Devil May Care (The New James Bond Novel )
by Sebastian Faulks
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Book Reviews of Devil May Care (The New James Bond Novel )
Book Review: A good attempt at a literary relaunch for 007.
Summary: 3 Stars
There is good and bad in the new Bond novel. It is great to see 007 back in print and back in his own era. The 1967 setting harkens back to the best of Bond, both in print and on screen. Fleming's novels of the 50's and 60's have never been surpassed by any of the continuation authors and the film series varies in quality after Thunderball, the fourth and final movie to adapt Fleming's work faithfully.
So what's good about Sebastian Faulk's novel? The story picks up after the events of "The Man with the Golden Gun", which gives a sense of continuity which is present in the best of Fleming's books. We see that Bond is still recovering from the beatings he received in the last two novels, where he was humiliated by being brainwashed by the Soviets and was almost responsible for the assassination of M.
The books final confrontation aboard an airliner is also handled extremely well by Faulks. He created the same sense of dread in the face of overwhelming odds that I felt reading Dr. No, Moonraker and Live and Let Die. Bond's foray through the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the show down with the bad guys is a fun read too; with Bond trying to remain undercover in hostile enemy territory.
As for the bad of the book?
Setting much of the story in Pre-revolutionary Iran may not have been such a great idea. The activities of the US and UK in that country during the reign of the Shah were villainous, no two ways about it. The UK was looting Iran's oil and the Shah, as their puppet, brutally kept the locals in check while they did so. Compared to this, it is hard to take fictional villain Dr. Gorner seriously. This also means that Bond is aiding his government in doing some very dirty and underhanded work, a common theme in some of the Fleming books, but never so overt.
I also found this book to be a little too long. I think the page count could have been kept under 200, rather than 300 pages. The story just doesn't warrant the length and the book sags in the middle as a result. Julius Gorner isn't much of a villain; he is a little flat and uninteresting, although Faulks gives him a good reason for being who he is.
Faulks also slips a few times; I found some of the references to Goldfinger and other Bond adventures unnecessary and distracting, since they were only dropped to tie in better with the Fleming books, and served no purpose story wise, but that's a small gripe.
If Mr. Faulks or another author of quality choose to continue with this new series I would certainly be interested, but I hope that we can see something with a little more punch. Perhaps we can see Mr. Sebastian Faulks writing as Sebastian Faulks next time.
Book Review: Not Quite Fleming But Fun Nevertheless
Summary: 4 Stars
Writing a pastiche of a well known and highly stylized author is a tricky business. Just take a look at all those Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes pastiches. You could probably pave a way from here to Mars with the pages of all those who've attempted it but only a very precious few have ever really come close to duplicating Doyle's style. While both Doyle's and Fleming's stories outwardly appear simple and easy to recreate you have only to look at the efforts of other authors (some of whom are actually quite good writers) to see that such is not always the case.
Sebastian Faulks is a well known literary writer and his attempt at a Fleming pastiche (while well written) seems to fall a bit short compared to the Fleming originals. The problem here seems to be that Faulks did his homework very well but just a bit too well. The book feels as though he went through Fleming's original books and created a checklist of all the ingredients that make up a Bond novel but somehow didn't quite mesh them all together to make a satisfying brew that could live up to any of Fleming's best efforts. Another big draw back for me was the villain of the piece, Dr. Julius Gorner. I often think that a story of this kind is only as good as the villain that our hero has to go up against and in this case the bad guy just left a lot to be desired. Sure, he has the trademark deformity (a withered hand that resembles a monkey's) and he does some very cruel and dastardly things but he just comes across as too cliched and, well, just a bit bland. His motivations are obscure and he just doesn't have the same menacing presence of any of the great Bondian villains of the past. Make no mistake, Dr. Julius Gorner is no Dr. No, Blofeld, Rosa Klebb or a Goldfinger (also Gorner's henchman Chagrin is just a bit too reminiscent of Oddjob for my liking).
OK, so why the four star rating? Well despite my complaints there is no doubt that Faulks' writing is very good compared to a lot of other thriller writers plus he has crafted a very fun read, especially during the last half of the book. This may not be the kind of Bond novel that Fleming would have written but it is a lot better than many others who have tried their hand at a Fleming/Bond pastiche.
Bottom line: for a book that is supposed to be a tribute to Ian Fleming this book falls short on its promise to recapture the original works of the master. On the other hand it still manages to be fun and its retro style and well written prose is actually a breath of fresh air when compared to many other thriller books on the market today.
Book Review: Good Fun, But Not As Fleming-esque as Some Say
Summary: 3 Stars
After much hype and anticipation over the release of Devil May Care by the great author Sebastian Faulks, we've really received nothing that warrants any more praise than the best of John Gardner or Raymond Benson. Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun and John Pearson's "biography" are still the best continuation novels in my opinion. DMC isn't even on level with Fleming's original novels, not even the worst ones. I get the impression Faulks may have under-estimated what it took to write a true-to-Fleming book, but I don't entirely blame him. For one thing, Ian Fleming Publications must have been aware that this book would attract a whole new audience, and Faulks was probably under a bit of pressure to include the weary, old Bondisms and pastiche-type over-references to the Fleming stories that would appeal to those who know little of Bond outside the films. If anything, perhaps IFP was hoping to use these references as self-marketing tools that would draw new readers into exploring Bond's past as outlined in Fleming's books. In my opinion, being a Fleming connoiseur, I found these things somewhat tiresome and irritating, if only slightly so. After all, Fleming rarely, and often very obliquely, referenced Bond's past missions.
