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I think that's Trigger's strength really, just being a nice, standard Bond plot. As for Sixtine, she's definitely one of my favourite Bond girls – at least from the continuation novels I've read. Don't know if I would compare her to the best of Fleming's though!
I agree with all of this. I wonder if he's making it faster paced for a contemporary audience which would be a shame.
The book Bond would sometimes stay in smaller hotels because the name of the place amused him and to veer away from pretension.
Yes, and he's talking about Holmes at the same time. I don't think too much can be read into it, although I would be surprised if they didn't get him to do a third 007 book.
Yeah, especially as there's still a few more unrevealed Fleming treatments to use.
Faulks in some ways had the hardest job as the first high profile novelist to write a Bond book in 40 years. My issue with DMC is that in some ways it's too much of a pastiche of Fleming. I'd prefer it if he allowed himself more free rein in the style.
I actually enjoyed Carte Blanche in that it took risks. There were style elements that took from Fleming (like the comparison of Mary Goodnight looking like Kate Winslett as an echo of the passage in OHMSS where Fleming references Ursula Andress), but Deaver was allowed to play around with the formula, adding the intrigue around Bonds' parents. It is let down somewhat by Deaver (who I'm a fan of) falling back into his "plot within a plot" formula with a false ending that soon falls apart only for the real resolution become apparent as a reversal of the false one.
I actually can't really say much about Solo as it left so little of an impression on me. It really didn't feel like a Bond book as such, just a book in there's a character who happened to be called Bond. The same is true of both the Benson and the Gardner books. I remember being so excited as a teenager when the first Gardner book came out, eager to add it to my Bond collection (which was the full set of the "Girls on Guns" series of Bond paperback, including the copy of Colonel Sun!). I read Licence Renewed & liked it, but it didn't grab me the way Fleming or Amis had done. I stuck with them for a bit, but while I continued to enjoy the films, the novels went by the wayside. I've gone back & bought them all on Kindle (they're cheap & it gave me something to read at lunchtime at work), but both Gardner & Benson fail to grip me the way that Fleming, Amis, Horowitz and Deaver still do.
I hope they give Horowitz another book, but I also hope that IFP allow whoever writes the one after that some freedom as to the style & when it's set. A Bond novel set in the dying days of the Cold War would throw up a whole range of possibilities.
(On a side note, I hope that Jarvis & Ayres are allowed to complete their radio adaptations of the Fleming novels for the BBC. They've only got CR, TSWLM, and the short stories to go. TSWLM would be a nightmare to adapt as a radio play, so I'm happy for them to leave that out, but a version of CR with Toby Stephens as Bond would be great. Plus I'm sure that they cold come up with a narrative framework to stitch the short stories together to make another couple of plays...)
Yea, because he's writing 'as' Ian Fleming, it starts to feel at times he's actually slightly taking the piss out of him, unintentionally I'm sure. But the baddie with a monkey paw, Bond feeling old and turning down a woman because he's feeling a bit old and useless, and a 'deadly game' of... tennis. At time it feels a bit like one of those pastiche short stories in a Sunday supplement that has Bond needing viagra or something.
Yeah I did like an attempt to make the new modern Bond who wasn't just Daniel Craig (but equally not incompatible with him either). I need to revisit it.
I presume they've been leaving CR until last so that the adaptations don't just end on a whimper. It'd be interesting if they did an Amis or Horowitz (I agree, the only two choices really). I wonder if Eon/Danjaq would allow them.
Although one can have empathy for those authors who try and fail to emulate the master, one has to have a greater sympathy for the completist fans who feel completely obliged to read them.
‘PussyNoMore’ is one such slavish individual. Over the years his love of Fleming has seen him abused and confused as he has faithfully followed the franchise owners with their misadventures.
The abuse has been particularly bad when some of his other favourite authors - notably Gardner and Boyd - became involved with Bond.
Gardner was a great author. His Oakes books were superb and his Kruger novels beyond good. But when it came to Bond, he started competently with ‘Licence Renewed’ and disappeared quickly into the abyss.
