James Bond book guide for 007 movie fans

62 original stories of the British secret agent in 70 years
Comparisons to the movies and creator Ian Fleming’s Bond

By Scott Hettrick August 2021 (updated May 2022 & February-March  2023)
first published April 2023
companion to my James Bond 007 Movies Guide

• Comparison of every Fleming novel/short story to movies
  (Bond behavior, actions, characters, scenes, locations, incidents, vehicles)
• Differences in Fleming vs cinema Bond personality, womanizing, gadgets, cars
• Summary of 30 post-Fleming Bond novels/short stories
  Presented in chronological order of year they take place (not when published)
• Notable distinctive writing and clever turns of phrase
• Notes of returning and new characters, vehicles, and weapons
• Plus personal photos of every book, short story

Sections (click on section heading below for direct link)
 Fleming’s Bond
 Book-by-Book vs Movie Adaptation
 Reviving, Re-inventing Bond Across 80 Years; 1930s-2011
 After Fleming: Bond in 1950s-1960s
 Modern Bond: 1980s-1990s
 Bond at Turn of Century and Beyond
 Teen Bond 1933-35

Introduction
Ian Fleming wrote 12 novels about James Bond in the 1950s and 1960s – nine of which were published prior to the first Bond movie – and including one that was completed and published posthumously, as well as nine short stories for various outlets, which were later compiled and published in separate books. 

Since Fleming’s death in 1964, Ian Fleming Publications (initially called Glidrose Productions) has authorized the publication of 27 more full original novels and four short stories focused on James Bond as agent 007 by eight different authors (not including six novelizations of Bond movies). These so-called “continuation” novels were written by several famous and independently successful authors, among others.
IFP also commissioned nine Young Bond novels and a short story (2005-2017) from two authors about Bond from 1933-35 as the orphaned teenager described by Fleming at English prep school Eton College and Fettes College in Scotland.

 

This is a guide aimed at fans of the 007 movies to all 62 officially authorized James Bond original novels and short stories over 70 years, which begins with an overall summary of my personal observations of the most interesting differences between the Bond character of the Fleming novels and short stories overall compared to the movies with those same titles, followed by a book-by-book listing of many, but not all, specific and notable differences in the characters, stories and elements in each of Fleming’s stories. Thereafter, you will find a plot synopsis and similarities, differences, carry-overs, and changes to the Bond universe in the books written by the other authors, a few obvious and some subtle connections between the continuation novels and Eon movies released before and after, as well as a listing of each new and returning character, vehicle, weapon, gadget, and examples of notable bits of writing.
In brief, if you are just getting started or have read only a couple of the books over the many years, here are recommendations for which ones to read without committing to the whole series:

• Four of my favorites by Fleming: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Moonraker (almost nothing like the movie), Diamonds Are Forever, and Goldfinger.

• Four favorites by other authors (I find that the first story by each author is generally the strongest): Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowtiz (by far the best; even better than some of Fleming’s), Licence Renewed by John Gardner (introduces first modern-era Bond – at least “modern” as of the 1980s), Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver (the only Bond in the 2010s), Blast from the Past by Raymond Benson (28-page short story first published in Playboy January 1997, later included with collection of three Benson 007 novels called The Union Trilogy).

• Young Bond series favorite: SilverFin by Charlie Higson – also his first.

While detailed and extensive, this guide, based on notes taken during the reading of all 62 stories multiple times, is not a complete academic analysis and does not incorporate any published observations or analysis by others. These are the observations of a fan of the first twelve Bond movies who only then started regularly reading Bond novels, first Fleming, and then every new continuation novel as it was released…

FLEMING’s BOND

Anyone who hasn’t read Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels might be surprised and even shocked to learn of many significant differences in the characteristics and personality of the famous British spy compared with the cinematic version of agent 007 in 27 Bond movies (25 from the primary Eon production entity), especially in the first six novels and the first five short stories, all written and published before the first Bond movie was released in 1962.
In addition to two books in which Bond doesn’t even show up until the last half and last third of the stories – one of which has Bond as only a supporting character in what is essentially a romance novel — Fleming’s Bond seldom uses gadgets or drives cool fast cars, is nearly humorless (no one-liners or sexual innuendo), he’s seldom a womanizer, repeatedly falls in love and wants to get married, is not always macho, gets queasy easily, is not a cold-blooded assassin (he cringes and resists killing), makes numerous careless mistakes, repeatedly relies on strong women to come to his rescue, and gets a woman pregnant out of wedlock who bears his child (examples of all below).
Bond, as well as Fleming’s writing, also reflect the prevalent attitudes of the primary era of the 1950s and early 60s settings of these books, which includes what society now calls out as sexist and chauvinistic, using racist terminology, and carrying a negatively judgmental perception of those with sexual preferences other than heterosexual (examples below). Ian Fleming Publications released 70th anniversary editions of the Fleming novels in April 2023 that are edited to replace words deemed to be insensitive or inappropriate, and to be consistent with the first publication in the U.S. of Fleming’s second novel, Live and Let Die, which was edited to replace some racial wording (examples below).
Nonetheless, Fleming’s Bond is admirably human, ruggedly attractive and sophisticated, and his charming character and adventures are very compelling as he relies on his wits, skills, and experience to successfully complete each exciting mission, thanks to Fleming’s stories, characters, and writing style.

Fleming notable turns of phrase

• • Live and Let Die: Bond’s nostrils flared slightly. He longed to get in there after him. He felt strong and compact and confident. The evening awaited him, to be open and read, page by page, word by word.
    In front of his eyes, the rain came down in swift, slanting strokes – italic script across the unopened black cover that hid the secrets that lay ahead.
  • Goldfinger: (when Bond goes to GF’s house for dinner after beating him at golf): The silence, helped by the slow iron tick of a massively decorated grandfather clock, gathered and crept nearer.
    (while laying spread-eagle on Goldfinger factory saw-table) Bond pulled the curtains tight across the ghastly peep-show of his imagination and listened.
  • The Spy Who Loved Me: (when woman in motel being held captive by two hitmen is apprehensive about going to sleep for fear of what they might do to her): As sleep held out her hands to me again, something nagged at my mind.
  • On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The empty corridor yawned at him.
  • You Only Live Twice: (when Bond is scoping out the grounds of Shatterhand/Blofeld castle at night, watching people committing suicide): So Bond stood, while the trees threw long black arms across the scene, and waited, with a cold, closed, stone face, for death to walk on stage.
• The Man with the Golden Gun: (when Bond is sitting across from M at his desk and about to try to assassinate M): “For instance,” said M. quietly, knowing that death had walked into the room and was standing beside him, and that this was an invitation for death to take his place in the chair.

For the more ardent James Bond fan…

Examples of Bond’s novel characteristics per Fleming

• Fleming’s Bond is far more emotional and seldom a womanizer – he fell in love and frequently thought of marrying the primary female character in most of the novels *** SPOILER ALERT*** (skip to next bullet point to avoid spoilers), starting with Casino Royale – within a day or two with Vesper Lynd at their separate beach cabins he was ready to ask her to marry him. In the second novel, Live and Let Die, he falls for Solitaire and has no moment with any other woman. In the third novel, Moonraker, although there is a mention of Bond’s evenings being spent making love with one of three different married women, Bond is in love almost instantly upon meeting Gala Brand. This continues through the series, including 11th Bond book (10th novel) OHMSS when Bond was “fed up with untidy casual affairs that left him with a bad conscience” and “wouldn’t mind having children” so he asks Tracy to marry him on an impulse, and again in YOLT where nine-months after Tracy gets killed he’s ready to settle down and live with Kissy in Japan (even before he gets amnesia and gets Kissy pregnant). At one point he even forgets how and loses the inclination to have sex.
• Fleming’s Bond is far more fallible – he kept making mistakes in judgments that would get himself and people around him in danger and even killed *** SPOILER ALERT*** (skip to next bullet point to avoid spoilers) – he let Rosa Klebb stab him with poison on her shoe blade that nearly killed him in From Russia With Love; he screwed up twice in a short time in The Spy Who Loved Me, which could have cost he and Vivienne Michel their lives both times — had two men at gunpoint and holding TVs in their arms but still not quick enough when one drops TV and grabs girl Viv, and wrongly assumed the two men drowned when their car went in the lake when in fact it didn’t fully submerge and one got out.
• Fleming’s Bond relied on very strong women to help him get out of many situations (Fleming was quite advanced creating such strong female characters 70 years ago) *** SPOILER ALERT*** (skip to next bullet point to avoid spoilers) – for instance it was Honeychile Rider who came up with idea of breathing underwater through the reeds in the water, not Bond’s idea as changed for movie version of Dr. No; and Kissy rescues him from ocean in You Only Live Twice.
• Fleming’s Bond was not such a cold-blooded assassin – he doesn’t experience his first murder in cold blood until the fifth novel From Russia With Love (even though there is this background about himself in Casino Royale: “I’ve got the corpses of a Japanese cipher expert in New York and a Norwegian double-agent in Stockholm to thank for being a Double O.”) *** SPOILER ALERT*** (skip to next bullet point to avoid spoilers) and he’s a little uncomfortable when Kerim Bey uses Bond’s shoulder as gun brace to murder his enemy crawling out a building window (“Bond had never killed in cold blood, and he hadn’t liked watching, and helping, someone else do it.”); In The Living Daylights short story Bond dreads having to commit murder and is glad he didn’t have to kill anyone; in The Spy Who Loved Me he can’t bring himself to shoot two men in cold blood, which results in them grabbing Viv and getting away, after which he tells Viv why he didn’t kill them, “Never been able to in cold blood”; in The Man with the Golden Gun he twice avoids killing Scaramanga when he could easily have done so and instead creates a situation where he is forced to kill him in self-defense.
• Fleming’s Bond is not very macho – he covers his head while riding on an airplane when there’s a lightning storm (From Russia with Love); he vomits after killing a centipede with his shoe (Dr. No); he gets stomach cramps in You Only Live Twice after being in too much sun and diving for two days; was “sick as a cat” in The Man with a Golden Gun.
• Fleming’s Bond has few gadgets, cool cars or even the Walther PPK in first half-dozen novels. In fact, not only did he use a “ladies gun” Baretta in the first five novels, but even when they took that away from him at beginning of Dr. No, they gave him two guns to replace it, including the Walther PPK, but he chose the Smith & Wesson instead.
• Fleming’s Bond doesn’t become cinematic Bond until seventh novel Goldfinger when he is suddenly very self-confident, full of bravado and seeming swagger, even cocky, brash and bold risk-taker

 

BOOK-BY-BOOK VS MOVIE ADAPTATION

Fleming book-by-book comparative notes vs movie version:

Casino Royale (1953, first novel; my Fleming rank: middle group)
— Plot summary similarities: The main characters, basic story and the primary notable and memorable elements of Fleming’s inaugural Bond novel were retained in the 2006 Eon production more than half-a-century later (leaving aside the 1954 live TV dramatization and the 1967 spoof movie of the same name). Villain Le Chiffre screws up with illicit money entrusted to him by powerful organizations when he loses much of it on a risky investment. When it is learned that Le Chiffre plans to try to win the money back in a casino game before his terrorist creditors find out, which would then be used to fund organizations that threaten global peace, M sends Bond to win the game himself, while the CIA sends Felix Leiter to do the same, and Frenchman René Mathis is there too. M also assigns Vesper Lynd to assist and monitor Bond, and of course the two immediately have a sexual attraction and soon develop deep feelings for each other. At the casino, Bond loses all his money on a failed bet, but Leiter gives Bond the CIA money to keep playing until Bond eventually beats Le Chiffre, putting Le Chiffre’s life in danger with his creditors. Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper, luring Bond into a trap after a high-speed car chase and captures Bond. Demanding he turn over the money, Le Chiffre sadistically tortures Bond by having him sit on an open-bottomed chair as he whips Bond’s genitals hanging underneath the seat. Bond is saved when a man representing Le Chiffre’s creditors shows up and kills Le Chiffre during his torturing and takes the money. Making matters worse, Bond learns that Vesper was forced into being a double-agent under threat of her secret boyfriend’s life, and helped Le Chiffre trap Bond, and is remorseful as she dies, leaving Bond quite bitter about women.

• Novel notes:
  — Le Chiffre is dealing with the Soviet Union’s SMERSH, for whom Vesper is secretly an agent. It’s a SMERSH agent who kills Le Chiffre during torture (it’s Mr. White in the movie).
  — Casino game baccarat vs Texas Hold-em poker in movie.
  — Vesper Lynd: Bond only has minor sexual attraction to her before his torture scene, and only a little interaction with her in first days of his rehab, but within first day or two with her at their separate beach cabins he was ready to ask her to marry him. And then after days of awkwardness between them with her making mysterious phone calls and being alternately cold and passionate with him, he was still ready to ask her to marry him. And yet he never officially asked her.
  — Bond is already contemplating retirement even before his infatuation with Vesper and never officially tries to resign (he resigns from MI6 in the movie).
  — Vesper’s dies by suicide (in movie, she drowns in building that Bond causes to collapse and does not let him save her)
  — Bond refers to how he got his 00-status: “It’s nothing to be proud of. I’ve got the corpses of a Japanese cipher expert in New York and a Norwegian double-agent in Stockholm to thank for being a Double O. Probably quite decent people.” (Bond’s two pre-00-status assassinations are depicted in black-and-white at beginning of movie.)
  — Mathis: never anything suspicious about Mathis in novel (Bond has Mathis arrested in movie – wrongly suspects him of tipping off Le Chiffre during casino game)
  — Bond’s cold summary when calling his office to report: “The bitch is dead now” is the final line of the book (the abbreviated “The bitch is dead” is the penultimate scene in movie before the final scene ending with “The name’s Bond, James Bond.”)

Live and Let Die (1954, second novel, my Fleming rank: middle group):
— Plot summary: There are almost as many elements from this novel used in later Bond movies as the book using this title (and mostly all-new components created for the film) but several key characters and plot elements were retained from this book of the same name. Bond is sent to New York to investigate SMERSH agent Buonaparte Ignace Gallia, aka Mr. Big, an underworld voodoo leader suspected of selling 17th century gold coins to finance Soviet Union spy operations in America. The coins, believed to be part of a pirate treasure, are turning up in Harlem and Florida. While visiting Harlem nightclubs, Bond and CIA ally Felix Leiter are captured and interrogated by Mr. Big with his fortune teller Solitaire. Solitaire lies to support Bond’s cover story, Mr. Big releases Bond and Leiter, and Bond kills Mr. Big henchman Tee-Hee Johnson. Solitaire leaves Mr. Big to travel to Florida with Bond. Solitaire gets kidnapped and Leiter is captured while investigating a suspicious warehouse and fed to sharks. Bond finds Leiter missing an arm and a leg with a note pinned to him reading, “He disagreed with something that ate him.”
After Bond learns the warehouse is used for smuggling the gold coins, he heads to Jamaica and meets the head of the local MI6 station, John Strangways, and a local fisherman called Quarrel who trains Bond in SCUBA diving. Bond plants a mine on the hull of Mr. Big’s yacht and takes refuge in a cave, where he is captured again and reunited with Solitaire. Mr. Big ties the couple together, attaches them to a boat line, and pulls them through the water behind the yacht. Just before they reach a shallow coral reef and shark-infested waters, they are saved when the mine Bond attached to the yacht explodes.
Mr. Big is eaten by sharks and barracuda, and Quarrel rescues Bond and Solitaire.

The movie begins with Bond being sent to New York to investigate the mysterious assassinations on the same day of three agents who had been investigating island dictator Dr. Kananga. When Bond’s driver is assassinated, he follows the assassin to the lair of local thug Mr. Big and his beautiful virgin fortune teller Solitaire. Bond chases Mr. Big to the small island nation run by Dr. Kananga. With the help of Solitaire, they head to New Orleans where they are captured and learn that Kananga and Mr. Big are the same person, who plans to provide free heroine at his soul food restaurants to create addicts he can control. Bond escapes and as Kananga prepares to have Solitaire sacrificed in a ghoulish voodoo ritual, he saves her and kills Kananga. On a train ride with Solitaire, the two survive a final attack by Kananga’s huge one-armed henchman Tee Hee Johnson.

