Bond is Back
Ian Fleming's last James Bond adventure - a collection of short stories including Octopussy and The Living Daylights - was published posthumously in 1967.

That wasn't the end of 007's adventures in print. Kingsley Amis wrote a well received sequel in 1967 - `Colonel Sun' - and in 1981, Glidrose Publications hired thriller-writer John Gardner to reinvent Bond for the modern era.

What followed were 14 increasingly dreary and unbelievable books which saw an aging Bond gamely struggle through a litany of dumb adventures (the highlight being the rescue of Margaret Thatcher from a hijacked aircraft carrier in 1989's Win, Lose or Die.)

American thriller author Raymond Bensen was hired in 1996 to continue Gardner's legacy and the resultant products were even worse - the popularity of the revived film-franchise meant that Bensen cheerfully threw Fleming's cast of characters out of the window and adopted the movie ones - like an `M' based on Judi Dench's character.

Things looked a little brighter when British comedian Charlie Higson got the go-ahead to write a series of `Young Bond' books in 2005 - based on Bond's adventures when he was a teenager at Eton (although Bond was actually expelled from Eton and attended Fettes for the majority of his school career.)

Higson's books were true to Ian Fleming's timeline, set in the thirties, and marvelous reads that appealed to adults as much as boys. The start of a great revival?

Apparently so. In 2007, celebrated British author Sebastian Faulks was chosen by the estate of Ian Fleming to write a new Bond adventure to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ian Fleming's birth. The result? Devil May Care.

Devil May Care goes right back to Bond's roots. It's set in 1967, following immediately on from James Bond's adventures in Jamaica battling against murderous hitman Scaramanga - The Man with the Golden Gun.

The familiar setting is reassuring. This Bond is one you can believe in - young, vibrant and capable. Sebastian Faulks recaptures the voice and feel of Fleming's writing. Succinct, yet detailed (Faulks, like Fleming himself, was a broadsheet journalist) while confident and experienced in his tastes and personality (whereas Bensen and Gardner's Bond felt arrogant and opinionated.)

The plot is pure 007. James Bond is balanced on the knife-edge of resigning from the service (a theme examined by Fleming in several books) but is lured back when M needs him to investigate pharmaceuticals giant Dr Julius Gorner - a typical `Bond baddie' with a deformity known as `main de singe' (which means he has a monkey's paw in place of his left hand.)

Bond's investigation takes him first to Paris, then to Persia and finally deep into the heart of Soviet Russia as he foils Gorner's typical `Bond baddie' plan to spark off World War Three.

It's a solid little adventure story, similar in feel to Fleming's earlier, `better' books like Moonraker and From Russia with Love. Intentionally or not, Faulks also includes some of Fleming's trademark lazy errors - such as some glaring inaccuracies in his description of Paris and some rather shaky plot devices designed to move the story forward (although Gorner `recruiting' Bond isn't nearly as silly as the titular bad guy coercing Bond to do his paperwork in Goldfinger.)

It took Sebastian Faulks six weeks to write Devil May Care and it took me three days to read it. All in all, I was very satisfied - a wonderful (and long awaited) return to form for the Bond literary franchise and a welcome addition to my bookshelf. Now the only question that remains; will Faulks be writing a sequel?


license suspended
The only excuse for writing another Bond book would be to do it brilliantly. This wasn't. It's a straight forward 'formula' piece of work with an eye to a film adaptation at some point in the future. The characters and situations cobbled together from Flemming's novels. It lacked any originality or excitement really. You could list the things you remember from the films - an 'Odd Job' character, a paranoid world domination egomaniac, a sports tournament where Bond stands to lose a lot of money, a suffocation sequence, something underwater, a factory somewhere with some weapon of mass destruction, a friendly middle eastern character who gets killed, taxis, dancing girls, etc etc - it's a list strung together and linked with a pretty thin sort of plot. I read all the Bond stuff when i was a teenager and i was thrilled. It was fresh and pacey at the time. This isn't. If it had been a straight attempt at a spy thriller without the 007 reference it would have sunk like a stone.


Slick
I thoroughly enjoyed Devil May Care and just did not want it to end. Having not read any other Bond Novel, I very much had the films in my mind and this definitely harks back to the Sixties feel of the Connery years and that's what makes it so slick - good old fashioned Secret Agent heroics in a simple non-PC world. Well done Sebastian Faulks



Welcome back, Mr. Bond!
Faulks is very comfortable with Fleming's idiom and catches his style nicely which is why it is labelled under Faulks writing as Ian Fleming. It is a hommage to Fleming with elements of lierary parody done with great respect. To be honest, I think Faulks is actually a better writer than Fleming. Faulks has fun with Bond and it works really well. Devil May Care is set in the period when the Bond films turned into self parody anf Faulks gives it a nice twists by showing Bond as a serious character out of time. That works really, really well.

Read the Fleming books instead, or an Eric Ambler
When, after years of watching the films, I finally tried out the Bond books, I thought "Wow, Ian Fleming is actually a really good writer." Several others have since said the same to me. The Fleming books have an inventive originality, plots that grip the reader, and a psychological insight or edge.

Having read Faulks's "Birdsong", I had high expectations of "Devil May Care". DMC is an easy read and OK to pass the time, but a disappointment. Anyone new to the Bond books should give this a miss and start instead with a Fleming original -- Casino Royale (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) is a good place to start.

"Devil May Care" stitches together bits of plot, character, scenario and narrative devices from the Fleming books.
* Sports match with villain (Goldfinger)
* Tour round exotic city by local secret service station chief (From Russia with Love)
* More from "From Russia with Love", but I won't say what because it's a spolier
* Borrows heavily from "Moonraker", again I won't say what

But if you had a dozen dead donkeys and stitched together a leg from one, the ears from another, the spine from a third and so on, then with diligent stitching you could get something which looked like a donkey and smelt like a donkey. But it wouldn't breathe, it wouldn't stand up and frolic and canter.

And that's the problem with this book. It doesn't have the inventiveness, the psychological edge, the spark of life found in Fleming books. Read one of those instead.

If you've already read the Bond books, then borrow this one from a friend, or buy it second hand (don't bother rushing). Better still, read something by Eric Ambler, for example A Coffin for Dimitrios (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) or, harder to find, Journey into Fear (Pan Classic Crime).

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