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"Then there's our Irish villain. Who does he love now? Felicity, or Hydth? Or however you'd spell his name." :-))
I think Irish villain should have stuck with Hydth. Ms Willing was bad news
Deaver is fixated on twists and turns. With Deaver nothing can be as it seems.
Does anyone know why Bond was willing to show the killer from Dubai mercy when they fought to the death in South Africa. Didn't this guy horribly kill Leiter's loyal operative in Dubai and almost leave Leiter to the same fate but for Bond's rescue. Or have I got that wrong? Did this guy only have it in for Bond and it was Hyde's men that killed Leiter's helper in Dubai? Confused?
However if this guy Rathko also horribly killed Leiter's trusted operative and also left Leiter for dead, then why the hell is Bond showing him any mercy? The guy's crossed a big line. He's expanded his target to not only Bond but also Bond's associates. He's now official psycho enemy. Blow him away. He's beyond salvage. It makes no sense to show a killer like this mercy.
Now I am allowing that maybe I have this all wrong. That maybe it wasn't Rathko that killed Leiter's operative friend and left Leiter for dead. Maybe the killer was Dunne and his men and Rathko was just kind of on the scene. I know the answer is in the book. I've just been too lazy to go back and re-read, but it is looking like Rathko was indeed the killer based on what Ross said.
If so Deaver's being real generous with Bond's sense of mercy, because that was horrible violence that occured back in Dubai.
That's why I was schocked that Bond would even consider giving this guy mercy which caused me to think,maybe I missed something, surely Deaver wouldn't have Bond show mercy to such a vicious killer.
Meanwhile Miss Dudley Do-Right SAPS agent Jordaan was threatening to blow Bond away if he didn't turn over Rathko. Bond however was planning on showing the guy mercy anyway and was bothered that Jordaan didn't see that. Unbelievable.
What was Deaver smoking when he wrote this scene? Did he forget the whole episode in Dubai?
I'm thinking the Faulks book was actually better than CB. CB is full of holes and frustrating depictions of the Bond persona.
If IFP is indeed going to space out the releases, maybe best if they find another author.
I really do miss John Gardner, after these last two books.
Charlie Higson might be the best bet to be writing new Bond books. I think he showed in his Young Bond series that he would be quite capable of writing adult Bond. He's part of the Bond family. Deaver's like a visitor, much like Faulks was. These guys have their own thing going on and their own fan bases to service.
Higson seems very commited to the Bond mystique.
Mind boggling, as the darkest moments of the book are the killing in Dubai and Leiter's near gruesome death, yet all is forgiven for these atrocities. The poor guy was just upset about his brother.
I really think Deaver should be excused from further contributions for this bizarre episode alone. #-O
Give us Charlie Higson back [-O<
I am about 50 pages in & so far my verdict is: 100% Perfect!! Deaver is (so far) a cross between Fleming & Gardener with his own touch. I love it & if the rest of the book is this perfect I hope he writes at least 2 more!
I toyed with this idea a few years ago for about 10 seconds then swiftly disregarded it. I'm not into it at all.
It certainly isn't James Bond we're reading about in Carte Blanche though!
Carte Blanche strikes me as a novel written by a Fleming fan and one who watched Casino Royale several times. And yet this novel seems awkward and self-conscious. Its James Bond reborn--a man with no history. Overall, this is a weak and disappointing addition to the series.
IMO Bond took way too much crap from the uptight Jordaan early on. Bond seemed almost hurt that she would make assumptions about him.
Bond also failed to respond to a very obvious and perfectly civil overture from a very single Ophelia earlier in the book. This is not the Bond I know. This is a kinder, gentler, more senstive to what women might-really-want-emotionally, Deaver-Bond . I prefer Fleming's more accomodating-of-female-desire Bond. Afterall, Bond is escapist male fantasy to a large degree. Women are attracted to Bond like a magnet and he generally obliges, be they good-girl or bad-girl.
But Bond's lack of womanizing aside @0BradyM0Bondfanatic7, what did you make of his empathy for the guy that brutally killed Leiter's man in Dubai and but for Bond's intervention, almost did the same to Leiter himself? When Bond finally encounters this crazed psycho, in mortal combat no-less, Bond wants to capture him, not to kill him, despite his crimes.