• Novel notes
  — Example of book reflecting 1950s era in which it was written: Chapter V titled Nigger Heaven, several additional uses of that word in the narrative, as well as the word negro, ie “…at the bus stop…three negroes stood quietly…” (it should be noted for context that there were also many references to Caucasians as whites, ie, “There were two or three whites…” and Mr. Big saying “Two white men coming in in five minutes.” – white was not capitalized in U.S. edition), and extensive use of dialect such as, “…wha’ goes ‘tween yuh ‘n dat lowdown ornery wuthless Nigguh?” (note: Nigguh is capitalized but negro is not).
  Significant changes were made to these elements with Fleming’s approval even for its first releases in the U.S beginning in 1955, starting with the renaming of Chapter V to Seventh Avenue. Other changes at this time (confirmations thanks to Brad Frank’s extensive collection of Fleming books and Jon Gilbert’s Ian Fleming: The Bibliography):
  +++ three entire pages of that chapter V (20 paragraphs, more than 800 words) completely removed from a scene with Bond and Leiter at the Harlem club of Sugar Ray’s where a man and a woman are arguing, during which Leiter says: How do you like this corner of the jungle?… Just listen to the corner behind you. From what I’ve heard, they’re straight out of “Nigger heaven.”  This removed scene also includes extensive dialect as noted above, though all the same dialect throughout the rest of the book remained.
  +++ each reference to negro and negroid being capitalized to Negro (white, in reference to Caucasian, was not capitalized for U.S. edition)
  Other samples of small revisions to the first and early U.S. editions simply for later preferred wording, punctuation, and adapting British expressions, ie:
  +++ altering Leiter’s reference to the real-life professional boxer Sugar Ray from original: “He was a wise guy, Sugar Ray.”
  >>>> revised: “He was a smart boy, Sugar Ray.”
  +++ changing original: “Better move along.”
  >>>> revised: “Better move along, though.”
  +++ original: “We’ll miss out Small’s Paradise.”
  >>>> revised: “I want you to see Small’s Paradise.”
  +++ original: They came out of the subway into the booking-hall.
  >>>> revised: They came out of the underpass into the station.
  +++ original: That big radio-gram you had sent round…
  >>>> revised: That big console you had sent round…
  +++ Describing the prattle of old people milling about St. Petersburg, Florida, the term hawk-an-spitting was replaced with giggling (yet the British spelling of words like colour, harbour, defence, and centre was not changed).
  +++ Punctuation alterations included, for example:
  >>>> quote marks inexplicably removed twice from a club called “Yeah Man”
  >>>> a period was replaced with a comma.
  >>>> a hyphen removed from day-break.
  .
  — Bond falls for Solitaire and has no moment with any other woman.
  — Solitaire makes important decisions to help Bond.
  — Mr. Big does not have a false identity of Dr. Kananga as in movie.
  — John Strangways (absent from this movie) resurfaces in a more notable way in Fleming’s Doctor No novel as well as the movie Dr. No.
  — Keelhauling scene used in movie For Your Eyes Only eight years after Live and Let Die movie
  — Note pinned to chest of Felix Leiter after losing arm and leg to intentional shark attack, “He disagreed with something that ate him” used in Licence to Kill movie 16 years after Live and Let Die movie

Moonraker: (1955, third novel; my Fleming rank: second best):
— Plot summary: An undercover Nazi called Hugo Drax (same name as movie) is bent on avenging the defeat of Hitler and his own childhood mistreatment at an English boarding school by destroying London with Britain’s own first nuclear missile project while personally profiting from a strategically timed stock market transaction. German-born wealthy businessman Drax has become a national British hero by funding a nuclear missile project, ostensibly to defend the UK against its Cold War enemies.
When M suspects the esteemed Sir Hugo Drax of cheating at cards, he brings Bond along as his bridge partner to confirm his suspicions and embarrass Drax at the exclusive private club. Shortly thereafter when an RAF security man at Drax’s rocket-building plant is murdered just a few days before a scheduled test flight, M sends Bond to investigate. Attempts are made to kill Bond and attractive undercover British policewoman Gala Brand, who are then taken prisoner and tied up underneath the rocket to be incinerated at launch. Bond manages to light a blowtorch, freeing Gala, who cuts Bond loose in time for them to re-set the flight path so that the missile lands in the North Sea on top of the submarine carrying Drax to Russia.

In the movie, Drax is devising to create a Hitler-esque Master Race, but in outer space, starting with the hijacking of an American space shuttle. Bond’s investigation takes him to Venice, where he finds Drax’s secret nerve gas laboratory that is then moved to Rio de Janeiro. Bond, along with Drax scientist Holly Goodhead, join forces and follow Drax to his lair in the Amazon and stowaway on one of his space shuttles, where they overcome the return of behemoth metal-toothed henchman Jaws and overtake the shuttle.

• Novel notes
  — This story was written just ten years after World War II and pre-dates the launch of the first space shuttle by 26 years, and even pre-dates the first Soviet rocket Sputnik launched into orbit by two years, the formation of NASA by three years, and the first manned space flight by seven years. So, there is nothing about space shuttles or manned space missions at all in the novel, but the space shuttles provided to the U.S. government in the movie by a wealthy businessman essentially replace the missiles of the novel.
  — Several elements of the novel vaguely referenced in the Die Another Day movie 47 years later in 2002:
  ** the villain is a high-profile philanthropist in England beloved by the government
  ** Bond meets and competes with the villain at the Blades club (card game of Bridge in novel with Hugo Drax, a swordfight in DAD with Gustav Graves)
  ** and female MI6 agent Gala Brand is working undercover as the villain’s assistant (it’s the opposite in DAD – villain henchwoman Miranda Frost has worked undercover as MI6 agent for three years in cryptology).
  — describes most of Bond’s work each year being at a desk all day reading files and making reports, and that his evenings are spent playing cards and making love with one of three different married women (first and one of few references to Bond being a serial womanizer).
  — Bond intended to have spent all his money by time he was killed, which “he knew he would be before the statutory age of 45. Eight years to go before he was automatically taken off the 00 list…” (So, that means he was 37.)
  — three 00-agents: mentions several times that Bond is one of only three 00’s.
  — Bond spends quite a bit of time with Gala Brand in Moonraker and was in love almost instantly and didn’t find out till end of book that she was engaged to be married very soon.
  — Gala Brand helps Bond get out of several jams.
  — Once again Bond falls head over heels with first and only woman he has any real interaction with, as in previous two novels.

Diamonds Are Forever (1956, fourth novel: my Fleming rank: third best):
— Plot summary: Much of the story and most of the characters in this novel will be familiar to fans of the movie even though this novel takes place just two months after the Moonraker mission (as opposed to eight years and four cinematic outings in advance of Moonraker in the movie sequential order). M instructs Bond to infiltrate a smuggling ring from African mines through a dentist who pays miners to smuggle diamonds in their mouth which the dentist extracts and hands off to be flown by helicopter to be collected by a pair of effeminate henchman called Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, who are working for an American gang called The Spangled Mob (instead of Blofeld and SPECTRE as in the movie).
Under the name of petty crook and diamond smuggler Peter Franks, Bond meets with the American contact in New York, the alluring Tiffany Case.
Bond as Franks is instructed to bet on a rigged horse race at Saratoga Springs (not in movie) and meets up with Felix Leiter who is also investigating the same people. After Leiter bribes the jockey to foil the Mob’s plot, Bond witnesses the jockey get brutally attacked by Wint and Kidd. Bond/Franks is then instructed by a man called Shady Tree to gamble at a casino in Las Vegas, where he wins so big that he is captured by the Mob, tortured, and taken on a historic private train to a ghost town named Spectreville. Bond escapes with the help of Tiffany, and they flee back to New York where they board The Queen Mary luxury ship to London. During the cruise, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd capture Tiffany but Bond overpowers and kills them. He then goes to Africa to cut off the diamond smuggling at the mines.

In the movie, Bond starts out seeking Blofeld to avenge the murder of his wife from the previous movie On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Believing he has killed Blofeld, Bond begins his diamond smuggling investigation assignment, traveling from Amsterdam to Vegas with a diamond shipment ostensibly intended for reclusive multi-millionaire Willard Whyte. It turns out Whyte has been kidnapped and held hostage by Blofeld, who is very much alive and impersonating Whyte while amassing diamonds to create a weaponized space satellite. Bond eventually infiltrates and destroys Blofeld’s control center on an oil derrick in the ocean.

• Novel notes
  — Large parts of novel used in movie:
  +++ First third of novel remarkably similar to movie, including many same characters (not just names), from Franks and Tiffany to Shady Tree and Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd (and Fleming even had the latter two as homosexuals, Mr. Wint the more sadistic of the two), and story closely aligned from the beginning set-up with Tiffany.
  +++ Helicopter exploding after take-off from picking up stolen diamonds at end in novel is near beginning of movie (better way for main villain to die at end in novel).
  +++ Scene in novel with scorpion which is referenced a couple times.
  +++ Tiffany Case very much the way Jill St. John played her in movie – hard and smart-ass.
  +++ After long part in novel that takes place in upstate New York at Saratoga horse racetrack and facility which is not in movie, novel goes similarly back to Las Vegas and even has Bond fly there from New York via L.A., as in movie.
  +++ Bond and Tiffany on cruise at end with Kidd/Wint in closing scene. But in novel, Bond uses bed sheets to lower himself down the side of ship from his portal to berth of Kidd/Wint.
  — Second part of novel veers away from movie:
  +++ Much of the setting shifts to upstate New York at Saratoga horse racetrack.
  +++ Instead of Blofeld and SPECTRE as in movie (neither introduced in Fleming novels yet), there is Jack Spang and Spang Brothers’ Spangled mob and ABC org.
  — Once again Bond not a womanizer at all in first four novels – just falls head over heels with first and only woman he has any real interaction with, even if briefly – this time Tiffany Case.
  — Vague reference, presumably to Vesper, when he chooses not to let a record play a song – La Vie En Rose – because “it has memories for him.”
  — Old West ghost town outside Vegas called Spectreville – not related to S.P.E.C.T.R.E. since that organization would not be introduced until five years later in Fleming’s Thunderball novel.
  — Felix Leiter returns, not only with prosthetic arm/hook hand and leg but is also no longer with CIA, which would only let him work a desk job, but he is now working for Pinkertons private security service (returns in Goldfinger reference).

From Russia With Love (1957, fifth novel: my Fleming rank: middle group):
— Plot summary: Many elements and most of the characters of this novel carried over to the movie. Soviet spy agency SMERSH, trying to redeem itself after a series of embarrassing failures, plans to commit a grand act of terrorism in the intelligence field by luring an agent into a trap for assassination that would embarrass and cause a scandal for Western spy agencies and make Russia look more powerful. Bond is chosen as a target since he thwarted Le Chiffre in Casino Royale and Mr. Big in Live and Let Die. British Army deserter and psychopath Irish SMERSH executioner Donovan “Red” Grant is thoroughly trained for the mission, and pretty young cipher clerk Tatiana Romanova is ordered by Colonel Rosa Klebb to pretend to defect from her post in Istanbul with a stolen Spektor decoder that is much-coveted by the British Secret Service. Tatiana is to demand to deal with Bond only, whom she is to claim she has fallen in love with after seeing his photograph.
Bond is provided his first gadget by the armourer (not Q) – an attaché case with secret compartments for compartments for money, ammunition, a silencer for his Beretta, and two throwing knives in the lining. Relieved to be sent on the mission after a year living with Tiffany Case since his last mission and being bored at his office, Bond is sent to Turkey where he coordinates with the head of the British Secret Service station in Istanbul, Darko Kerim, with whom Bond becomes involved in a plot against Kerim by a local gang who work for the Soviets. When Kerim takes Bond to a gypsy encampment, they are attacked by the gang, after which Kerim executes the local gang leader in cold blood. That night, Tatiana is waiting naked in Bond’s hotel bed and insists on taking the decoding machine to Britain the next day via the Orient Express train. Kerim, who unsuccessfully tries to get Bond to leave the train and take the plane, winds up being murdered. Grant boards the train pretending to be an MI6 agent. After revealing his real identity, he shoots Bond, who secretly blocks the bullet with his carefully positioned metal cigarette case, and then kills Grant.
After successfully delivering Tatiana and the decoder machine in Paris, Bond goes to meet Rose Klebb, who is awaiting Grant. She comes at Bond with poisoned-tipped knitting needles but Bond’s friend René Mathis of the French Deuxième Bureau (from Casino Royale novel) captures Klebb. While being taken away, Klebb stabs Bond with a poisoned blade in her shoe that leaves Bond fighting for breath and seemingly dying as the story ends.

The movie adds the scenes immediately after the killing of Grant on the train in which Bond and Tatiana take the truck meant for Grant, get chased by a helicopter that Bond shoots down, and then get in a boat chase that ends explosively, before their encounter with Klebb, which does not end badly for Bond.

• Novel notes
  — Very dense and lengthy background on Russian intelligence operations – 10 chapters of what is Part 1 for more than a third of the book, with Tatiana Romanova not coming in until near the end of this section and Bond not appearing at all in Part 1.
  — decoding machine called Spektor (called Lektor in movie) used by SMERSH (not SPECTRE) to lure Bond for assassination – just picked as near-random spy.
  — Bond doesn’t make first appearance till start of Part II, nearly four-tenths into the book.
  — Bond covers his head while riding on airplane when there’s a lightning storm.
  — Bond experiences his first murder in cold blood and a little uncomfortable when Darko Kerim uses Bond’s shoulder as gun brace to murder his enemy crawling out a building window – “Bond had never killed in cold blood, and he hadn’t liked watching, and helping, someone else do it.”
  — Bond carelessly allows Rosa Klebb to stab him with poison on her shoe blade that nearly killed him – book ends with his life in question.

Doctor No (1958, sixth novel: my Fleming rank: middle group):
— Plot summary: First, we learn how Bond survived at the end of his previous mission – the poison from the shoe blade only paralyzed his muscles while he remained conscious long enough for medical help to arrive. Thereafter, most of the story elements and characters were carried into the movie: M sends Bond to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of the head of station in Kingston, Strangways (from Live and Let Die). Strangways had been investigating the activities of Doctor Julius No, a reclusive man of Chinese-German origins who lives on an island called Crab Key. To get to the island, Bond once again enlists the aid of local man Quarrel (also in LaLD), and they are joined at the island by a beautiful woman (she has crooked nose in the novel) whom he spots collecting valuable shells, Honeychile Rider. Quarrel is burned alive by a flame-thrower from a tank-like vehicle painted like a dragon, and Bond and Honey are taken prisoners.
Bond learns that Doctor No is working with the Soviets to sabotage ongoing American missile tests taking place nearby. Doctor No had his hands cut off by a Chinese a criminal organization and survived a shot aimed at his heart because his heart is on the right side of his body. He tortures Bond to discover and record his powers of endurance, forcing him to navigate an obstacle course in the facility’s ventilation system while being subjected to electric shocks, burns, an encounter with large poisonous spiders, ending in a fight against a giant squid. Meanwhile, Honeychile had to escape being pegged down and potentially eaten by crabs. Bond overpowers the operator of a loading machine to bury Dr. No alive in bird guano.

In the movie Dr. No is working with SPECTRE and tries to recruit Bond to help take over control of an American rocket about to be launched from Cape Canaveral.

• Novel notes
  — the book spells out the title as Doctor No (except on some book jacket/sleeves) rather than movie abbreviation Dr. No.
  — even when they take his Beretta away from him at the beginning, they give Bond two guns to replace it, including the Walther PPK, but he chose to use the Smith & Wesson on the mission instead.
  — No Professor Dent scenes of being in cahoots with Doctor No, visiting him on Crab Key island.
  — Sunbeam Alpine mentioned in novel also used in movie.
  — Bond vomits after killing centipede with his shoe (instead of tarantula as in movie).
  — No scene of Dent trying to trap Bond at home of the Chinese woman and then getting killed himself by Bond in the bathtub (or at all).
  — Honeychile, not just Honey.
  — Once again Bond relies on help of women to save him (Ian Fleming’s 007 novels are remarkable for their very strong women characters, given the early-to-mid 1950s era – they are often cleverer than Bond and frequently save his life; women not characterized nearly so self-sufficient or strong in the early movie adaptations of these novels to film more than a decade later).
  — it was Honeychile’s idea to use bamboo shoots to breathe underwater when enemies are approaching in river, not Bond’s.
  — Honeychile gets herself out of trap with clams, with no help from Bond.
  — Once again Bond is not a womanizer in this novel; in this case Honeychile is so young and unsophisticated – and he constantly needs to keep his senses sharp – that Bond, although interested in having sex with her, refuses even that indulgence during the mission on Crab Key.
  — Once again a more fallible James Bond: Bond’s poor strategy, execution and decisions result in Quarrel being killed excruciatingly by flame-thrower, and endangering life of innocent bystander Honeychile.

Goldfinger (1959; seventh novel: my Fleming rank: fourth):
— Plot summary: Bond observes and busts Auric Goldfinger cheating at cards in Miami and then sleeps with Goldfinger’s pretty assistant Jill Masterton. Some time later Goldfinger has her painted in gold, causing her death. Back in London, Bond is told that Goldfinger is the richest man in England and the world’s top gold smuggler, and Bond is assigned to meet him for golf to learn how he does it. Bond soon finds out that Goldfinger melts gold and transports it secretly as body parts of his Rolls Royce. During his investigation, Bond runs into Jill’s sister Tilly trying to assassinate Goldfinger to avenge her sister’s death, and both Bond and Tilly are captured by Goldfinger’s Korean henchman OddJob and put to work as secretaries for Goldfinger. Bond learns that Goldfinger is a communist criminal and is intending to finance SMERSH by stealing $15 billion in gold from Fort Knox in Kentucky.
Bond sends a secret note to Felix Leiter to alert him about Goldfinger’s Operation Grand Slam, a plan that includes killing soldiers at the depository with a water-borne toxin and then using an atomic bomb to break into Fort Knox’s seemingly impregnable vault. Goldfinger has recruited various mafia organizations to help him, including the Spangled Mob (from Diamonds Are Forever novel), and Pussy Galore’s New York City-based Cement Mixers crime group. During the attempted attack, soldiers scattered all over pretending to be dead, get up, but during the chaos Tilly is killed by Oddjob’s steel-rimmed bowler hat and he escapes with Goldfinger.
The next day Bond is kidnapped again by Goldfinger, who takes him on plane heading to Russia. Pussy helps Bond get free and break a window that sucks Oddjob out to his death. Bond gets in a fight with Goldfinger and kills him before the plane crash-lands and Bond and Pussy are rescued.