Years later, nothing excited ‘The Pussy’ more than the announcement that one involvement of his all time favourite scribes, William Boyd, was to enter the fray. Boyd’s resume was perfect. A classy novelist who had written several great spy stories - often with a certain Flemingesque style.
When the signed U.K. first edition arrived it was even published by Cape and had great cover art. Surely our saviour had arrived and after all those false starts, we were going to arrive at Bond nirvana?
Not a bit of it, between those great covers, Boyd had turned Bond into a drunken voyeur who was forced to stagger around a no name African state and drive a mod edit brown Jensen Interceptor. The turgid tale made The Pussy feel like he’d been kicked in the groin and kneed in the face on the way down !
After all of this, ‘The Pussy’ cheered the arrival of Horowitz. He may not be perfect but he’s a thousand miles better than anyone since Amis. Does he match the master’s high old tone ? No, but nobody ever will but occasionally he comes perilously close and that will do for ‘PussyNoMore’. What’s more, he hasn’t put Bond in a mod edit brown Jensen albeit he didn’t get his car right in FAAD !
What’s wrong with a Jensen?
What’s wrong with a Jensen ? Well, back in the day they were a flash ‘Del Boy’ spiv mobile that broke down around every corner. Certainly not a driver’s car and Bond wouldn’t have been seen stiff in one ! (Ps. Boyd can’t drive which may explain the choice).
Oh if it's set in 1950 that is an error, yes! :D Still, heaven knows what a 'Mark 2 Continental' is anyway, Fleming did tend to get the names of cars wrong!
Could have been an old Mark VI he intended to put a Continental-style body on.
It's a point though, didn't Fleming have Bond buy his 4.5 litre Bentley when he was 12 or something? That should be in the book if it's early Bond.
No I don't think so. And Bond liked drivers' cars I'm not sure why he was in massive lumbering Bentleys! :D
The lumbering Bentley won the French Grand Prix and put in stellar performances at Le Mans and Goodwood. The Jenson never got to a fish and chip shop without breaking down !
I don't think it did :)
In the 20s, yeah (although I'm not aware of them racing at Goodwood in any significant capacity at all, that's far too late. Maybe you mean Brooklands?). Cars had moved on a bit by the 60s.
Don't get me wrong, I love the big Bentleys but 'drivers cars' in the 50s and 60s were something else. Getting old Bentleys to move was, and remains now, a bit more of an experience!
:)
Well, not true either, but I think it rather suits Fleming's ideals in a car which he seemed to advocate: big and cruiserish and with a lump of American metal in it. Doesn't harm anything that it looks great too.
I remember one of the 60s comic strips had him in an AC Frua, which I thought was a rather brilliant choice.
He'd be wrong then, as the reason it's in there in Young Bond is that Fleming said in Casino Royale that Bond bought the 4½ litre in 1933. Which meant that when in later books he tended to revise James' age downwards slightly to keep him the right age for a double O, Bond had actually been around 13 years old when he bought it.
IT indeed didn't win the French Grand Prix, it became second. But it did become a ledgend, and I think that's what Fleming chose it for
https://www.bentleymotors.com/en/world-of-bentley/the-bentley-story/history-and-heritage/heritage-cars/the-blower-bentley.html
For a car enthusiast, it would be a very special car to have, with all its shortcomings.
I disagree on Flemin and American cars. I think it's in LALD when Fleming has Bond talk to Felix about the shortcomings of American cars, when Felix enjoys showing off his car which, to Bond's surprise, is very fast and nimble. I can't remember the car itself but it was definately not with the standard engine.
It is in GF when he's admiring the Alfa Romeo which overtakes him, while chasing the (heavily loaded) Mercedes of GF. Bond, for sure, loves fast drivers' cars. (he even likes the Merc).
Yes, exactly: he had Bond become convinced by American cars and Fleming himself was a big fan of Ford Thunderbirds and that's what he drove.
https://flemingsbond.com/studillac/
That's the one! Of course it was DAF! They take it together to go to the racecourse. Thanks!
BTW that IS a good looking car! Designed by a Frenchman... so still half European ;-)