The reasoning that Deaver offers up in explanation of Bond's "compassion" here is pretty weak IMO. Not the Double 0, Licenced to Kill operative we are used to, I don't think.
But this approach is consistent with Deaver's depiction of Bond as double O operative, that does his job, but also seems to have an exaggerated need to be understood.
My only question is how did Bond get from Serbia to London overnight?
Poor Deaver, seems like he's trying to "improve" Bond for us. No thanks. Please let Bond be Bond and let Ophelia have her little fling before she gets back with BF.
However, the chapter structure was all wrong - numbered chapters with no titles, too short and way too many of them. The novel seemed to be in such a hurry, and didn't allow itself to prolong at a leisurely pace like the Fleming books, and because of this it felt closer to the films than the novels. Also, Deaver never really gets under Bond's skin.
No one can truly emulate the books because it was Fleming's thoughts, opinions and vision alone. This became all too apparent when reading Carte Blanche.
Here are some of my thoughts on CARTE BLANCH itself:
- I loved the twist about the derailment in Serbian being about the scrap metal and not the methyl isocyanite. It's an unusually good bit of foreshadowing because of Dunne's characterisation; he knew the containers were virtually impenetrable, so a little derailment would do nothing. Deaver pulled this twist off quite well.
- However, I didn't like the revelation that Willing was the Big Bad. Not because I didn't like the idea of her being a villain, but because I felt the whole subplot was wasted. There was a lot of potential in that storyline, but the ending felt a little bit "Murder She Wrote" with Bond explaining everything at the end. I think it would have been better if Deaver had given us a reason to suspect something was wrong with her, and if he'd spent a bit more time on that plot thread and less with Hydt.
- I felt Hydt broke character at the end when he went from sociopatic to hired gun with the revelation he was being paid to detonate the Cutter. Speaking of, such a nightmarish weapon should have been given a little foreshadowing in the plot.
- I get that one of the themes of the novel is that intelligence can be misinterpreted, but the Willing and Hydt subplots were too disjointed. There should have been more of a connection between them. Like Willing using Dunne to get the Cutter for Sudan to use in their war with the rebels.
- Felix Leiter's presence felt like fan service. If you're going to include him, give him something to do.
- I didn't like the Steel Cartridge subplot. I feel it undermines Bond's character, because the idea of getting revenge for his parents dilutes his entire reason for doing everything that he does. Still, props to Deaver for setting Andrew Bond up as a spy and then a traitor and then revealing that Monique Delacrox was the real spy(-hunter) all along. And on that note, were we supposed to think that the "Sir Andrew" who talks with M was Andrew Bond?
- Bond's actions in defending the schoolboy seemed forced and out of character. The whole thing seemed to have been created to give Bond a way to get to Dubai on time without attracting Osborne-Smith's attention, and I don't think it's something Fleming's Bond would have done. Bond's Arabian playboy friend is also a massive cliche.
- Why is Bond's success so frequently portrayed as a direct result of everyone else's incompetence?
- And why so many references to Formula 1? I know it's my favourite sport, but I could at least four references (Moneypenny can blink faster than a Formula 1 car can change gears, Bond/Philly can drive like Michael Schumacher, Philly thanks Bond for the chance to "play Formula 1" and Bond likes the newspaper in Dubai because of the Formula 1 coverage).
Overall, CARTE BLANCHE was pretty strong, but never made good on its potential. The first half of the book is clearly the strongest; elsewhere, it suffers from AVTAK Syndrome (so named because the locations in that film gradually downsized from Siberian snowfields, the Eiffel Tower and Zorin's chateau to an empty house outside San Francisco - they gradually got smaller and less Bondian).
And some of my observations post-CARTE BLANCHE:
After finishing CARTE BLANCH, I went and found as many Deaver novels as I could. I started with THE SLEEPING DOLL, which I really enjoyed, and I finished off THE EMPTY CHAIR recently. I've since gone back and re-read CARTE BLANCHE, and while my opinion of it remains largely unchanged, I'm beginning to see that it is very Deaver-ish and one of his better novels. Here's a few observations I've picked up from his back catalogue:
First of all, Deaver is at his best when he's freely writing. A few of the books I read were "themed"; they revolved around a particular subject. I found these stories to be noticeably weaker. In particular, I'm referring to ROADSIDE CROSSES (the theme being cyber-bullying and online gaming) and THE BROKEN WINDOW (data mining). They were full of Exposition Dumps (I had to skip a few pages of ROADSIDE CROSSES that recounted the history of the internet), and they often felt like Deaver was trying to make a point by painting the themes as bad things simply because the villains used them to fulfil their ends. CARTE BLANCHE is a little guilty of this, with its emphasis on misinterpreting intelligence, but it's not as pronounced as some of Deaver's other books.