• Novel notes
  — Example of book reflecting 1950s era in which it was written: Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they, and their male counterparts, were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and ‘sex equality’. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits – barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them. (Later, when Pussy Galore decides to try to seduce Bond and he tells her to get into bed with him): She did as she was told like an obedient child. She said, not in a… Lesbian’s voice but in a girl’s voice… ”
  Bond said, “They told me you only liked women.
  She said, ‘I never met a man before.’ ”
  — Bond for first time very self-confident, full of bravado and seeming swagger, even cocky, brash/smart-aleck, bold risk-taker.
  — painted young woman (named Jill Masterton instead of Masterson) not painted soon after card game at Miami Fountainbleu hotel– not until much later.
  — Bond invited to Goldfinger home for dinner after golf game.
  — Goldfinger painted different woman each month and pays them $1,000 – doesn’t kill them.
  — Bond (driving battleship grey Aston Martin DB III from carpool instead of DB 5, which hadn’t been manufactured yet) intentionally reverses into Tilly’s car (Triumph TR3 instead of Mustang, which also hadn’t been developed yet) when she is following Goldfinger, forcing her to ride with him.
  — Bond accidentally blows Tilly’s cover while she is trying to kill Goldfinger when he leaves radar on in car (rather than electrified barbed security wire as in movie).
  — Tilly isn’t killed in ensuing chase by Oddjob’s people, but killed near end during raid on Fort Knox by Odd Job’s hat.
  — Bond tries to will himself to die while spread-eagle on Goldfinger buzz-saw table (instead of laser) – imagines heaven and three 00-agents and wonders which will take his place; maybe 008), and wonders if he will see Vesper Lynd in heaven (wonders how will he introduce Tilly to Vesper if she is there).
  — Pussy Galore doesn’t enter till last fourth of book and is one of gang leaders invited to join in with Goldfinger.
  — Tilly is lesbian and attracted to Pussy Galore.
  — Felix Leiter still with Pinkerton’s and still has hook hand – comes to help Bond during Fort Knox raid.

• Short stories (1960 – five in For Your Eyes Only; eighth book)
  Story summaries and notes
  — From a View to a Kill: Title has additional “From” (dropped for movie, though included in end credits of Octopussy with James Bond will Return in… ) in this completely different story about Bond investigating and thwarting a motorcycle assassin; Woman Mary Ann Russell saves Bond when he leaves his gun safety on and can’t use it as he gets grabbed by an enemy in close combat, whom woman comes up from behind to shoot.
  – For Your Eyes Only: Judy Havelock instead of Melina; blonde instead of brunette – here she’s trying to avenge death of her British parents (not Greek), for whom M served as Best Man at their wedding. M sends Bond to Vermont on personal mission of vengeance against the former Gestapo officer who ordered Cubans to kill them for not selling their Jamaican home to him. Bond once again makes potentially fatal mistake when he lets Havelock sneak up on him and hold him at bow/arrow-point until he does what she says. Havelock shoots villain with arrow while he is diving into water, as in movie. None of the rest of the primary story or characters from For Your Eyes Only movie are here – those elements are taken from Risico story for the movie For Your Eyes Only).
  – Quantum of Solace (Cosmopolitan May 1959): Story told to Bond at a dinner by Bermuda governor about a government employee who took revenge against his wife for years of cheating on him and humiliating him (she didn’t even leave him a quantum of solace – an ounce of dignity/self-pride). Movie story completely different.
  – Risico: characters (Kristatos, Colombo) and much of the story used in For Your Eyes Only movie – Bond initially assigned to partner with Kristatos to kill Colombo but then learns Kristatos is really the villain with an opium-making plant in Albania, so Bond partners with Colombo to kill Kristatos. Also, Kristatos sends his woman Lisl to lure Bond but in the novel they do not sleep together and she does not die as in the movie.
  – The Hildebrand Rarity (Playboy March 1960): name of villain (Milton Krest) and boat (Wavekrest) used in movie Licence to Kill. Otherwise, plot completely different – Bond on his own; goes boating to hunt rare fish with a maniac who beats his wife until she, apparently, finally murders him in revenge.

Thunderball (1961; eighth full novel, ninth book counting FYEO short stories; my Fleming rank: middle group):
— Plot summary: As an adaptation of the screenplay developed by Fleming and his collaborators that was initially intended to be the first Bond movie, there is little here that differs from the movie that came four years later, or from the second cinematic adaptation that came 22 years later, Never Say Never Again. The novel presents the introduction of Blofeld in the first of three Fleming novels, and the introduction of the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. organization in his books.
The story begins with Bond being sent to the Shrublands health clinic, where he encounters a mysterious patient known as Count Lippe, who has tattoo marks of a Macau crime organization. Bond also tries to seduce sexy masseuse Patricia Fearing, who straps him to a traction table and leaves him, after which Lippe turns up the power in an attempt to kill Bond.
Meanwhile, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. hijacks a new NATO military jet carrying two atomic bombs and threatens to destroy a major city in the United States or United Kingdom unless a ransom of 100 million pounds is paid.
Bond is sent to the Bahamas to investigate the possibility of the warheads being hidden there. He meets Domino, the beautiful mistress of a wealthy Italian with a luxury yacht called the Disco Volante. Bond wins Domino over when he tells her that Largo killed her brother after hiring him to pilot the hijacked jet. Bond challenges Largo at a casino baccarat table, angering him by winning and casually mentioning the word spectre.
Felix Leiter (on loan again to the CIA from Pinkerton’s) sends for a Polaris nuclear-powered U.S. submarine while he and Bond fly over the ocean and find the downed and hidden aircraft. Bond leads a group of diver fighters to intercept Largo and the underwater delivery of the bombs. Bond’s frogmen are out-numbered and Largo’s men are using special speed boosters, but the surprise attack works. Largo manages to escape and gets an edge on Bond in a man-to-man underwater battle, attaching a baby octopus to Bond’s mask when Domino unexpectedly shoots Largo with a harpoon gun.

• Novel notes
  — slightly different feel than Fleming’s previous novels; it reads like a novelization of script/screen treatment, which it is, even though it was published four years before the movie was produced and released.
  — S.P.E.C.T.R.E. introduced as The Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion (the SP must be short for Special and yet there is a period after the S.; and on second reference it is all-caps SPECTRE and later Spectre).
  — Felix Leiter is back and still with the hook hand (unlike movie), and back with CIA, having been hired specifically for this mission.
  — Bond said to be in his mid-30s.
  — Largo says during casino game with Bond, “…handwriting on the wall” (which would become name of “Spectre” movie theme song by Sam Smith 54 years later).
  — no Fiona Volpe/Fatima Blush character in novel.
  — U.S. Navy nuclear-powered sub Manta comes to take Bond and Leiter to follow Largo and engage in underwater battle (no sub in Thunderball movie; but is one in Never Say Never Again).
  — underwater battle only 10 pages (shorter, like Never Say Never Again).
  — Bond and Leiter and Navy team have no high-tech underwater weapons, only makeshift knives strapped to end of broomsticks.
  — Bond jams rudder of Chariot underwater sled carrying atom bomb so it goes in circles (as in Never Say Never Again).
  — Largo traps Bond underwater (like NSNA) and attaches an octopus to his face (not in either movie).
  — Domino kills Largo with spear underwater to save Bond (like NSNA) – she does this in Thunderball movie during fight on boat after underwater battle.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1962; ninth full novel, 10th book counting FYEO short stories; my Fleming rank: last):
— Plot summary: This story is told in three parts by young woman Vivienne Michel, who sets out from Canada on a Vespa motor scooter for a road trip through America to escape her problems. The first section deals with Michel’s past love affairs that both ended badly. The second part details Michel’s intended journey from Quebec to Florida but she only makes it as far as upstate New York and The Dreamy Pines Motor Court for one night, where the managers say they are closing for the season, leaving on vacation, and ask her to spend the night and hand over the keys to the owner when he arrives the next day. That night, two mobsters show up on behalf of the owner to burn down the motel for the insurance money. They beat Michel and threaten to rape her. This leads to the third part of the book, when Bond happens by due to a flat tire. He assesses the situation, and, after a series of miscalculations during his effort to rescue Michel, she eventually gets extricated from the peril, and the two men are killed.

Of course the movie of the same title carries over none of this at all, with an entirely new story in which Bond unites with sexy Russian agent Anya Amasova in an underwater car to take on a seven-foot-tall henchman with steel teeth (Jaws) and defeat reclusive megalomaniac shipping magnate Karl Stromberg, who is threatening to destroy New York City and the world with nuclear weapons while he creates a new civilization under the sea.

• Novel notes
  — This reads like a romance novel – young woman Vivienne Michel (Viv) is treated badly by men three times; first as a young woman forced to masturbate her boyfriend in a theater and then forced into start having sex with him in a movie theater, where they are caught by the manager and then he immediately forces her to finish the sex outside on the grass and then he dumps her; next after a platonic and then sexual relationship with her work mate he dumps her unceremoniously when she gets pregnant and sends her off to Zurich for an abortion; and finally when she is taken hostage, beaten, and nearly raped by two villains at the motel where Bond meets her.
  — One of villains called Horror has steel-capped teeth (as did Jaws in movie)
  — Bond doesn’t enter till two-thirds into book – Part III: Him
  — Bond once again screws up – twice, both times which could have gotten he and Vivienne killed: was holding the two men at gunpoint while they were holding TVs in their arms, but he was too slow to react to one of them dropping TV and grabbing Viv, then both men get away. Moments later Bond says “Sorry Viv, I made rather a hash of that round.” Then wrongly assumes the two men drowned when their car went in the lake when in fact it didn’t fully submerge and one got out. Then says, “I’m sorry Viv, I must be losing my touch. If I keep up like this I’m going to catch trouble… I was a damned fool not to work that out for myself. We ought to be dead ducks… I’m sorry Viv, it ought never to have happened.”
  — Bond once again (in that instance) shows he does not like cold-blooded killing and has not done it much, if at all, when he responds to Viv question about why he didn’t just shoot the two men: “Never been able to in cold blood.”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963; 10th full novel, 11th book counting FYEO short stories; my Fleming rank: best one):
— Plot summary: While other Fleming Bond novels that were fairly faithfully adapted to the big screen but still had a couple major elements added or removed, this story is remarkably similar in almost every respect to the movie that followed just six years later – structure, plot, characters, situations, dialogue, even locations. And yet, the cinematic adaptation made numerous interesting tweaks and adjustments to almost everything in this Fleming novel (detailed in Novel Notes following this plot summary).
After a year trying to learn about a S.P.E.C.T.R.E. plan called Operation Bedlam and trying to find its leader Blofeld with no success and no support from M, Bond composes a letter of resignation. Meanwhile, Bond encounters a suicidal, beautiful, young woman at a casino, wakes up to find her missing, then prevents her from drowning herself in the ocean. It turns out that Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo is the daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, head of the biggest European crime syndicate. Draco wants Bond to marry Tracy, and offers to pay him. Bond refuses agrees to continue seeing her if Draco will use his resources to find Blofeld. Blofeld is hiding in Switzerland under the name Comte Balthazar de Bleuville and seeking official declaration as heir of the bloodline and the reigning count. Bond impersonates a College of Arms representative, Sir Hilary Bray, to meet with Blofeld at his Piz Gloria lair atop the Alps. Bond learns that Blofeld has been supposedly curing a group of young British women of their livestock and food allergies. When a fellow 00 agent is captured by Blofeld’s guards on Christmas Eve, Bond knows his cover will be blown, so he skis away, encountering Tracy in the village below, who helps him escape S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and Switzerland. Bond proposes marriage and Tracy accepts.
Bond learns that Blofeld and aide Irma Bunt have been brainwashing the young British women into carrying biological warfare agents back to the UK in order to contaminate England’s food supply and destroy Britain’s agriculture economy, upon which Britain depends.
Growing impatient waiting for Swiss official cooperation, Bond enlists Draco’s people to mount an air assault against Piz Gloria and Blofeld, but Blofeld escapes down the mountain’s bobsled run and blows the pursuing Bond out of the track with a hand grenade.
Bond and Tracy wed on New Year’s Day but as they drive away for their honeymoon, Blofeld and Bunt drive by, shooting at the newlyweds. Bond gains consciousness as a patrolman approaches the car, saying to the officer as he cradles Tracy’s lifeless body, “It’s quite all right. She’s having a rest. We’ll be going soon. There’s no hurry. You see, we’ve got all the time in the world.”

• Novel notes
  — Bond is preparing his résumé near beginning of story (before meeting Tracy or her father Draco) because he is upset about being sent around world on routine detective matters instead of more exciting world for which he is uniquely qualified, and preferably tracking down Blofeld. In movie, Bond has been unsuccessfully tracking Blofeld for two years (Operation Bedlam) and gives Moneypenny his résumé to give to M only after meeting with Draco and learning Blofeld is in Switzerland, and getting turned down by M to continue pursuing Blofeld.
  — The name of his previous love from Casino Royale re-appears: “…there had been a drama and poignancy about that particular adventure that every year drew him back to Royale and its casino and to the small granite cross in the little churchyard that simply said ‘Vesper Lynd R.I.P.’ ”
  — Tracy hair golden blonde instead of dark brown; drives a white Lancia Flaminia Zagato Spyder instead of a red Mercury Cougar
  — Reverse order of Bond’s initial interactions with Tracy: in novel it is first when she passes him in car, then at casino/overnight in hotel, then next day onto beach and into ocean, though told in same order as movie starting with beach/ocean, then through flashback of night before when she passed him, then at casino/hotel.
  ** no fight with security guard in Tracy’s hotel room after casino.
  ** Bond doesn’t notice two men following him in car as he follows Tracy from hotel or when he follows her into water on foot and they follow (Bond once again not as flawless as in movies)
  ** in novel the two security guards follow Bond into ocean after Tracy, subdue Bond and Tracy, and take them in boat to see Draco; in movie they fight with Bond on beach and Tracy drives away to casino/hotel, and two men subdue Bond the next morning and take him to Draco
  **novel version makes more sense that Draco’s men were sent to follow Bond after Draco investigated him the morning after he learns that Bond came to aid of Tracy at casino, comforted her overnight, after which she left suicide note to her father, noting that Bond may have changed her mind about suicide.
  ** Summary of novel describing first interactions with Tracy leading up to Draco meeting: Tracy races past Bond in the car on the way to the casino, where Bond follows her, and where she sits down and makes bet she can’t cover. So, Bond sees second situation in same day where she is careening out of control and, thus, covers her bet and uses that to get close to her. They sleep together and he can tell she is on the edge of suicide, and so he follows her to beach the next morning because he is worried about her state of mind. He camps out watching her, while two men are watching Bond from a cafe across the street without Bond being aware of them. When Bond goes in water after Tracy, the two men follow him and grab both he and Tracy and put them in the boat to take them to Draco. We then learn that these were Draco’s men, sent by Draco to keep eye on Tracy and also to bring Bond to him after Draco looked into Bond that morning and decided he would be good for Tracy.
  ** Summary of movie depicting first interactions with Tracy leading to meeting with Draco: Tracy passes Bond in car and he follows her to beach and into water to prevent her committing suicide. Two men who were not seen anywhere (there are no cafes across street from beach in the movie) come out of nowhere and start attacking Bond for no apparent reason, and handle Tracy very roughly and then let her get away. She apparently just happens to go back to the hotel where Bond also just happens to go, and he happens to see her car. He plays at the casino and after such a traumatic encounter at the beach, Tracy dresses to the nines and just happens to show up at Bond’s table and makes a reckless bet she can’t cover. She then gives Bond the keys to her room and then either plots or is aware that one of her dad’s henchmen is going to be in her room to beat up Bond for no reason made clear to audience. Meanwhile, Tracy somehow gets into Bond’s room for reasons also not clear, and is there when Bond comes in.
  — Upon meeting Draco, Bond states “September the 16th” and throws knife at calendar behind Draco, sticking on Sept 15; in movie he does not make verbal prediction but is also one day off as sticks Sept 14 instead of current date of Sept. 13, which Bond says is because he is superstitious.
  — In addition to having had a brief marriage as in the movie, Tracy, in the novel, also had a baby girl which contracted spinal meningitis and died six months prior to Draco and Bond meeting.
  — Tracy goes to see therapist in novel (clinic in Switzerland – for at least 3-4 months) before starring up relationship with Bond; in movie she immediately embarks on romantic courtship with Bond.
  ** Bond does not go to Blofeld’s lawyer’s office to copy documents.
  ** No man helps Bond get documents out of lawyer office via Draco crane bucket (same man killed by Blofeld at Piz Gloria – presumably Swiss MI6 agent).
  ** Bond does not meet with Hilary Bray directly (in novel Bray is living in solitude in the country but has given his permission for Bond to impersonate him).
  ** Bond does not visit M at his home to convince him to be allowed to resume pursuit of Blofeld as Hilary Bray; no need for this scene in novel, but in novel Bond visits M at his home after escaping Piz Gloria.
  — Mary Goodnight introduced as replacement for Bond’s secretary Loelia Ponsby, who leaves to get married (Goodnight a character in movie version of The Man with the Golden Gun; Ponsby never in movies – Bond doesn’t have own secretary in movies).
  — Agent 006 mentioned as most likely to get the sexy young Mary Goodnight first.
  — Piz Gloria wasn’t open yet when book was published – only under construction that same year of 1963; restaurant didn’t open until six years later after, the movie opened (movie helped get it done).
  ** Bond doesn’t make his Hilary Bray pretend to be squeamish as in movie (“I’m not a good traveler, I’m afraid”; pretends to feel air sickness in helicopter – “I’ll be glad to get my feet on the ground”; says “I’m not a sporting man”; and is not adept at curling game on ice).
  — Ursula Andress spotted among the celebs around Piz Gloria ski resort.
  — Hilary Bray friend recognizes the name and approaches Bond, nearly exposing him in front of Irma Bunt.
  — 3 balls / 4 balls: in both novel and movie Bond is told before leaving for Piz Gloria that his personal family coat of arms has an argent (silver) on a chevron sable with three bezants (gold balls) to which Bond responds in novel, “That is certainly a valuable bonus” – not said in movie where Bond claims his coat of arms has four bezants and with sexual innuendo tells the smitten girls the definition of bezants at dinner the first night – “gold balls” — and that his coat of arms “includes four of them, if you’d care to see them.”
  — Blofeld tall and slender with silvery white hair and dark green contact lenses instead of bald in this and most movies, more like Diamonds Are Forever movie.
  — Bond sleeps with same Ruby girl at Piz Gloria but in novel goes back later to get full names and hometowns of each of ten girls.
  — Number 2 from Station Z in Zurich with blond hair, Shaun Campbell, who gives up Bond when caught in front of Blofeld. Bond pretends he doesn’t know him. (In movie, the man is not identified, has verbal confrontation with Blofeld outdoors when caught; unclear if he exposes Bond’s real identity but that is implied with passing remark by Blofeld that he “was such a brilliant conversationalist”).
  ** Bond not caught in trap in bed by Bunt, not taken to Blofeld.
  ** Bond isn’t shown Campbell hanging dead upside down dead outside.
  ** Bond not locked in gondola pulley room, no escape by hanging/sliding on cables.
  — Bond escapes on skis after dark, chased down, man gets ground up in snow blower, Bond outruns avalanche, then Bond meets Tracy at ice rink. Movie divides this into two parts, with avalanche and man in snow blower during second ski chase down mountain next morning, with Tracy skiing too.
  ** no ice race track chase (and no Irma Bunt following him).
  — Tracy drives him away to airport restaurant (instead of taking refuge in an out-building during snowstorm) where Bond decides he is “fed up with untidy casual affairs that left him with a bad conscience” and “wouldn’t mind having children” so, impulsively, asks Tracy to marry him (instead of while lying in straw).
  ** no next-morning ski chase that buries Tracy.
  ** Tracy not kidnapped by Blofeld.
  — Bond flies back to London that same night of ice rink right after Tracy says yes to marriage and she goes to Munich to wait for Bond while he goes back to Piz Gloria for Blofeld.
  ** Tracy is not taken back to Piz Gloria by Blofeld.
  ** Blofeld doesn’t make midnight ransom demand to prevent unleashing viruses
  — Draco single helicopter with men approaches Piz Gloria while pilot negotiates with air traffic control (three helicopters in movie and Draco negotiates himself).
  — Brief shootout at Piz Gloria between men of Draco and Blofeld.
  ** Not extended shootout and fight at Piz Gloria and no Tracy involved.
  — Bond chases Blofeld down bobsled run on single-man skeleton sleds.
  ** not 2-man/4-man/6-man enclosed bobsleds.
  — Blofeld beats Bond to bottom of run and escapes, maybe to Italy.
  ** Blofeld does not get snared in a tree going down bob-run, where Bond leaves him instead of going back to make sure he’s dead or take him into custody.
  — Bond does not notice woman following him while ring-shopping in Munich.
  — Bond/Tracy married at British consulate in Munich on New Year’s Day (1962, according to You Only Live Twice obituary letter from M).
  ** not married in good weather in Portugal.
  ** none of MI6 staff attended wedding (M, Moneypenny, Q).
  — Bond does not notice red Maserati in Munich or following married couple.
  — Bond/Tracy leave from wedding in Tracy’s white Lancia, with Tracy driving.
  ** Bond is not driving them away in his Aston Martin.
  — Drive-by shooter in Maserati implied to be Irma Bunt but doesn’t specify.
  ** in movie, it’s a silver Mercedes driven by Blofeld wearing a neck brace and clearly Irma shooting.

