance, and there’s a great reveal when we realise we first met them on Bond’s flight to the US. However, they behave completely unprofessionally on the ship. They talk about committing murder within earshot of a steward, then draw attention to themselves with the Low Field bet, thus sealing their doom. Bond underestimates American criminals and American criminals underestimate him right back.
It's good that Fleming tries something different rather than sticking to the same formula, and ultimately there is satisfaction in seeing Bond polish off the very last one of this poisonous bunch, but the impact is lessened by diffusing the evil among several villains.
Fleming also goes off-formula by taking the violence inflicted on Bond in the Brooklyn stomping offscreen. This does work well, and I like the flashback to LALD as Bond comes round.
The girl
I’m not a big fan of Tiffany Case; I find her personality just too harsh and abrasive, and her tragic backstory a little too tragic.
But I do like her tough-affectionate ‘you Bond person’.
Other cast
Felix! You’re back!! It’s good to have Leiter driving Bond around, teasing him, and explaining the fact of US life to him once again. Fleming handles the subtle ways he’s been altered by his injuries and career change, giving us the same character but more so.
Vallance from Moonraker is back, along with a couple of colleagues who are nicely described even though they don’t get much screen time.
Ernie Cureo, a pal of Fleming's given a nice namecheck here, is a fun character who briefly takes over Felix's role of Explaining America.
The plot
Following the very localised setting of Moonraker, Bond moves around a lot, giving us a linear story that follows the diamond pipeline backwards to its source. Racehorses get mixed up in it along the way, which is slightly weird but nonetheless fascinating.
There's something profoundly satisfying about the conclusion, in which chapter titles and setting bring us back to the start of the story and a place we, the readers, have already seen, while Bond has not. We've been on a journey and come full circle.
(There's no real reason for Bond to carry out this final part of the mission, but it's more dramatic than having a stranger do it.)
The location
DAF, along with Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent and Peter S. Beagle's I See By My Outfit, is responsible for my long-held ambition to do a Big American Road Trip and stay in cheesy motels and see Vegas. I suspect, however, that I would be disappointed, because what I actually want to experience is the Big American Road Trip somewhere between 1955 and 1965.
I love the fantasy of the Tiara casino, and the more down to earth but still exotic atmosphere of Saratoga Springs. Spectreville is pretty great, too. Hard to hate someone who’s bought himself a ghost town to play with.
Finally, the little self-contained world of the ocean liner. Like the Orient Express, it's a glimpse of luxury ‘50s travel and a lovely mental image. There's so much travel in Bond; it's what makes them so soothing to read when you're travelling yourself, or in bed.
Food & drink
I wonder what constitutes the inappropriate assortment of foods that BOAC advertise as 'An English country house breakfast’? Airline brekkie these days seems to consist of a yogurt and a muffin, so I’d probably take the country house option.
Uncharacteristically for Fleming, we don’t get the details of what Bond has for breakfast after Felix and Tiffany whisk him to safety and a doctor, but I bet it was pretty great.
He gets through a fair bit of steak and champagne. Then there's the sauce Béarnaise made by Tiffany, which should be a touching moment but feels a bit sitcom-ish and slightly nauseating.
Miscellany
The title comes from the De Beers advertising slogan, A Diamond Is Forever. Did I read once that Fleming wanted to use the actual slogan, but wasn’t allowed?
I like Bond getting disguised for his meeting with Saye. I imagine him looking a bit like Brosnan in TWINE's funeral scene.
There’s something very sexual about the way the Queen Elizabeth moves off ‘with a shudder of release’. What could possibly be going to happen on board, eh?
In the pre-Google days, I was delighted to stumble across ‘that most sinister line in all poetry’ in an anthology. (It’s from Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson.)
There’s a mention of the Inspectoscope at Idlewild, which Bond was unwillingly reading up on in Moonraker. Nice.
Here is a lovely though faded mug I found for 50p in a charity shop, featuring the Penguin cover art. I’ve never seen another and I’ve no idea if they did the whole series, but I’m keeping an eye out.
Love the title, but they're never making a movie out of it.
I love the details with Bond, Leiter, and Tiffany rolling into Hollywood and how "Bond's battle-scarred face didn't mean they hadn't all just finished work at the studios."
Bond acknowledges how insanely capable the Pinkertons are. It's interesting seeing Leiter pulling strings to get Bond out of the country under the radar. A different dynamic for the character from his CIA days.
Wint and Kidd set up at the end of the chapter here. I kind of wish their identities hadn't been spilled to us right away, but it's an effective chapter ending just the same.
22. Love and Sauce Béarnaise
Nice way for Fleming to delay the romantic payoff: making Tiffany seasick.
I just love the whole setting of the cruise ship here—Bond and Tiffany meeting for cocktails on the Observation Lounge, everything. It feels authentic and unique and really quite Bondian (a massive luxury hotel on the seas). I also doubt cruise ships were quite so crowded with retirement folks back in the day.