Secondly, some of the big twists in the stories were only really big because there was no foreshadowing. I commented on this in my first review of CARTE BLANCHE - Felicity Willing is revealed as the villain halfway through the third act, but it felt like a lot of her more-villainous activities were happening "off-camera". There were a few references to what was really going on, but no genuine clues that the reader could a) recognise and b) use to try and solve the mystery themselves, or at least in line with the characters. This was particularly noticeable in ROADSIDE CROSSES and THE EMPTY CHAIR.
For example, the villain in THE EMPTY CHAIR is a corrupt industrialist who has contaminated a North Carolina town while producing toxaphene, a banned pesticide, and is killing off anyone who asks too many questions.
The story up until this point has revolved around the search for a teenager who has kidnapped two local girls. He is depicted as mentally disturbed, which most people write off as being a result of living in foster care. However, his mental state is actually a symptom of exposure to toxaphene.
Unfortuantely, there are no real clues to all of this until Lincoln Rhyme announces it. There is an early reference to toxaphene, but a character who is portrayed as an expert on the subject (and is not a villain) dismisses it, and so the audience is willing to accept this. Likewise, the teenager recounts the scene where he was exposed to the poison, but it is from his perspective and no evidence is given that something else might have happened.
Similarly, in the final scene, Rhyme confronts the corrupt sheriff and tricks him into confessing that he is responsible for everything that has happend. But evidence that he is guilty is omitted for the sake of the revelation that he is behind it all (particularly since he is related to a series regular). We never see the scenes in which Rhyme contacts the FBI and arranges for the sting to be set up.
Finally, I've also noticed that Deaver has the unusual habit of cutting a scene short, skipping ahead a few moments and then doubling back to explain it. As an example in THE EMPTY CHAIR:
Halfway through the book, a group of local rednecks decide to kidnap the disturbed teenager from the county lockup and torture him for information about the girl he kidnapped. They start to put their plan in motion, and are about to enter the lockup when the scene cuts to Lincoln Rhyme being informed that his partner, Amelia Sachs, has broken the teenager out of the lockup herself. We then cut back to a scene before the redneck conspiracy, showing Sachs breaking the teenager from prison.
It's utterly bizarre. The early cut robbed us of any revelation that the boy was gone, and the scene with Rhyme removed any element of mystery about who was responsible. Deaver effectively spoiled the scene for the readers two pages before he actually showed it. And it's not the only time he does it - I noticed it in THE TWELFTH CARD and ROADSIDE CROSSES as well.
Don't get me wrong - I still like Deaver. He does write a good story, and I like the twists he throws out, even if I would like a little bit of foreshadowing that I can pick out. He's a much better writer than, say, James Patterson, who just mass-produces formulaic stories that usually end with the "twist" that the chracter we believe to be the villain isn't actually the villain at all (which just feels like a lazy way of justifying another story), like in THE BIG BAD WOLF.
And there is no need to swear. In the Fleming novels, Bond respected women - even when it didn't seem like it. For example, once he knew Gala Brand was engaged, he let her go. Likewise, here he refused to take advantage of Philly's fractured emotional state. And in doing so, he would have lost Jordaan's respect and support entirely. By not killing the Serbian, Bond demosntrated that Jordaan could trust him, and it was this trust that led to her and her unit supporting him in the confrontations against Hydt and Willing. Without that support, Bond probably would have been killed. The story makes it quite clear that Bond does not smoke or drink on assignments because they can compromise him - smoking can give away his position, and drinking alters his perception. I don't think you could be more wrong if you tried to be. Bond might be "sort of a chauvanist", but he doesn't go around sleeping with people and taking advantage of them simply because he can or because they're there. I can't help but think that your version of Bond is a rowdy drunkard who spends his evenings at a tavern calling out "More women! More ale!". You've fundamentally misunderstood the character.
I like it!