You Only Live Twice (1964; 11th full novel, 12th book w/ FYEO short stories; my Fleming rank: middle group):
— Plot summary: Nine months after the wedding-day murder of his wife, Tracy, Bond is still distraught: M reports he is getting sloppy and needs help – his mistakes on two recent missions nearly got himself killed and endangered others. M removes Bond from OO-section and “promotes” him to Diplomatic Section where he is given new code number of 7777. In order to give him more challenge and distraction from bad memories, M sends him on mission to Japan to get info from Japanese Secret Service about Russia (get access to Magic 44 device that de-codes Russian communications), and there will be “no strong-arm” stuff or “gunplay” but rather the use of his “wits and nothing else.”
In Tokyo, Dikko Henderson introduces Bond to Tanaka, who eventually tells Bond of a Swiss botanist called Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, who, along with his wife Frau has built a Garden of Death resort for suicidal people at a secluded castle on a volcanic island featuring carnivorous fish, poisonous plants and reptiles. In exchange for the Magic 44, Tanaka asks Bond to kill Dr. Shatterhand, which Bond eagerly agrees to when he later learns Shatterhand is actually Blofeld, and Frau is Irma Bunt.
Bond is made to look and act Japanese and introduced to Kissy Suzuki and her family to complete his training. Kissy, a former Hollywood actress, is also a diver. She helps Bond across the river to the castle, where he climbs the two-hundred foot wall and gets into the castle where he hides to observe the activities before seeking his vengeance. Bond is discovered, beaten, and put in a seat above a volcanic geyser that erupts every fifteen minutes in order to get him to reveal his true identity, which he does. During a subsequent encounter, Bond knocks Bunt unconscious and duels with Shatterhand/Blofeld before disarming and then strangling him. Bond then rigs the geyser to explode and jumps to a helium balloon that carries him over the garden, out to sea as Blofeld’s castle is destroyed in an eruption, killing all inside and rendering Bond unconscious when he is hit in the head with debris, falling into the sea.
Kissy finds Bond but he has no memory of her or anything but Blofeld’s face. She takes him back to her family’s home and tells him he is her lover. After a year of living with her as a domesticated fisherman who needs help having sex, Kissy becomes pregnant but doesn’t tell Bond. When Bond finds a paper with the name of a Russian city, it makes him wonder if it is the key to his missing memory, and decides to travel to Russia.
Meanwhile, MI6 determines that the missing Bond must be dead. An obituary for him is written by M and published in The Times.

The movie version retains little of the this last novel completed by Fleming before he died except the Japanese setting and most of the characters, not including Shatterhand and Frau. SPECTRE and Blofeld get the Americans and Russians threatening each other with nuclear war by building a rocket that secretly hijacks a spaceship of each country. But when the spacecraft lands in the Sea of Japan, Bond is sent to investigate, but only after they fake his death in Hong Kong. With the aid of Japanese secret service head Tiger Tanaka and the cute Aki, learns that an apparent dormant volcano is really a launch facility run by Blofeld. So, Bond disguises himself as Japanese and plans a fake marriage to local beauty Kissy Suzuki in order to infiltrate the facility. Along with Tanaka’s ninjas, they destroy the control center.

• Novel notes
  — Many changes in story depicted in movie which was released prior to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service movie – novel begins eight months after Tracy’s death (Jan 1, 1962), so, presumably August 1962.
  ** Nothing with USA blaming Soviet Union for hijacking U.S. space capsule.
  ** Bond not fake-murdered in bed in Hong Kong or buried at sea.
  ** No Aki at all; no meeting at sumo wrestling.
  — Mary Goodnight still Bond’s secretary.
  — Bond talks at length in bar/brothel with MI6 man in Tokyo, large and brash-talking Australian Richard Lovelace “Dikko” Henderson, and then again next morning when Dikko takes him to meet Tiger Tanaka.
  ** in movie, only brief meet with “Mr. Henderson” in home before he’s killed.
  ** no abduction of Bond or fight in office bldg or stealing info from safe.
  ** no Aki drive of Bond to meet Tanaka or trap door slide to Tanaka office.
  ** no massage or sex with Aki.
  — Tanaka calls Bond Bondo-san instead of Bond-san because it’s too close to bon-san which means a priest, a grey-beard.
  — Tanaka shares secret intel with Bond that Russia is about to test nuclear bomb and use it to threaten Great Britain to get rid of all its nuclear weapons.
  — Nuclear bomb then tested and Pres. Kennedy makes strongest speech of his career about reprisals for such activity (book published 4 ½ months after Kennedy assassination).
  — Tanaka assigns Bond to assassinate mysterious Swiss botanist Dr. Shatterhand and his “very ugly wife” who have set up massive garden of poisonous plants and fish on remote volcanic land where 500 people have died or committed suicide.
  — Tanaka takes Bond to bath house to get Japanese make-over (and massage and sex) by 18 year-old Mariko.
  — Similar to movie, Tanaka shows Bond ninja training school, though much more extensive and brutal in novel – one man fails to climb wall and falls to his death.
  — Bond is very unfamiliar with Japanese culture and doesn’t like it much.
  — Tanaka disappointed repeatedly in Bond’s lack of knowledge and acceptance of Japanese culture and Bond’s sarcasm and jokes.
  — Tanaka very cold-hearted; says Dr. Shatterhand wife should die just because she is so ugly.
  — Blofeld name doesn’t appear until nearly two-thirds into novel when Bond sees photo of Doctor Shatterhand and recognizes it is Blofeld, and that his wife is Irma Bunt; now 9-months since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service mission.
  — Kissy Suzuki is former Japanese actress who returns to family in Japan because she doesn’t like Hollywood (except for David Niven) and now swims naked for clams, and is assigned to help Bond get in to Dr. Shatterhand fortress.
  — Bond quickly falls in love with Kissy and imagines living with her in Japan.
  — no fake marriage of Bond to Kissy.
  — Bond gets bad stomach cramps after two days of diving for clams with Kissy.
  — no volcano or rocket space ships, just castle of Shatterhand/Blofeld.
  — piranha fish in suicide gardens but not in Blofeld lair inside volcano.
  — Kissy rescues Bond in ocean after he kills Shatterhand/Blofeld and drops from hot air balloon.
  — Bond gets amnesia, forgets how, and loses inclination to have sex (Kissy buys him porno book and toad sweat aphrodisiac), and lives with Kissy from fall through spring, getting her pregnant.
  — M puts out Bond obituary (presumably late 1962, possibly early 1963), missing-presumed dead – detailed lifetime bio, including:
  ** James’ parents killed when he was 11 in climbing accident in the Aiguilles Rouges above Chamonix – Scottish father Andrew Bond of Glencoe, Swiss mother Monique Delacroix of Canton de Vaud; father a foreign representative of Vickers armaments firm, spoke French and German.
  ** James put under guardianship of father’s sister Aunt Charmian Bond – erudite and accomplished lady (now deceased) in the quaintly hamlet of Pett Bottom near Chanterbury in Kent.
  ** James at age 12 or thereabouts went to Eton College briefly (had been entered by his father at birth), but was asked to leave after two halves due to some trouble with one of boys’ maids. Then went to Fettes, his father’s old school, until age 17 – he developed friends in athletic circles where he fought as a light-weight and founded first serious judo class at an English public school.
  ** At age 17 in 1941, with help of father’s old friend from Vickers (and claiming to be age 19), Bond became lieutenant in the Special Branch of the R.N.V.R., completing his confidential duties and rising to rank of commander by the end of the war.
  ** M accepted Bond’s post-war application, and the publicity surrounding some of his adventures led to a series of popular books written about him by a personal friend and former colleague.
  ** Bond leaves no relative, as far as M is aware, including from his brief marriage in 1962 to Teresa, only daughter of Marc-Ange Draco of Marseilles, which ended in tragic circumstances.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1965; 12th full novel, 13th book w/ FYEO short stories: my Fleming rank: next to last):
— Plot summary: This novel that Fleming was working on when he died and that was completed by the publisher, begins with the long-missing and presumed-dead Bond (who had gone to Russia at the end of the previous novel to try to regain his memory and learn his identity) showing up and requesting a meeting with M, sitting down across the desk from him, and pulling out a gun and shooting to kill his longtime boss. A bullet-proof glass drops down in time to save M, who orders psych treatment for Bond to reverse the KGB brainwashing (which works completely after six weeks of brain shock treatments). Anxious to get onto his next assignment, Bond is sent on a mission to Jamaica to find and kill Francisco “Pistols” Scaramanga, who has been assassinating Secret Service men under contract for the KGB with his gold-plated .45 pistol.
Bond re-teams with his former secretary Mary Goodnight, now assigned to the MI6 station in Kingston, and goes undercover as Mark Hazard. He initiates a relationship with Scaramanga, who hires Bond as a bodyguard for a weekend conference of gangsters who are plotting many illicit activities for Castro and the KGB, including the destabilization of the Caribbean sugar industry, and smuggling drugs and women into America.
With Scaramanga knowing Bond’s real identity, the two get in a shoot-out on an open-air train ride, during which Scaramanga tricks Bond with a mannequin of Goodnight on the tracks. Bond gets help on the train from Felix Leiter, who has been recalled to duty by the CIA again, but Bond and Leiter both get badly wounded before the battle is over.

The movie adaptation uses only some of these elements and characters in a story that begins with Scaramanga outwitting a foe in a house of mirrors on his private island. After a golden bullet engraved with 007 is delivered, M relieves Bond of his mission to find a scientist who has something called a solex agitator that will solve the global energy crisis. Bond pursues Scaramanga anyway, not knowing what he looks like except that he has a third nipple. After several chases, stunts, exotic locations, and interactions with Scaramanga Little Person henchman Nick Nack, Bond rescues Mary Goodnight and completes his initial mission of retrieving the solex agitator.

• Novel notes
  — begins in November, the year after Bond’s obituary (likely late 1962) – so presumably November 1963
  — Scaramanga formerly worked for the Spangled Mob in Vegas.
  — Bond wonders what became of Honeychile when he goes to Jamaica (in movie he goes to Thailand & Hong Kong/Macau) – she never wrote but she married a Philadelphia doctor and had 2 children.
  — Universal Exports becomes Transworld Consortium.
  — Bond stumbles into his former MI6 secretary Mary Goodnight, now working at Station in Jamaica (in movie the character is making her debut – says she has been in Staff Intelligence for two years), and enlists her assistance, then quickly kisses her and starts sexual overtures.
  — Sunbeam Alpine – Mary Goodnight loans Bond car she is now driving, Strangways’ old car (which Bond drove in both the Doctor No novel and movie).
  — Bond once again notes he doesn’t want to kill in cold blood and avoids easy early chance to complete assignment of killing Scaramanga by shooting him in back of head when he gets in car in seat behind him – because he doesn’t want to kill in cold blood. This opportunity comes and is rejected again near end of story. Bond is standing over wounded Scaramanga in swamp and still can’t bring himself to finish him off until Bond lets his guard down and Scaramanga grabs his derringer forcing Bond to shoot him five times in self-defense.
  — Bond reading JFK’s Profiles in Courage.
  — Felix Leiter still has hook hand, still with Pinkerton’s, and once again on loan to the CIA.
  — Bond falls for trick of fake Mary Goodnight mannequin being strapped on train tracks.
  — Bond jumps from train into smelly marsh. “Knelt down and was as sick as a cat.”
  — Felix does not finish off Scaramanga, believing he was dead.
  — Felix hurts his leg badly jumping off train.