Tiffany's dialogue simply continues to impress. The whole interplay between the two, him prodding into her life, her growing emotional and defensive, plays out very well. (Though Tiff is definitely one of the hot-and-cold ones.)
23. The Job Comes Second
An interesting setup here with the high and low auction reintroducing Wint and Kidd into Bond's life, unbeknownst to him, but it does introduce some bothersome problems. Actually just one very big problem: that Bond fails to identify Wint and Kidd despite everything screaming in his face that he should. Bond comes off as the densest, most incompetent secret agent in this chapter.
The fact that W&K choose the low field, against all expectations, should have rang a small alarm bell for Bond, but it doesn't. Then, when asked by Bond if she recognizes the two, Tiffany says they look like they're from Brooklyn. Simply by word association, you would think the mention of "Brooklyn" would send Bond's mind directly back to the "Brooklyn stomping" that was ordered on him. Then Tiffany mentions that the big guy was sucking his thumb and this strikes Bond as troublingly familiar but he can't place it. Really? The fact that the case you just worked on involved a hitman who sucks his thumb isn't fresh enough? How do you not put those two together? Tiffany even refers to Kidd as "the white-haired guy" and wasn't that in Leiter's description to Bond too? Bond sounds like he couldn't ID the killer if the guy was covered in blood at the crime scene with the murder weapon in his hand. Sorry, Fleming, but you did not pull this one off smoothly.
I forgive you for having Tiffany ask Bond for "everything you've ever done to a girl. Now. Quickly." And on the floor.
24. Death Is So Permanent
Fantastic chapter title.
A line of poetry pops into Bond's head. So this started with Fleming, huh? Gardner, of course, would take it and run with it, having characters spouting poetry left and right in every book as if everyone in Bond's world were lit majors.
Confused about the sequence of events here. Fleming writes "she left him," but it was clearly Bond who leaves Tiffany to respond to the cipher at the start of the chapter. How does that work?
Thrilling, if slightly improbable, sequence with Bond diving in through the porthole and managing to take out W&K. Kudos for taking a throwing knife to the ribs like a man. That one sounds like it hurts.
Bond loses the new Beretta M had just given him. No respect for company equipment.
A couple of thoughts pass through Bond's mind as the chapter closes: his seriousness about Tiffany, and the permanence of death, perhaps coupled with remorse over killing? The accusatory "...what you did to me" from the corpse appears to suggest some form of guilt, though Bond was fully justified in killing the man. Maybe it has more to do with the general idea of killing getting to Bond as seen in the first chapter of GF, though Fleming doesn't explore things much further here.
25. The Pipeline Closes
And we return full circle to where we started—closing off the pipeline, closing out the book.
Indeed DAF has a very blow by blow structure, and much like FRWL (the film) has a unique three-part climax. Really three separate climaxes: first with Spectreville, then on the cruise ship, then taking out ABC in the desert. Unlike FRWL's multiple climaxes (yes, I'm not going to reword that) I really like how DAF's unfold. They each feel unique and yet thrilling in their own way and necessary to the story. The conclusion in the desert here is certainly the least thrilling of the three, but it's over with quickly and we can sense the end has indeed come.
I like that we don't finish with Bond and Tiffany back at his flat. We know she's there, we know what's to come, but we conclude with Bond alone in the desert at the end of this rather unpleasant journey through America's filth, literal and figurative. There is no glamor in it and that's just how it should be. Like I mentioned before—about the little bits of meta in here—Fleming reminds "It reads better than it lives." For the reader this has been a thrilling 200+ pages well spent, a nice escape from everyday life, but for Bond, walking through the desert toward the death and carnage he just brought about, "it was just the end of another adventure." This is his life. A life full of death and the occasional escape into the arms of a girl.
I really do like that Fleming makes each of his novel endings unique. It's so refreshing to come to the end of each one and see how it differs from the others. I really wish the films would follow suit and appreciate how the Craig era has indeed done that.
Total scrambled eggs count: 1
Believe me, I have devoted a lot of thought over the last week and a half to what could possibly need to be done on the floor rather than in a bed. Fleming, you tease.
Yes, it was great seeing you! I only wish I hadn't been so massively jet lagged and had been able to stay longer. But the Le Carre discussion was good, and better still in the company of a Bond fan. The "fantasy" of Fleming's spy world got a couple mentions, but nothing in-depth.
Yup all around. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy perhaps. Out of fear of his villains not living up to his villains past, Fleming exhausts more time telling the reader they should fear the villains than actually making the villains fearsome. A shame. The Spangs are barely there and could have been among the greats with a different approach: this pair of greasy Italian brothers working from opposite ends of the globe. The henchmen fare better.
Absolutely. As I mentioned to @Agent_99 the other day, I cheated and cracked into FRWL on the plane. We are in a whole 'nother world from DAF here.