There are a lot of plus-sides to DMC, however. It is a fun, entertaining read that means well. I whipped it off in just a day or so, as the pacing is quite speedy, and some of the action scenes are quite stimulating. When Faulks does strike the right chords he does so very well, notably in the scenes set in Tehran, which evoke the same descriptive, travelouge skills Fleming was so adept at using. The swim into the hangar was quite suspenseful, and felt like the best of Fleming.
There are some notable plot holes, however, or at least places where the plot trips itself up and goes in the wrong direction. Most notably, Faulks introduces a interesting aircraft, but does little with it, and destroys it rather suddenly and without giving it the purpose it deserves - and seemed to have been set up for - in the book.
The villain is not overly memorable, though I enjoyed his death.
The girl, too, is rather bland, and I saw the twist surrounding her coming from the first few chapters.
Bond is pretty recognisable as the same Bond of old, but he does little that's unique or interesting.
Overall, the book is a decent addition to the continuation novels, but offers little that makes it special as the centennary tribute to Ian Fleming.
Book Review: At Long Last, the Real James Bond is Back
Summary: 5 Stars
If Ian Fleming were alive today, he'd've just turned 100 and I like to think he'd be pretty bloody pleased with the Bond franchise he'd spawned. As a lover of everything Bond from Fleming, though Gardner and Connery through Craig (okay, I was a little disappointed in George Lazerby), I like to think I'm qualified to muse a bit about the latest of the Bond writers. First off I have to say:
Well done, Mr. Faulks.
Fleming wasn't always politically correct, of course he died before it was fashionable, and Faulks follows in the non PC tradition. I loved Fleming's Bond, read him when I was in high school, saw Goldfinger the day after it opened at Gruman's Chinese Theater.
I mourned Ian Fleming's passing and thought I'd seen the last of James Bond, then in 1968 came Colonial Sun, written by Robert Markham (which belongs back in print), who was really the excellent writer Kingsley Amis, who joined Ian Fleming in 1995. That was a great book.
Then in the Eighties came the Gardner books. Lord I loved his Bond, loved those books, all fourteen of 'em, but I especially liked his first one, License Renewed. But good things don't last forever and in the late Nineties John Gardner's health forced him to quit doing Bond and sadly last year Mr. Gardner went away and joined Messers Fleming and Kingsley.
However, right on the heels of the last Gardner book came the Benson Bond and I liked all six of those as well, read his shorter Bond stories, liked them too. But through it all, Gardner's Bond was not Fleming's Bond, nor was Amis' or Benson's. They'd changed him, some for the better, some for worse. They'd humanized him, grew him up, gave him good stories, great adventurers.
But now I feel as if I'm young again, not yet twenty, standing in line with the man I was going to marry at Grauman's, waiting to see Goldfinger. God we loved Bond back then. There was a man.
He's back.
Thank you, Mr. Faulks.
Reviewed by Vesta Irene
Book Review: Faulks' Bond Debut Worth the Look
Summary: 3 Stars
Faulks picks up the mantle of the master Ian Fleming in the late 1960's with Bond recalled from sabbatical to snuff out the drug-peddling efforts of an Anglophobe operating out of Iran. There is a lot of 20/20 hindsight at work here - the rise of drugs as the great menace of the western world in the late 20th century, the mounting political and military failure of the US in Vietnam, the Cold War as a black ops gun and drug bazaar - and Bond himself takes on a sort of a 21st-century man quality that Fleming's agent never seemed to possess.
Faulks retains much of the cocksure bravado and acquisitive elegance of the Bond more familiar to movie viewers than Fleming readers; but, for my money, this is the most introspective and sensitive Bond we've seen perhaps since Fleming debuted the character in "Casino Royale."
"Devil May Care" is populated by the usual menagerie of villains: including a Laotian child-torturing sidekick with no sense of pain thanks to experimental Soviet brain surgery; and - with no apparent sense of the irony - a drug running Eastern European billionaire with a unique birth defect as his physical and egotistical weakness (ah, if only those same Soviet surgeons that performed the free brain perforation could have devised some way to alleviate a billionaire's cursed monkey hand).
The "Bond girl" is Scarlett, a young beauty shrouded in mystery and with a new "secret" seemingly revealed every chapter. The relationship with Bond was as expected; but, my real criticism of Faulks would be in the Scarlett story. None of the big reveals really pay off and most of them are carried out ham-handedly with unsurprising - if not obvious - conclusions.
Still, for summer reading with a familiar friend, I think Devil May Care is worth a look. It takes the frequent espionage reader into an unfamiliar place with a center of gravity outside of "Langley," and a setting in a time before every story can hinge on some critical technological advantage. In that sense it is more like a Le Carre or Higgins than the stuff you find in heavy rotation these days at the grocery checkout, in Walmart and in the airport bookstores.
JAW