• Short stories (1966 Octopussy; 14th book – two stories but only later retitled Octopussy and The Living Daylights; third story The Property of a Lady only added to initial 1967 paperback edition of Octopussy; story 007 in New York added to Octopussy and The Living Daylights in 2002)
  Story summaries and notes
  – Octopussy (Oct 1965): Bond is sent to Jamaica to bust a former WWII British military officer who killed a man after the war to steal gold bars that he later lived off for many years with his wife. The man killed was a father-figure to Bond as a teenager and taught him to ski – his name was Oberhauser (the name given to Blofeld/Bond’s step-uncle in Spectre movie).
  – The Living Daylights (Feb 1962): Same as movie opening (after titles) – Bond assigned to shoot KGB sniper assassin as they try to kill agent escaping from East to West Berlin. (Bond dreads having to commit murder.) Turns out assassin is woman cello player in orchestra who Bond chooses to graze instead of kill at last second when he realizes it’s girl he had spotted earlier. (Bond dreads having to commit murder and is glad he didn’t have to kill anyone.)
  Takes place in 1960 – year before origin of Checkpoint Charlie (Oct 1961)
  – The Property of a Lady (Nov 1963): Bond successfully seeks identity of Russian/KGB bidder for Faberge “Emerald Sphere” (egg in Octopussy movie) called Property of a Lady at an auction at Sotheby’s (similar to small piece of Octopussy movie but in movie Bond himself bids up price and then secretly replaces the egg with a fake). It was given to British agent by KGB in payment for her three years of work that KGB seemingly wrongly believe has been for KGB benefit as double-agent (this element not in movie).
  – 007 in New York (Oct 1963) Bond muses on his memories of New York City upon his arrival at Hotel Astor for one-night to meet a former lover and former first-class MI6 staff officer on behalf of M, simply to warn the English woman called Solange that she is living with a KGB spy. After arranging to meet her in the afternoon at the reptile house in the Central Park Zoo, Bond laments the inability of cooks to prepare his favorite scrambled eggs (simple recipe included) as he smokes his Morland Specials, and his mind runs through a list of his favorite NYC restaurants, bars, hotels, and music clubs — some recommended by Felix Leiter and most of which no longer exist as the city prepares for the 1964 World’s Fair — imagining a romantic evening of reuniting. But it all goes wrong when he learns there is no reptile house at the zoo, so he doesn’t connect with Solange until midnight at the Rockefeller Center skating rink, where she collapses in tears at his news and becomes suicidal.
  This brief nine-page story had quite an evolution, starting out as one of a series of non-fiction travelogue impressions of world cities by Ian Fleming – nothing to do with Bond – commissioned by The Sunday Times starting in 1959, which was later compiled into the book Thrilling Cities. Because the U.S. publishers weren’t happy about his harsh comments about NYC, Fleming created a fictional story of James Bond in New York – since Bond liked NYC more than Fleming — first published in the New York Herald Tribune in October 1963 as Agent 007 in New York (Fleming’s original title was Reflections in a Carey Cadillac) before it was subsequently renamed 007 in New York and published in the 1964 US editions of Thrilling Cities. Ultimately, it was added to a reprint of the short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights in 2002 (which had already been expanded to include a third story in the original paperback edition more than 35 years earlier), with an introduction by Fleming’s literary agent Peter Janson-Smith.

 

REVIVING, REINVENTING BOND ACROSS 80 YEARS: 1930s – 2011

All the Bond continuation novels carry on many of the familiar characteristics, characters and elements of the Fleming Bond books. Six of the Bond continuation novels are even set back in the Fleming Bond era, four of which take place in the mid-to-late 1960s, shortly after the last Fleming publication, The Man with the Golden Gun. Accomplished authors such as Kingsley Amis, Sebastian Faulks, and Anthony Horowitz also made an effort to varying degrees to emulate Fleming’s writing style. Horowitz even incorporates previously unpublished Fleming TV show outlines into his first book, Trigger Mortis. The nine Young Bond novels take place in the 1930s.
British spy and thriller novelist John Gardner published 14 Bond original continuation novels in the 1980s and 90s set in those contemporary times, with Bond initially driving a Saab and acting more like the cinematic Bond. Chicago-based first-time novelist Raymond Benson – the first American commissioned to pick up the Bond mantle – penned six original Bond novels, also set in the then present-day of the 1990s and early 2000s, including more vivid sexual encounters, and bringing many of the Fleming characters in the Bond universe into the new era while further embracing the Bond movie universe, including his boss M being a female. The only other Bond continuation novel set in contemporary times was written by award-winning American mystery and crime author Jeffery Deaver in 2011, with his Bond reverting back to a less gadget-oriented agent and a return to a male M.

Continuation novel descriptions and notes, Fleming carry-over elements
(listed in order of the date in which the story takes place, not by publication date, with exception of Young Bond novels set 1933-1935, listed at end)

AFTER FLEMING; BOND IN 1950s-1960s

Anthony Horowitz
three original Bond continuation novels (2015 – 2022)

Accomplished and prolific English author and screenwriter of suspense and mystery novels and TV shows Anthony Horowitz introduced several new elements that sparked renewed interest in the Bond series. He was the first since American first-time novelist author Raymond Benson to have been invited and commit to writing multiple James Bond continuation stories, which brought a return to consistency in the literary Bond over seven years. Setting his Bond to take place in the middle of Fleming’s series was also a first – Trigger Mortis takes place in 1957, immediately following Goldfinger — as was offering a 007 origin story set in 1950 in his Forever and a Day, just before the events of Fleming’s first novel Casino Royale, creating a back-story of how Bond became 007. Finally, being allowed and deftly incorporating Fleming’s own words into Trigger Mortis infused the series with a level of excitement and anticipation that had been missing for years.
Horowitz’s Bond and the people and trappings around him feel very familiar and comfortable to Fleming fans. His storytelling is compelling and sophisticated. He sometimes goes overboard in trying to include too many elements of Fleming, can get bogged down in details and descriptions, and occasionally strays into implausible territory.
Horowitz also curiously introduces at least one curse word to the thoughts of Bond (Fleming’s Bond never cursed), and creates an interesting but somewhat deflating, and certainly unnecessary explanation for Bond’s sense of fashion and his signature choice of mixed drink.
Although it seems the effort put into his Bond books fluctuated, at his best, Horowitz exhibits an impressive writing style and pleasing turns of phrase that often measure up to and even exceed Fleming’s weaker outings. Trigger Mortis is easily the Bond continuation novel, and all three rank among the best of the continuation novels.

Forever and a Day (Anthony Horowitz, 2018) my rating as a Bond book, 7 of 10
(no big action first 200 pages – way too much exposition, detail about settings, food, history, background of characters; things that Fleming accomplished in a few sentences or paragraphs go on for pages at a time)
— Year it takes place: 1950 – “five years after VE Day” and newspaper headline about American attack on Chinju Korea (June 1950); Bond “about 30”
— Takes place in: Stockholm Sweden; London; France – Marseilles, Antibes, Menton, and French Riviera including Nice, Cap Ferrat, and Monte Carlo casino; Los Angeles

— Plot summary: While on his first assignment as 00-agent is to investigate the death of his predecessor 007, Bond develops an affinity for casinos and fine hotels, where he meets a former British operative who introduces him to many of the things that become his identity, including his preferred cigarettes, asking for martinis to be shaken, not stirred, and how to make love more maturely. A curious sudden lack of drug activity sparks Bond to visit a grotesquely obese Corsican heroin kingpin, who admits to killing the previous 007 and threatens to disfigure Bond with hydrochloric acid. Bond gets away and meets the Corsican’s multi-millionaire partner who is the head of a film studio and planning to make heroin readily available on the streets of America to avenge the loss of his sons in WWII due to America’s role in the invasion of Normandy. Bond is once again captured, held aboard the partner’s ship on its way to New York, and injected with drugs, but once again escapes and follows the American to Los Angeles, where Bond becomes suspicious of a CIA agent purportedly helping Bond but whose allegiance is to his government that has a conflicting agenda.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Loelia Ponsonboy – expanded here as office secretary to all three Double-Os, whose desks are in a row near each other. Bond meets her only when he is promoted to 00-section.
  — Expansion of this comment by Bond in Casino Royale: “I’ve got the corpses of a Japanese cipher expert in New York and a Norwegian double-agent in Stockholm to thank for being a Double O.” – To earn his Double-0 (“something he wanted more than anything in the world”), Bond first assassinated Japanese cipher man from 50 yards away using telescope on a rifle to 36th floor window of NYC skyscraper, then stabbed a knife in neck of man in bed in Stockholm.
  — Full-time housekeeper May – expansion here: was already “elderly” and had started a year earlier (so, 1949 – and she was with him through Fleming novels 15 additional years into mid-1960s, and continuation novels until 1968-ish, being replaced – but still alive – by her niece in 1969 Solo novel)
  — Bond carries .25 Baretta
  — Bond parents died in climbing accident when he was 11 – new here: left him trust fund he got at age 18; he was raised in Kent in place called Pett Bottom near Canterbury, just south of Nackingham; now lives in Chelsea in Regency House near King’s Road
• New:
  — Women: Madame 16 (aka Sixtine) – first to introduce Bond to martini “shaken, not stirred,” but not because it is better, but rather because it is exact opposite way her late husband preferred his vodka martini for a specific better taste; and tells Bond about Morlands in London (cigarettes he preferred in Fleming novels), and shows Bond how to make love more slowly, maturely, not “like a schoolboy”
  — Villains: grotesquely obese Jean-Paul Scipio; wealthy businessman Irwin Wolfe
  — 007 killed – agent who had same number before James Bond
  — Bond has Jaguar XK 120 but doesn’t like sluggishness. Mark II Continental Bentley in storage in need of total retrofit.
• Miscellaneous
  — only three Double-Os initially, 007, 008 & 0011 – Bond was striving to be the fourth with a different number until 007 was killed – then Bond took that number when promoted.
  — Tosca opera attended by Stockholm man assassinated by Bond – same opera depicted ten years before this book published in movie Quantum of Solace
  — Shame Lady – extravagant large house on hill overlooking French Riviera port (name Fleming was considering for his Jamaica house before he decided on Goldeneye)
  — Once again Bond (and/or 007 who preceded him) responsible for death of an innocent young woman he/they entice into helping him/them, as often happened in Fleming
  — discusses “the many girls he (Bond) had slept with, often only once” and “…the first girl he had slept with had been six years older than him – he’d still been in his teens (16)…” even though Fleming’s Bond did not have casual one-night-stand sex, especially through first six books where he was only with women he often fell in love with and wanted to marry (with exception of mention in third book Moonraker of Bond’s evenings spent playing cards and making love with one of three different married women.)
• Notable writing:
  — Once again Bond (and/or 007 who preceded him) responsible for death of an innocent young woman he/they entice into helping him/them, as often happened in Fleming
• Notable turn of phrase:
  — “He (Bond)… had deliberately chosen to go through life with the same carelessness as the little ivory ball that span around a roulette wheel, blithely ignoring the certainty that it must one day drop into double zero.”

Trigger Mortis (Anthony Horowitz, 2015) my rating as a Bond book, 9 out of 10
(Compellingly original story and yet features the kinds of situations, the kind of women, and a villain that all feel very satisfyingly familiar – it starts a little slow and finale action sequence with subway is pretty preposterous and elongated but otherwise it is filled with frequent action, adventure, all manner of encounters, and a very clever, intriguing, and engaging story, characters, developments, and twists-and-turns)
— Year it takes place: 1957 (“Twelve years after the war,” “This is 1957, not the Middle Ages”) two weeks after Bond first met Pussy Galore in Goldfinger mission (she was head of organization staffed by lesbians)
— Takes place in: London; Nürburgring race track in Germany; New York – Coney Island

— Plot summary: Two weeks after the 1959 mission of Goldfinger, Bond is recuperating with Pussy Galore when he is assigned to train to drive in the Nürburgring Grand Prix and take out a Soviet driver planted by SMERSH before he can knock out the British driver in order to win the race. Meanwhile, Pussy is kidnapped and painted gold while standing naked until Bond rescues her, and she falls for Bond’s female racing instructor whom Bond was about to try to sleep with. While investigating the castle of a suspicious wealthy and enormously obese and odd-looking Korean millionaire/megalomaniac who is driven to evil by a horrific childhood, Bond discovers suspicious photographs of a U.S. space rocket in development that was recently sabotaged. Working with a female U.S. Secret Service agent in New York, they learn that the businessman is plotting to destroy the U.S. space program by staging a fake rocket crash in the middle of Manhattan using a train carrying a replica of the sabotaged rocket. Both agents are taken prisoner and Bond is buried alive but manages to escape and the U.S. agent arrives on motorcycle to help him chase down the train. Crisis averted, Bond returns to London where he is ambushed by the vengeful Soviet/SMERSH race car driver.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Walther PPK; SMERSH
  — Pussy Galore; Bond housekeeper May; his secretary Loelia Ponsonby; Moneypenny, M, Bill Tanner
  — Bentley Mark VI – here it is said Bond bought it days after Hugo Drax (Moonraker) crushed it beneath 14 tons of newsprint as Bond pursued him through Weald of Kent.
  — La Vie en Rose – here a band is playing the song (in Casino Royale, it was playing in lounge when Bond was with Vesper Lynd before she betrayed him, and in Diamonds Are Forever Bond saw the same song on a record and chose not to play it because of Vesper memory)
  — reference to Doctor No book prior to Goldfinger: “A bit like that chap in Crab Key”; plot once again involves evil genius (Sin) working with SMERSH to try to cripple American space program
• New:
  — Women: Jeopardy Lane introduced 1/3 into story; driving instructor Logan Fairfax
  — Villains: Jason Sin (Korean name: Sin Jae-Seong); race car driver Ivan Dimitrov
  — Others: Henry Fraser, former Double-O agent who got a bullet in his spine now working per M request as Duty Officer, invaluable member of team.
• Miscellaneous
  — based on an outline Fleming had written for a potential TV episode that he called Murder on Wheels that involved Bond in the world of Grand Prix auto racing in which he was mentored by real-life British racing legend Stirling Moss (replaced with fictional character here, who connects with Pussy), Horowitz seamlessly blends 400-500 of Fleming’s own words (about 1 1/2-pages) of description and dialogue into Chapter Two, also including a scene with M and Tanner meeting in M’s office, and uses the name Murder on Wheels as the title of Chapter Seven.
  — Bond recuperating in his flat with Pussy Galore, still the dark-haired lesbian (or presumably bi-sexual) of the novel; Bond wakes up in bed with Pussy; now they were lovers “The conquest particularly satisfying to Bond” because “until he came into her life” she “had felt nothing but suspicion and hatred towards men.”
  — Obscenity: Bond thinks “godammit”; Fleming’s Bond had no obscenities
• Notable writing:
  — lots of well-researched historical accuracy and nuggets re AAA-approved motel and decorations/signage
  — Bond once again careless (as in Fleming books): believes woman he just met (Jeopardy Lane) and leaves her alone in hotel room with secret photos he just stole from Sin so he can go buy her some clothes – returns to find her and photos gone
  — Woman once again saves Bond multiple times (as in Fleming) – Jeopardy Lane rescues Bond in car from motel ambush, then at end on motorcycle after Bond is too late to catch Sin train – drives him to catch up to Sun train at a station stop
• Notable turn of phrase:
  — “His eyes were small, prisoners of his face.”
  — “Silence sat in the room, an uninvited guest.”
  — “Amplified by the stillness, the noise of the M60 was unbelievably shocking… It was the sort of death that a British spy deserved. He stopped. The silence was almost physical as the night fought to regain its command.”
  — “He could feel the pressure in his ears and despite his efforts, the madness of panic and despair were close by, the other side of a mental barrier that could collapse at any minute.”
  — “Bond’s nostrils were filled with the scent of dust and defeat.”
  — “Rain swept into London like an angry bride.”
  — “Three bullets spat their ugly farewells…”

With a Mind to Kill (Anthony Horowitz, May 2022) my rating as a Bond book, 8 out of 10 (Horowtiz emulates many elements of Fleming’s storytelling structure and style, though, in several ways this is an a-typical Fleming Bond woman. Minor criticisms include a fun but overload of references to Fleming’s Bond characters who do little of note, and the story twisting itself into pretzels rationalizing the plausibility of M sending Bond back to Russia for more brainwashing only months after the first time and justifying the faked death of yet another prominent member of MI6 only months after they faked Bond’s death. Nonetheless, Horowitz’s writing makes this an easy and enjoyable read that measures among best of the continuation Bonds.)
— Year it takes place: December 1963-March 1964 (Begins two weeks after the end of Fleming’s last novel The Man with the Golden Gun – roughly November 1963 (just a few months after You Only Live Twice; four months after Russians sent Bond back to London, three months after Bond tried to kill M at beginning of The Man with the Golden Gun; Bond’s first mission was 12 years earlier than now) Ends March 1964 (per Acknowledgements that Kruschev was removed in October 1964, six months after this book ends)
— Takes place in: Moscow, including 13, Sretenka Street in Meshchansky District; The Park (convalescence home in Brenchley England); M office bldg near Regent’s Park, ninth floor (only mentioned)

— Plot summary: Bond gets Eyes Only coded cable from PRISM (M) while convalescing in Jamaica. Must return immediately to London for urgent briefing; travel under same alias of Mark Hazard with Transworld Consortium; pick up Passport and travel docs supposedly at “Miami Hotel.”
When M learns of the emergence of a new Russia state security successor agency to Smersh (Stalnaya Ruka aka Steel Hand, combining KGB, GRU, Smersh & Stasi) from an insider mole who gets caught and killed, he pretends Bond’s attempt on M’s life in The Man with the Golden Gun was successful, fakes his own death, and sends Bond to Moscow to become the replacement insider.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Walther PPK (brief mention, not carried by Bond)
  — M
  — At funeral for M: Miss Moneypenny standing with widow Lady Frances Messervy (their only son died in the war); Porterfield (head waiter at Blades gentleman’s club in Park Street just off Pall Mall); Sir Charles Massinger (permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence); Sir James Molony (Nobel Prize-winning neurologist and first man at scene of death and pronounced M dead); Bill Tanner (M’s chief of staff)
  — Mary Goodnight (Bond’s former secretary and lover, nurse in Jamaica; golden hair, deep sunburn, perfect bosom and hips. Bond felt her arms too tightly around him and needed an excuse to get away)
  — housekeeper May
  — clinical psychologist Major Colin Cunningham (C.C.)
  — Karl Brenner (an MI6 mole, born 1927, huge facial scar from car accident; Communist/East German member of Stasi providing insider info to MI6 in exchange for possible defection but killed by The Hammer before it could happen)
  — Bond’s black oxidised Ronson lighter
  — Bond’s Morland cigarettes with three gold rings and blend of Turkish and Balkan tobacco in gunmetal case
• New:
  — Women: Katya Leonova (Russian, small body of a gymnast)
  — Villains: General Nicholai Grubozaboyschikov (with shaven skull, who headed Smersh during the From Russia With Love mission); Lieutenant General Kirilenko (head of KGB’s Department V); Erik Mundt (aka The Hammer, East German Ministry for State Security – the Stasi); Alexander Shelepin (first Deputy Prime Minister of Soviet Union, head of Stalnaya Ruka at Kremlin); Colonel Boris (left eye pale grey, right eye brilliant blue); Ivan Aranov (Soviet agent)
  — Stalnaya Ruka (successor agency to SMERSH, the Russian organization of three Red Army counter-intelligence agencies, also operating amongst leaders in the Kremlin, but secretly).
• Miscellaneous
  — Death of Admiral Sir Miles Messervy announced a few days before his fake murder by Bond (Bond sent back to London four months ago, six weeks being treated at The Park, then six weeks tracking down Scaramanga in Caribbean)
  — A week before funeral, M was alive and Bond was on flight from Kingston International to London via Bermuda under same Mark Hazard alias used for The Man with the Golden Gun mission – this happening after only a few days of recovery from being shot by Derringer bullets steeped with poison by Francisco “Pistols” Scaramanga
  — Background: Bond had been attached to British embassy in Moscow for a few months more than 12 years ago, just before joining the Double-O section
  — Reference: George Blake: responsible for deaths of dozens of MI6 people
  — M:
  + educated at the Nautical College, Pangourne, then at HMS Brittania, Dartmouth. Service in the Dardanelles, commander of the battlecruiser HMS Renown, director of Naval Intelligence. Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, Admiral. Companion of the Order of Bath and chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.
  + Buried in Gosport cemetery.
  + murdered in same room as his predecessor (who was shot with single bullet between the eyes); shot with a bulb-shaped pistol loaded with cyanide.
• Notable writing:
  — 259 pages is by far the shortest of the three Horowitz Bond novels
  — each chapter numbered and named, like Fleming (but no longer common)
  — many elements of Fleming’s storytelling structure and style – story divided into three parts; Bond woman not introduced until second part; no gadgets; only a single brief mention of a Walther PPK (not used by Bond, nor a Baretta); Bond doesn’t drive a cool car; the story jumps ahead then drops back in time; Bond makes multiple misjudgments and survives by luck and help of others; has self-reflective moments and considers resigning; and leaves readers uncertain about Bond’s future career and survival. But — perhaps a reflection of the 2020s sensitivities — the Bond woman does not have a suggestive or cutesy name, is not the traditionally physically voluptuous woman of Fleming’s stories and spends 16 pages pouring out her long sad story to Bond.
  — References to nearly three dozen characters from Fleming’s Bond universe, plus
  — A Luke/Darth Vader relationship revelation between two key characters and a Sonny Corleone-style gunning down of a pivotal player in a busy public place.
• Notable turns of phrase:
  — “The car was a two-tone Hillman Imp, grey on beige, the colours trapped in a loveless marriage.”
  — “Bond needed death, or the threat of death, as a constant companion. For him, it was the only way to live.”
  — “He had lost the comfort of certainty.”
  — “He felt the nose break and saw the curtain of blood come down.”
  — “…a pair of surgical lamps, leaning forward as if they were trying to eavesdrop…”

Colonel Sun (Robert Markham aka Kinglsey Amis, 1968) my rating as a Bond book, 6.5 out of 10 (better than Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me; on par with Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun. Second act slow, with long detailed descriptions of settings and discussions of plans with little forward movement of story; Third act: suddenly Bond/Sun confrontation happens very quickly, and Sun provides Bond with every detail of his mission and his plan for inflicting pain on Bond – even more than usual for Bond villain. Credibility issues: Sun looks away as he lets female prostitute secretly cut ropes around Bond’s hands and sneak him a knife; Bond doesn’t finish killing Sun, allowing Sun to recover, kill more people and cause more damage.)
— Year it takes place: The Man with the Golden Gun happened “last summer” (so, presumably late 1964 or early 1965 since TMWTGG started in November, presumably 1963)
— Takes place in: Aegean Islands Vrakonisi; Athens

— Plot summary: When M is kidnapped and Bond is almost captured, Bond learns that Colonel Sun of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was planning to attack a Middle East détente conference hosted by the Soviet Union and blame Great Britain, creating a world war. After an attack on Soviet headquarters, Bond and the Greek team up with a pretty resistance fighter and find Sun’s headquarters but Bond gets knocked out, captured and tortured. A girl at the house cuts one of Bond’s hands free and gives him a knife.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — MI6 office in Regent’s Park
  — Bond flat off King’s Road (no mention of housekeeper May)
  — M’s Quarterdeck home
  — Transworld Consortium continues (introduced in Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun as replacement to Universal Exports)
• New:
  — Women: Litsas
  — Villains: Colonel Sun; former Nazi Von Richter
  — Other characters: Ariadne Alexandrou
• Miscellaneous
  — Best book jacket of any Bond book (first printing) – Salvador Dali-esque
  — A paragraph of Sun’s description of philosophy of torture is spoken nearly verbatim by Blofeld in 2015 movie Spectre movie 47 years later, although Sun has several manners of torture, none of which is drilling into Bond’s brain/ear as in Spectre.
  — no notable special gadgets or cars (like Fleming, unlike movies)
  — M abducted at his Quarterdeck home where Bond shows up
• Notable writing:
  — no clever Bond girl names
  — no chases or notable action scenes
  — no clever turn of phrase

Devil May Care (Sebastian Faulks, 2008) my rating as a Bond book, 8 out of 10
— Year it takes place: begins after Bond is in last two weeks of medically-mandated three month sabbatical following desk/office work for 18-months after The Man with the Golden Gun (so, starts somewhere between late 1965 and early 1966 since TMWTGG started in November, presumably 1963 thru maybe summer 1964)
— Takes place in: France; Tehran (Caspian Sea resort near Tehran); Leningrad; Finland; Paris

— Plot summary: After recovering from the events of The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond is sent to Iran (Persia) to investigate the intentions of the owner of pharmaceutical factories who has a deformed hand like a gorilla. After learning the man plans to flood Europe with cheap drugs and launch a terrorist attack on the Soviet Union via a hijacked British airliner to provoke them into retaliation against the UK, Bond is captured with the intent to be used as bait during a heroin delivery across the Afghan desert and fly the airliner into Russia.
After longtime Bond ally Felix Leiter provides aid and helps expose a double-agent, Bond escapes with a pretty woman helping him in the investigation, who turns out to be a potential new agent 004 who would have replaced Bond if he failed in his mission.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Felix Leiter still working for Pinkerton’s; René Mathis; Bond’s Scottish house maid May; Loelia Ponsonby returns as Bond assistant – new here: she returns after having two sons (Holly Campbell had been replacement until promoted by M)
  — references to Bond personal habits such as hot shower followed by cold, eating scrambled eggs, putting hair across door to see if anyone opens it while he’s out, references to previous missions and people, Morlands cigarettes
  — Fleming Universal Exports name restored after Fleming changed it to Transworld Consortium in his posthumous book The Man With the Golden Gun and it was continued in Amis’ Colonel Sun
  — Bond still driving his Bentley (Continental)
  — Mentions SMERSH but not SPECTRE
  — Sunbeam Alpine (in Fleming’s Doctor No and TMWTGG) – here Scarlett drives it
• New:
  — Women: twin sisters Scarlett Papava (and “twin” Poppy)
  — Villains: Dr Julius Gorner – unusually large and hairy left hand with thumb that isn’t opposable but more like a finger; Gorner henchman bodyguard Chagrin
  — Others: agents Darius Alizadeh (Tehran) and JD Silver (an in-situ agent); taxi driver Hamid
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond walks into hotel to check-in all disheveled in swim trunks after underwater encounter, very similar to Die Another Day movie six years earlier in 2002 (but in Caspian Sea resort near Tehran as opposed to Hong Kong in DAD)
  — villain plot similar to movies You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Tomorrow Never Dies – staging an attack and making it look like it was another country doing it; this time Great Britain attacking Russia
  — USA supposedly angry at Great Britain for not supporting USA in Vietnam
  — Big twist at end involving real identity of new agent 004
  — Scarlett/004 thought of reference to Bond’s “bad time” in Tokyo
• Notable writing and turns of phrase:
  — Faulks “writing as Ian Fleming”
  — “His big body crumbled at the knee and fell forward into the dust of his homeland.” (agent in Tehran, Darius Alizadeh, who gets shot just after phoning in important coordinates to CIA)

Solo (Willam Boyd, 2013) my rating as a Bond book, 5 out of 10 (nothing like Fleming; way too descriptive of every – and unlikely and second-guessing – thought by Bond and the environment, trying too hard to mention every physical and personality characteristic ever written by Fleming about Bond; way too much detail of every person’s physical description and every room, etc. Absurd that Bond suggests an attack strategy and is asked to lead an Army attack against another Army. Too many characters seem to die, then either disappear and/or aren’t really dead: Blessing, Breed, Adeka, and even Bond himself.)
— Year it takes place: 1969; Bond celebrating 45th birthday – born 1924 per Bond bio in You Only Live Twice
— Takes place in: London; Africa – fictional Dahum Zanzarim, Bayswater, Port Dunbar; Washington D.C.

— Plot summary: When assigned to immobilize an African rebel leader to end an artificially prolonged civil war, Bond teams up with local female agent and the two them are kidnapped by a mercenary assisting the rebels, mistaking Bond for an English mercenary. They escape but the woman leaves Bond to walk alone through the jungle for two days before he is picked up by his previous mercenary captor who now believes Bond to be with the French press and allows Bond to direct a military operation for the rebels. That success leads to an audience with the leader Bond sought, who is now terminally ill. While attempting to leave on a plane, Bond learns that a billionaire is funding a bogus African aid charity that is really supplying weapons to Africa, but then Bond’s identity is learned and he is shot in the chest by the local female agent and the mercenary captor.
After recovering, Bond defies M’s orders and goes on a solo mission of revenge to destroy the headquarters of the bogus African aid organization in Washington D.C. as well as his mercenary captor, the billionaire, and the rebel leader who didn’t die after all.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Flat in Chelsea; former housekeeper May; much of the food Fleming wrote that Bond prefers
  — M; Q branch; Bond still using Walther PPK
  — Vehicles: Sunbeam Alpine – in Fleming’s Doctor No and The Man with the Golden Gun; Bond looking to replace his old Bentley
  — Transworld Consortium again (Fleming’s new name for Universal Exports in posthumously-published The Man with the Golden Gun)
  — Felix Leiter still with Pinkerton’s
• New:
  — Women: Bryce Fitzjohn; Bond’s new secretary Araminta Beauchamp; Blessing (Efua Blessing Ogilvy-Grant)
  — Villains: Solomon Adeka; Jakobus “Kobus” Breed – Rhodesian white man with damaged face and eye, initially a tormentor, then tentative ally of Bond, then villain again
  — Others: housekeeper Donalda, niece of May (from Fleming); Quentin Dale of Q branch; Bond driver Christmas; Gabriel Adeka, older brother of Solomon; Colonel Denga; Hulbert Linck; Sunday – Dahum government-assigned assistant to Bond (young man); Felix Leiter’s nephew Brigham introduced as CIA agent
  — Vehicles: Bond drives Jensen FF after looking at Jensen Interceptor I; Austin 1100 van
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond’s driver’s name is Christmas, 14 years after Dr. Christmas Jones in The World is Not Enough movie
  — Kobus Breed has constantly weeping eye like Le Chiffre seven years earlier in Casino Royale 2006
  — Bond rents Mustang Mach 1 (first introduced in 1968 – as seen in 1971 Diamonds Are Forever movie
• Notable turn of phrase:
  — ” ‘I think I may be able to answer that question, now,’ Felix nodded. Bond could see clarity was visiting him, also.”

 

MODERN BOND 1980s-90s

 John Gardner 14 original Bond continuation novels (1981 – 1996)

Gardner’s Bond of the 1980s is slightly older than Fleming’s Bond (flecks of grey hair), is more health-conscious (drastically cut back on his alcohol intake with exception of his martini still shaken, not stirred, and he drinks tea instead of coffee, though he still smokes), enjoys 1920s jazz music, sings aloud by himself in the car, and occasionally prays for help. He’s still surrounded by the same people at MI6 (M, Moneypenny, Tanner) – even though the 00-section has been eliminated, but much later revived as “Two Zeroes” — as well as allies such as Felix Leiter, along with Felix’s wife (Felix now working for Pinkerton’s). Bond lives in the same home on King’s Road in Chelsea, still managed by Scottish housekeeper May, and keeps to his showering routine (piping hot water followed by cold) and preferred breakfast (egg boiled for three-and-a-third minutes with toast, jam, and coffee). He still enjoys a steady stream of attractive women with memorable names (Lavender Peacock, Percy Proud, Heather Dare, Easy St. John, Flicka von Grüsse), to one of whom he becomes engaged, and one even manages to have sex with Bond while he’s unconscious! His missions still take him to casinos and exotic and diverse locations, from the ice fields of Finland, aboard a military cruiser in the North Sea, to an aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, a cruise ship in the Caribbean, and dozens of the world’s most famous cities. He occasionally runs up against vestiges and successors of his nemesis villains like Blofeld and organizations such as SMERSH and SPECTRE. And there are plenty of new larger-than-life megalomaniacs threatening everything from nuclear power plants to the assassinations of actual current heads of state mentioned by name (Thatcher, Bush, Gorbachev), and royalty at EuroDisney (Princess Diana and sons William and Harry). Early on, Bond drives a Saab and gets his gadgets from a woman in Q-branch called Q’ute, with whom he also gets sex along with a sanction from Felix to get the same from his daughter Cedar (she works at U.S. State Department). But Bond soon steers away from all of that, opting for women not so close to home and for a custom Bentley. The stories often take place in America (Florida Keys, Texas, Louisiana, New Orleans, New York, Hilton Head South Carolina, Idaho, the mountains of Washington, and even in the White House Rose Garden). Gardner’s adventures and his personality for Bond more closely resemble the movies than Fleming, and are filled with action, gadgets (1980s electronics such as night-vision glasses and a Sony Walkman for recordings; and early computer-era technology), and are filled with pun and double-entendre humor that is most akin to the Roger Moore/Pierce Brosnan cinematic incarnations.
Here are my notes on all 14 of Gardner’s original Bond novels…

Licence Renewed (1981) my ranking: best Gardner Bond novel (very enjoyable, satisfying, and credible updating of Bond and his trappings for the 1980s; more enjoyable than several of Fleming’s lesser Bond novels)
— Year it takes place: early-mid 1980s (“…adapting to the changing pressures of the 1970s and early 1980s”)
— Takes place in: Ascot race track in England; Scotland

— Plot summary: Despite the “00” section having been abolished, M retains Bond as a troubleshooter, continues to call him 007, and assigns him to pretend to be a mercenary for hire to meet and gain the confidence of a man intending to hijack six nuclear power plants around the world simultaneously. Bond is to feign a happenstance introduction of himself at a horse race track and investigate the man’s castle in Scotland, which is also home to his pretty young ward, whom he wants killed.

• Fleming holdovers:
  — Morelands of Grosvenor Street (cigarettes) with three gold rings below the filter (now custom-made special blend with slightly lower tar)
  — Flat off King’s Road (in Chelsea)
  — Transworld Exports at HQ overlooking Regent’s Park (blend of Fleming’s original Universal Exports and change to Transworld Consortium in The Man with the Golden Gun and continued as TC in Colonel Sun)
  — Bond blue eyes, 3-inch scar down right cheek, cruel mouth
  — Q Branch armorer Major Boothroyd (still not called Q – never in Fleming novels); Moneypenny; Chief of staff Bill Tanner
  — reference to Casino Royale book mission that left scar on hand that had letters/insignia of Smersh
  — introduces himself as “Bond, James Bond”
  — reference to gunmetal bullet case previously saving Bond’s life from bullet by Smersh
• New:
  — Saab 900 Turbo, silver (sold Bentley Mark II after selling Bentley)
  — Bond bought cottage in the country – “five miles out of Haslemere and a good mile from the nearest village”
  — Bond flecks of grey in his dark hair
  — Double-O section abolished a couple years earlier, replaced personally by M with “Special Section” “…and you are it.” – Bond lone agent; M still calls him 007
  — Smersh now Dept Viktor (no mention of Spectre)
  — Bond “drastically cutting back – for most of the time – on his alcohol intake…”
  — Bond woman: Lavender Peacock, 26 (at end her rightful name restored, Lavender Murik, Lady Murik of Murcaldy
  — New pretty female exec in Q branch (along with Boothroyd) called Ann Reilly nicknamed Q’ute (spent a year in the field)
  — Gun: Browning 9mm but also .38 Cobra revolver; or heavier Colt .45 for more power and ammo; and secretly in Saab glovebox a Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum (Walther PPK dropped by MI6 for jamming too many times, finally in 1974 for royal bodyguard during attempted abduction on Princess Anne)
  — Villain/henchman, Anton Murik; Caber, big burly Scotsman
  — Gadgets from Q branch – Nitefinder glasses (early night vision), lock picks and currency in belt and credit card, etc.
• Notable writing:
  — primary plot based rather shamelessly on The China Syndrome movie of two years earlier
  — climactic battle inside a giant cargo plane (Starlifter) with giant back door opening and ramp unfolding, as would be the setting and similar situation for scene from The Living Daylights six years later, which also added fight while hanging out on net
  — similar writing style to Fleming of starting some stories with what happened and then backtracking to explain what led to it
  — no humor/witticisms from Bond, same as Fleming
  — no notable turns of phrase

For Special Services (1982) my ranking: second best Gardner Bond novel
— Year it takes place: early-mid 1980s
— Takes place in: mostly USA, mostly at Texas ranch near Amarillo, also New York, Louisiana, New Orleans

— Plot summary: Bond teams up with daughter of Felix Leiter to pose as art dealers and investigate the revival of SPECTRE and its intent to take over America’s military space satellite network under a new leader, a bi-sexual art collector at his ranch in Texas where Bond engages him in a car race and engages his frustrated one-breasted wife in sex before he is captured and brainwashed into believing he is an American general assigned to inspect NORAD, and later learns the woman is the daughter of SPECTRE founder Ernst Stavro Blofeld before being given permission by Felix to have sex with his daughter.

• Fleming carryovers and alterations:
  — re-introduces SPECTRE and Blofeld (former associate of Blofeld, German Kurt Walter Treiben)
  — still Transworld Exports (blend of Fleming cover organizations Universal Exports and Transworld Consortium)
  — references to former wife Tracy di Vicenzo; love Vesper Lynd; women Gala Brand (now Mrs. Vivian with three kids and house in Richmond – she and Bond exchange Xmas cards), Honey Rider, Tiffany Case, Doraino Vitale, Solitaire, Pussy Galore, Kissy Suzuki
  — reference to Felix and his missing arm and leg but says after CIA he works for private security firm (not Pinkerton’s)
  — reference to Blofeld’s Castle of Death in Japan and Bond strangling him to death (Fleming’s You Only Live Twice)
• Gardner carryovers:
  — same car silver Saab 900 Turbo now nicknamed “The Silver Beast” – custom bullet proof; very bright aircraft light for blinding oncoming drivers; automatic fire extinguisher
• Changes from first Gardner novel:
  — Bond and “Q’ute” Ann Reilly now occasional lovers (Moneypenny aware of this)
• New:
  — Women: Felix Leiter daughter Cedar Leiter works for U.S. State Dept and is on secret assignment by CIA (unbeknownst to Felix) to partner with Bond on this mission
  — Bond gun Heckler & Koch VP70
  — new low-tar cigarettes personalized for Bond by H. Simmons of Burlington Arcade maintaining three gold rings of his previous Morland’s brand
  — Gadgets: a few more gadgets in car and briefcase and belt in addition to Nitefinder glasses again (night vision) – provides very long rope and grappling hooks during fall down elevator shaft, explosives, etc
  — villain car for fun: Mustang GT 350 Shelby-American
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond girl/villain Nena born with one breast (turns out at end to be Blofeld’s daughter)
  — Cedar Leiter guesses that the main villain must be a “faggot”
• Notable writing
  — still little humor or Bond witticisms (like Fleming but unlike movies)
  — starts like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service with event outcome and then backtracking to explain what led to it (repeats this device too many times throughout)
  — revisionist bit page 69: “In the… novels of his adolescence, Bond had read time and again of mad professors, or masterminds, whose aim was to dominate the world.” (presumably reference to Fleming Bond novels)
  — First two-thirds good but gets way too muddled in last third with two main characters becoming other characters
  — too many sudden new locations and detailed issues
  — absurd last-second twist that makes no sense, and hedging on creepy with potential sex between Bond and Leiter’s daughter sanctioned by Leiter.

Icebreaker (1983) my ranking: one of four in middle group of Gardner Bond novels
— Year it takes place: nothing specific; presumably 1982/83
— Takes place in: mostly Finland – Helsinki and border of Russia

— Plot summary: Bond gets several weeks of driver training before dealing with double-crossing CIA, KGB, and Israeli Mossad agents to root out the leader of a murderous army, a one-time Nazi SS officer who now believes he is the new Adolf Hitler.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — First Gardner brief reference to Bond housekeeper May (59 pages in)
  — reference to Tracy’s death, and villains Hugo Drax, Goldfinger, Blofeld
  — SMERSH carried on as Department V
• Changes from previous Gardner novel:
  — yet another new Bond gun, Heckler & Koch P7 9mm automatic (instead of VP70), much closer to Bond’s previous Walther PPK
  — Q’ute just brief passing mention
  — After revival of Blofeld/SPECTRE through Blofeld daughter in previous book, now Hitler/Nazi Party revived through Nazi SS officer Aarne Tudeer/Count Conrad von Gloda and his daughter Anni Tudeer/Rivke Ingber.
• Notable writing:
  — too many very trite comments, ie:
  > > Paula: “Ask and it shall be given”
  later…
  > > M to Bond: “…this thing’s not going to be a piece of cake…”
  > > American CIA agent Brad Tirpitz known as “Bad” Brad (replacing Felix?)
  > > “Well, Bond thought… there was no law against looking.”
  — introduction of attempts at humor and Bond witticisms/sexual double-entendres that aren’t funny and even clunky (and often followed by words having to explain that it was supposed to be funny), ie:
  > > Paula opening her robe: ‘… that is, if you feel up to it”
  > > Bond: “Up to it is the way I feel.”
  later…
  > > M to Bond (sending him off to Madeira): ” ‘…this thing’s not going to be a piece of cake, as they used to say in World War II.’ Bond: “Not even Madeira cake?’ M actually allowed himself a short laugh.”
  > > Mossad female agent described to Bond as deadly and stunning beauty: “I’d hate to be up against her.” Bond: “In the professional sense, of course.’ Bond could not resist the quip.”
  > > sexy Mossad agent Rivke: “We really do have to watch each other’s backs…” Bond: “You’re quite right, Rivke. Though I’d be much happier watching your front.'”
  — introduction of attempts at humor and Bond witticisms/sexual double-entendres that aren’t funny and even clunky (and often followed by words having to explain that it was supposed to be funny), ie:
  — Absurd number of back-and-forth false identities of three main characters – both women and brash CIA agent (or is he?)
  — Very little plot; Bond does very little; and far too much detail about process and equipment/buildings/weapons – all feels like tedious filler where story should be
  — Bond not very competent, ie:
  > > Bond completely wrong about loyalties of two primary women: Paula Vacker with whom he had long-term intermittent relationship; then suddenly believes she has really been a Nazi villain all along, conspiring against him, then just as suddenly believes she is really on his side and helping him.
  > > Likewise, Bond is convinced that the daughter of the villain Count Conrad von Gloda/Aarne Tudeer (Rivke Ingber/Anni Tudeer) is his only ally and sleeps with her, then is stupidly suckered into telling her vital state secrets, and only then finds out her real identity.
  > > Bond almost never takes charge at key points but just follows others around, first Russian agent, and then Paula.
  > > Bond does very uncharacteristic things that don’t seem like a tough agent, re looking at Paula during impending air raid and crossing his fingers

Role of Honor (1984) my ranking: tied as one of two worst Gardner Bond books
— Year it takes place: nothing specific but came into legacy (inheritance) during summer or boring office work 18-months ago
— Takes place in: Paris; London; casinos, restaurants & hotels in Monaco/Monte Carlo/Cannes/Nice/Beaulieu/Garavan/Menton; Nun’s Cross near Banbury Cross in England

— Plot summary: After Bond receives a large inheritance and is accused of improprieties, MI6 uses the situation to create a false story about Bond being ousted from the Service and places his services on the open market in order to attract the representatives of a resurrected SPECTRE.
Bond first spends a month in Monte Carlo with an attractive CIA agent to learn computer programming, and is then hired by a SPECTRE agent with a computer game company and sent to a terrorist training camp, where is assigned to a mission to destabilize the Soviet Union and the United States by forcing them to rid the world of their nuclear weapons.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Brief mention twice of Major Boothroyd
  — remembers his dead wife Tracy
  — woman says to Bond, “The place is electronically buttoned like Fort Knox – you remember Fort Knox?”
  — SPECTRE reintroduced
• Gardner carryovers:
  — Bond cigarettes: H. Simmons specials
  — brief mention Q’ute
• Changes from previous Gardner novels
  — custom-built Bentley Mulsanne Turbo
  — gun: ASP 9mm, American-made modification of 9mm Smith & Wesson
• New:
  — Yet another successor to Blofeld (Tamil Rahani) and return of SPECTRE
  — Bond women: Percy (Persephone) Proud; Lady “Red” Freddie Fortune; “Sinful” Cindy Chalmer
  — Villains: Tamil Rahani (succesor to Blofeld, head of SPECTRE) Dr. Holy/Prof Sinjon Finese – Jason (Jay) Autem Holy aka Professor Jason St. John-Finnes (prounounced Sinjon-Finese); woman Davide “Dazzle” St. John-Finnes; General “Rolling” Joe Zwingli; Peter Amadeus (turns out to be helpful); Tigerbalm Balmer; Happy Hopcraft
• Notable writing:
  — Bond messes up multiple times:
  > > Bond once again rescued by woman, this time during climax by woman he’s in bed with (Percy) who senses impending danger before Bond does; she rolls out of bed naked, grabs gun and kills would-be assassin (using blow-dart with nicotine)
  > > Bond misses clues that he and Percy are being followed for days in Rome, Athens, and islands
  > > Bond doesn’t realize his gun isn’t loaded when initiating an attack in blimp that requires a bullet in gun being fired
  > > Bond multiple times misses chances and incorrectly assesses situations
  — Poor writing:
  > > silly juvenile description of Bond being aroused (while watching Percy train him on computer):
  > > Uncontrollably, Bond suddenly felt hot and flushed. He almost reached out a hand to Percy’s shoulder.
  > > For the first time Bond noticed a little mole on Percy’s neck that almost made him jump with delight.
  > > amateurish “guess who?”: …he spotted Tamil Rahani, seated on one side of St. John-Finnes, and – guess who? – good old Rolling Joe Zwingli on the other
  > > cliches (eye-rolling trite): “As they say James, that’s for him to know and you to find out.”; ” I’ll be right up the proverbial tributary without oars, as they say.”; “…if they cop me with these stuffed down my shirt… Well – she ran a finger over her throat.”; “… as pure as the proverbial driven.”; ‘Stranger than fiction.”
  > > Bond sings aloud while driving alone – inexplicably an old Boy Scout song, I’ve Got Sixpence, aka As we go rolling rolling home (I’ve got twopence to lend, and twopence to spend, and twopence to send home to…) “His voice trailed off. He could not bring himself to sing the last line…” – to my wife, poor wife

Nobody Lives Forever (1986 – first of only two instances of a two-year gap between Gardner novels) my ranking: one of three in second lowest group of Gardner Bond novels 
— Year it takes place: nothing specific but reference in 1996 final Gardner Bond novel Cold Fall to Bond first meeting Sukie Tempesta in 1985
— Takes place in: Salzburg, Rome and throughout Europe, Florida Keys/Key West

— Plot summary: When the new head of SPECTRE, who is dying from wounds suffered in his previous encounter with Bond (in Role of Honor), uses Moneypenny and Bond’s housekeeper to get revenge against Bond by creating a reward for anyone who can capture or kill him, Bond teams up with a mysterious female bodyguard to navigate a gauntlet of longtime allies who may or may not be trying to help him or kill him.

• Changes from previous Gardner novels:
  — May, Bond’s Scottish housekeeper (from Fleming novels)
  — Department Eight under KGB Directorate S (descendant of SMERSH)
• Fleming carryovers:
  — Miss Moneypenny (visiting May convalescing in Salzburg); May, Bond’s Scottish housekeeper
  — Marc-Ange Draco (reference to him being Bond union ally and father of Tracy)
  — SMERSH (which is said to have evolved into Department Thirteen, then Department V independent of KGB, then dissolved and now reformed under KGB Directorate S as Department Eight)
  — SPECTRE
• Gardner carryovers:
  — Transworld Exports
  — Colonel Tamil Rahani (successor to Blofeld, head of SPECTRE – just 4 months left to live; doesn’t appear till last 41-pages/14% of novel)
  — Bond cigarettes: H. Simmons specials
  — custom-built Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, Saab 900 Turbo (rented for secret nighttime drive from Salzburg hotel to Klinik)
  — gun: ASP 9mm, American-made modification of 9mm Smith & Wesson
  — Q’ute
• New:
  — Women: Sukie Tempesta; Nannette “Nannie” Norrich (also villain)
  — Gadgets: miniature tool kit sewn into Bond’s belt & pants:
  — Department Eight of Directorate S, KGB (formerly SMERSH and Department V)
  — Villains (in addition to little-seen Tamil Rahani): MI6 double-agent in Rome Steve Quinn; briefly Salzburg bad cop Inspector Heinrich “Der Haken” (The Hook) Osten; Nannette “Nannie” Norrich (also villain)
• Miscellaneous:
  — Bond wears jeans
  — “For the first time in years” Bond prayed.
• Notable writing
  — More dreadfully juvenile groaner double-entendre humor and amateurish and sexist writing about sexual attractions and women. A few of numerous examples:
  > > “the body… revealed possible depths that any red-blooded male would be eager to plumb.”
  > > “Bond… could not allow the girls to start chattering – that could go on for hours.”
  > > “…the girls, when not indulging themselves in the trivial pursuits of their world – which ranged from haute couture to the latest scandals of their particular sets…”
  > > From Bill Tanner: “Don’t let her get behind you.” Bond: “I was thinking of the opposite, as a matter of fact.”
  > > Nannie referring to her pistol being holstered on her upper inner thigh: “Not the most comfortable place to have a weapon; well, not THAT kind of weapon anyway.”
  > > Salzburg police official to Bond: “Let us take it from the top, as they say in musical circles.’ Bond had a foolish image of Mozart, in front of a small orchestra, saying, ‘From the top – a one-two-three-four.’
  > > Double-agent Steve Quinn responding to Bond noting how many weapons he carries hidden on his body: “In this game, I’ve always found it useful to be like a Boy Scout and be prepared.”– Once again Bond makes careless mistakes and is outwitted, outsmarted, and frequently rescued by women (this happened to a lesser degree and less frequently in Fleming novels, but more than most people would expect or remember since this seldom happens in movies):
  > > first he agrees to accept unknown passenger Nannie at the peak of impending danger to himself from numerous people he doesn’t know – and Nannie is a friend of another woman he just met under suspicious circumstances who is also now accompanying him
  > > Bond frisks Nannie but misses the gun belted to her inner thigh because he didn’t want to be indelicate. Thank goodness because they soon get into a situation in which Nannie saves Bond with her quick shooting.
  > > Sukie later saves Bond’s life from a bat attacking him in shower.
  > > Bond gets suckered into a set-up by Quinn and Klinik doctor, then easily taken hostage by them in middle of airport.
  > > Sukie and Nanny again come to Bond’s rescue in their own boat and shooting/killing Quinn, the doctor and boat pilot as Bond is being taken in bindings by them on a boat to SPECTRE/Tamil Rahani for ransom
  > > Bond completely misses that Nannie is a double-agent and gets captured by her– Once again way too much detail about everything – food, buildings, clothing, weapons, etc – that isn’t integrated smoothly but repeatedly bogs down the flow/narrative
  — Additional convenient secret Q weapons (tool kit, explosives) suddenly materialize in lining of Bond’s pants just when he needs exactly that

No Deals, Mr. Bond (1987) my ranking: one of four in middle group of Gardner Bond novels
— Year it takes place: nothing specific noted but opening Seahawk mission took place 5 years ago (published 1987); “passage of years” since Bond and Q’ute had sexual relationship
— Takes place in: London, Ireland, Paris, Hong Kong

— Plot summary: Five years after a mission in which Bond extracted two of four young women and a man on a failed secret assignment in East Germany involving top Soviet agents, the women and people involved with the case are being brutally assassinated one-by-one and having their tongues cut out. Bond is sent unofficially by M, whose job is on the line, to find the remaining members before they suffer the same fate, but without any official support to Bond from MI6.
As Bond gathers members and relies on former agency friends for help, he soon realizes one or more of the people who appear to be targets, allies or villains, are not who they seem to be, and therefore no one can be trusted. And soon Bond becomes a target himself of the notorious and seldom-seen head of a Soviet agency formerly known as SMERSH.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — May, Bond’s Scottish housekeeper
  — Miss Moneypenny
  — SMERSH, brief reference of SPECTRE
  — Blades (M’s club)
  — Hugo Drax (referenced memory at Blades club sounds like not that long ago)
  — Bond bride killed on wedding day (a reference as if it wasn’t long ago – people in office still don’t mention it)
• Gardner carryovers:
  — custom-built Bentley Mulsanne Turbo; another rental Saab
  — gun: ASP 9mm
  — Q’ute (“passage of years” since they had sexual relationship), she meets Bond in Paris with list of gadgets
  — Gadgets: collapsible metal baton
  — Russian Dept 8 of Directorate S (formerly SMERSH)
• New:
  — Women: Heather Dare/Irma Wagen; Ebbie Heritage/Elizabeth Larke
  — Gadgets: Pen that shoots 3 steel darts
  — Villains: Colonel Maxim Smolin of the GRU; General Kolya Chernov/Blackfriar – chief investigating officer of Dept 8; Mischa (Chernov right-hand man)
  — Other characters: Big Thumb Chang; Jungle Baisley/Franz Wald Belzinger (huge man); Susanne Dietrich; Norman Murray (Ireland Special Branch, assisted Bond then became turncoat mercenary); Swift (local agent, assisted Bond then immediately murdered); Richard Han (Swift’s Hong Kong young assistant saved Bond’s life near end, then immediately got head blown off)
• Miscellaneous: mention of author Kingsley Amis (first Fleming/Bond continuation author of Colonel Sun)
• Notable writing:
  — Once again way too many characters and way too many of them with multiple names, even several more introduced in last third of story:
  > > Heather Dare/Irma Wagen
  > > Ebbie Heritage/Elizabeth Larke
  > > General Kolya Chernov/Blackfriar
  > > Jungle Baisley/Franz Wald Belzinger
  > > Colonel Maxim Smolin of the GRU
  > > Mischa
  > > Big Thumb Chang
  > > Susanne Dietrich
  > > Norman Murray
  > > Swift
  > > Richard Han
  — And again, too many tired expressions – ie:
  > > “…the more chance Murray would have to be the U.S. Fifth Cavalry and ride in, at the eleventh hour, to his rescue.”
  > > “…nothing personal, it’s just business.”
  > > Bond says “Apart from that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln.”
  — Gets much more engaging halfway thru when Smolin turns out to be Bond ally against Chernov, but that doesn’t last long before Smolin disappears from story.
  — Once again Bond allows himself to do things that will obviously result in falling in to enemy hands – ie spending way too long at hotel when he knows Chernov is just a couple hours behind him
  — Overkill repeated references to Dept 8 and Chernov being formerly SMERSH

Scorpius (1988) my ranking: one of four in second tier of Gardner Bond novels (first half ranks as second best by Gardner)
— Year it takes place: unspecific but contemporary – published 1988
— Takes place in: England, Hilton Head Island SC, White House Rose Garden

— Plot summary: After being connected to the death of a woman in London, Bond and a beautiful undercover IRS agent work together to investigate a cult society that brainwashes members to carry out terrorist acts against British politicians that is run by an arms dealer for several terrorist organizations, who takes the IRS agent hostage.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M, Bill Tanner, Miss Moneypenny, May (housekeeper)
  — morning routine of shower of piping hot water followed by cold; routine scrambled egg/tea breakfast
  — Two references to Tracy as Bond prepares to fake-marry Harriet Horner
• Gardner carryovers:
  — custom-built British racing green Bentley Mulsanne Turbo
  — “Q’ute” Ann Reilly, assistant to Major Boothroyd
  — weapons: ASP 9mm; collapsible baton
  — Bond fake identity James Boldman
  — Bond likes jazz music: playing in elevator was Gertrude “Ma” Rainey w/ jazz group playing 1920s New BoWeevil Blues
• New:
  — Women: Harriett Irene “Harry” Horner (IRS undercover investigator); Trilby “Trill” Shrivenham; Pearlman daughter Ruth;
  — Gadgets: briefcase w/ hidden Browning Compact 9mm pistol, homing device pen
  — Villains: Vladimir Scorpius/Father Valentine head of The Society of the Meek Ones;
  — Gadgets: Sony Walkman for recording; briefcase with hidden Compact Browning 9mm; medical kit: lock-picking tools; wire; and convertible tool that could be nine-inch knife, hacksaw, file or jimmy
  — Other characters: Chief Superintendent Bailey (Special Branch); Lord Basil Shrivenham; Sgt “Pearly’ Pearlman; Moneypenny deputy Ms Boyd; safe house guards Danny De Fretas and Todd Sweeney; CIA head of station at US Embassy David Wolkovsky
• Miscellaneous:
  — Insider reference – Bond watched in-flight movie The Untouchables starring one of his favorite actors as a Chicago cop (Connery)
• Notable writing:
  — Exorcist-like voice of Trilby sounding like girl possessed by satan as in many satanic movies popular in late 70s & 80s.
  — More instances ala Fleming where aftermath described before dropping back in time to explain what happened that led to result, ie Bond gets urgent call about shooting at safe house, then reader is taken back to a detailed third-person description of assailants approaching/attacking safe house as it’s happening, then jumping reader ahead in time again to Bond arriving at safe house.
  — Woman once again saves Bond’s life (common in Fleming) when Harriett shoots assailant.
  — Poor attempt at metaphor with mixed metaphor: “The buzz saw of the radio alarm cut into the deep cocoon of sleep like a vandal’s knife.”
  — Several times bad guys very quickly and easily penetrate supposedly very secure MI6 buildings without much explanation, such as two safe houses, one of which is MI6 most secure one, and very extra tight security line to protect dignitaries
  — Bond keeps wrongly suspecting multiple allies of being moles
  — The religious cult leader plot and villain preceded similar duplicitous character a year later in Licence to Kill, but feels as if inspired by all the religious and cult leaders who began to be exposed as frauds in late 1970s/early 1980s ie Jim Jones, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker
  — Bond has many uncharacteristic thoughts of insecurity and second-guessing ie, wondering if going through with sham marriage will be considered blasphemy; wonders if should escape now or wait another day
  — Bond goes through with wedding ceremony to Harriett Horner
  — Lots of set-up with anti-climactic payoff and Bond blunders, ie days (pages) of Bond and Harriett prep for escape from Scorpius house only to literally instantly run into a wall, then Harriett quickly bitten multiple times by water moccasin snakes they specifically sought to avoid and slowly dies while running and Bond pulling her along and through water without Bond even knowing she’s dead, then learns none of the escape was even necessary as CIA had already come to rescue, then Bond easily chases down, sends Scorpius to his death, then Pearlman’s daughter Ruth easily escapes house full of Bond and CIA men; very end blah
  — Bond lets vengeance supercede good judgment – kills Scorpius when he was needed alive
  — Bond allowed to call shots over CIA, imbed w/ Prez Secret Service despite not doing anything helpful along way

Win, Lose or Die (1989) my ranking: one of three in second lowest group of Gardner Bond novels 
— Year it takes place: 1988-89 or 1989-90 (military exercise Landsea ’89 takes place right after Christmas / New Year’s); reference to USSR’s Gorbachev and Glasnost (1986-91); reference to Bush being Prez (Jan 1989) – published 1989 (3 years after 1986 Top Gun)
— Takes place in: HMS Invincible aircraft-like Through Deck Cruiser in North Sea; Ischia island and town of Forio in bay of Naples; piloted Harrier over Irish Sea, not far from Isle of Man; England – Yeovilton, Wedmore, Cheddar (Somerset) and Woodstock, Blenheim (Oxfordshire)

— Plot summary: Bond is returned to active Royal Navy duty and promoted to Captain (from Commander) to provide security against a terrorist organization trying to infiltrate and destroy a top-secret Royal Navy aircraft carrier-based summit of top world leaders, but not before he has to avoid being assassinated as he is flying a Sea Harrier training exercise and then again while on holiday in Italy with a new and very serious love interest who is seemingly killed instead.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M; chief of staff Bill Tanner
  — M home Quarterdeck
  — 2 brief references to Bond’s wife Tracy
• Kinglsey Amis/Colonel Sun carryover (and OHMSS movie):
  — reference to M’s Quarterdeck butler/servant Chief Petty Officer Hammond (he and his wife were killed)
• New:
  — Women: First Officer Clover “Irish Penny” Pennington; Saphii Boudai, Beatrice Maria da Ricci; Nikki Ratnikov
  — Cars: BMW 520i dark blue (borrowed from MI6 carpool); Lancia; rented Fiat
  — Other vehicles: Sea Harrier (Martin Baker Type 9A Mark 2) flown by Bond off aircraft carrier
  — Villains: Ali Al Adwan aka Julian “Tomato” Farsee; Bassam Baradj; Abou Hamarik (BAST strategist); Felipe Pantano (Spanish Harrier pilot)
  — weapons: 9mm Browning automatic
  — Other characters: Prime Minister Thatcher and Presidents Bush and Gorbachev; M’s Quarterdeck house servants Mr. and Mrs. Franco Davison (minder/bodyguard) – replaced the murdered Hammonds
• Miscellaneous:
  — “A footnote: Though it has only been hinted at, and never admitted in print, Bond almost certainly saw action during the Falklands War. It has been said that he was the man landed secretly to assist and help train civilians before the real shooting war started.”
  — Bond “often lived by the three F’s – Find, Fornicate, Forget.”
• Notable writing:
  — Very unusual to have Bond interacting with real-life dignitaries like Prime Minister Thatcher and Presidents Bush and Gorbachev, all in very friendly and familiar manner, and Thatcher making reference to Bond previously saving the lives of she and Pres Reagan; also references To “Charles and Di” and “Andy and Fergie”
  — Bond once again seems very ineffective – while head of security on ship several imposters come aboard, there are multiple incidents of murders, hostage-taking, and kidnapping of all three world leaders, lets himself be tricked into believing a woman he falls in love with has died (Beatrice Maria da Ricci), his poor handling of situation causes another woman he just made love with to die, and he even walks into a trap and gets himself caught by a woman he once again wrongly trusted; then carelessly allows himself to be spotted while tailing villain, insists on taking out villain himself but gets tricked once again and is about to be killed before being spared yet again by woman who shoots villain.
  — many more trite cliches:
  > > Admiral: like hornets around a honeypot
  > > describing Clover: dark haired, black-eyed beauty;
  > > Daggers were invisibly hurled in Bond’s direction from the eyes of three young officers…
  > > M: “…until you set sail for distant shores; …out to get you, …take you out, …ice you, …buy the farm for you
  > > Davison: “if you follow my drift”
  > > Tanner: knock your socks off
  > > make the Petty Office an offer he could not afford to refuse
  > > “The man said it all – power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
  > > “This time he really was on his own. Up the proverbial creek without a paddle.”
  — once again, way too many characters and once again some appear to die but then return
  — more schoolboy sexual innuendo:
  > > Clover banter to Bond: I always feel better out of uniform
  > > Bond: her laugh was throaty and infectious, something he would not really mind catching himself; when Clover references her father, Bond recalls visiting his brother at “a stately home which Bond had enjoyed in more ways than one,” after which Clover asks if he knows her cousins and Bond responds ” ‘Intimately,’ with a completely straight face.”
  > > Davison: “Mrs. Davison is fit as a flea, and twice as nippy, if you follow my drift.”
  — Bond gives rare commentary on politics to Clover late in book offering his perspective on how each country will respond to ransom demand, then pontificates about idealism, all of which also seems fairly simple-minded.
  — Bond feels instant deep emotional potential long-term connection to Beatrice, as Bond did with many women in early Fleming novels
  — Poor integration of locale and objects; brings flow to a halt; ie, immediately after Bond is summoned to view shockingly murdered bodyguard. Interest level instantly peaks but then just as quickly dissipates as he goes into lengthy description of the colors and configuration of the room on the ship. It’s also at this point Gardner has Bond ponder the trivial differences between British and Americans use of several inconsequential expressions.
  — once again juvenile humor, this time presented through a character who makes a joke about President Bush gone “quail” hunting (his VP was Dan Quayle).

Brokenclaw (1990) my ranking: one of four in second tier of Gardner Bond novels
— Year it takes place: September 1990 – a year after previous mission with Royal Navy (1989-90?), “We will have the huge crash of 1990”; Perestroika in USSR (1986-91)
— Takes place in: Victoria BC briefly; San Francisco and aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay near Treasure Island, briefly in Saint Francis Ca; briefly in Manhattan; Washington – Chelan mountains

— Plot summary: A charismatic half-Blackfoot, half-Chinese philanthropist Bond meets while on vacation in Victoria turns out to be the man MI6 soon wants Bond to investigate regarding stolen
submarine technology and a threat to the United States stock exchange by going undercover in New York with a pretty Chinese woman.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M; Bill Tanner; Bond Scottish housekeeper May
  — vodka martini shaken not stirred
• Gardner carryovers:
  — weapons: Asp 9mm
  — Q’ute (Ann Reilly)
  — Bond still Captain (promoted from Commander in Win, Lose or Die)
•  New:
  — Women: Cuckoo – Lieutenant Commander Wanda Man Song Hing; Chi-Chi Sue/Sue Chi-Ho/Jenny Mo
  — Vehicles: F-14 Tomcat (Bond a passenger)
  — Villains: Lee Fu-Chu aka Brokenclaw (parents Chinese and Crow Indian – left thumb on wrong side of hand); “Bone bender” Ding; Frozen Stalk Pu; General Hung Chow H’ang; FBI double-agents Nolan and Wood
  — Other characters: Navy Commander Ed Rushia
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond makes passing comment about losing his virginity at 14 (in response to Chi-Chi saying she lost hers at 16: “I’ve got you beat by nearly 18-months”)
  — “…Bond’s beloved western highlands of Scotland…”
  — “…a visit to Glencoe, the site of… and the birthplace of the father he had hardly known.”
• Notable writing:
  — Inventive and fun short action scene where larger enemy helicopter maneuvers to lower down above Bond’s helicopter, forcing it down.
  — Fleming styles:
  > > Fleming technique of several times jumping ahead in time to describe some significant development and then dropping back to explain what led to it.
  > > As always, notes Fleming’s Bond preferences for breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, and shower starting scalding hot and then cold, etc
  — many more trite cliches:
  > > imagines housekeeper May telling Bond “curiosity killed the cat”
  > > Chi-Chi: “Like peas in a pod.”
  > > re Ed Rushia: “He was… between a rock and a hard place.”
  > > Ed Rushia: “…but the ice man cometh, as the playwright sayeth.’
  > > Time, as the lawyers say, is of the essence.
  > > Bond’s feet hardly touched the ground as he covered the distance to…
  — duh!
  > > “Bond followed, his feet crunching on what he suspected was gravel…”
  — more Bond ineptitude
  > > Bond is so smitten with the sensual lips and charisma of villain Lee when he sees him for first time that he doesn’t hear important things Lee is saying
  > > Bond forgets he isn’t carrying a weapon even after spending many minutes luring a man (“Porpoise”) who is following him into a secluded street and not until he is in a compromising situation
  > > Bond doesn’t recognize that the man following him is a government agent even as he pulls out ID and assumes a stance with gun, and Bond does nothing but watch the agent get his skull crushed several times by thugs
  — juvenile humor and references to current pop culture:
  > > Rushia pulling out .357 Magnum: “This is my Make My Year gun.” (re Dirty Harry’s Make My Day line in “Sudden Impact” seven years earlier)
  > > Bond: “… feel as though I’ve gone four rounds with Mike Tyson.’
  — kinda taking elements from recent movies: Indian torture endurance test similar to A Man Called Horse (1970)
  — Pretty absurd ending, Bond suddenly accepts deal to challenge Brokenclaw to excruciating torture endurance test instead of just killing him or capturing him

The Man From Barbarossa (1991) my ranking: one of four in second tier of Gardner Bond novels
— Year it takes place: a couple weeks from Dec. 26, 1990 thru Jan 3, 1991 thru Jan 9 (Bond presumed dead), thru Jan 17 US attack on Iragi forces in Kuwait, 1991; tied to UN deadline of Jan 15 for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait – published 1991
— Takes place in: London; outside Moscow

— Plot summary: James Bond is teamed with an Israeli Mossad agent and two agents from the French Secret Service to pose as a TV crew and infiltrate a group that is murdering government officials until the Soviet government puts a long-missing World War II holocaust criminal on trial as an elaborate diversion from their real mission of sabotaging perestroika/glasnost and supplying Iran with nuclear weapons to destroy the United States.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M, Chief’s Personal Assistant Moneypenny, Chief of Staff Bill Tanner
  — Bond ground-floor flat on King’s Road in Chelsea; showers scalding hot then stinging cold; breakfast two freshly boiled eggs and juice; alias James Boldman
• Gardner carryovers:
  — weapons: ASP 9mm
  — Bond still Captain (promoted from Commander in Win, Lose or Die)
• New:
  — M office and others at MI6 HQ in Regent’s Park refurbished with straight-backed chrome skeletal chairs, steel and glass desk, watercolors replacing paintings of great naval battles
  — Women: Stéphanie Annie Adoré (33) aka Harriet Goode (French agent); Nina Bibikova (undercover agent)
  — Villains: Josif Vorontsov; General Yevgeny Andreavich Yuskovich (Josif Vorontsov’s first cousin);
  — Other characters: Mossad agent Pete Natkowitz; French agent Henri Rampart aka Robert Brace; Russian agent Boris Ivanovich Stepakov; Professor Vladimir Lyko; Nigsy Meadows; Michael Brooks, Emerald Lacy
• Miscellaneous
  — a note about Bond getting much older?… Bond thought… “She was enough to… make an old man very happy.”
  — sexy Bond ally has sex with Bond while he is unconscious. huh? Is that even possible? Why? They have sex again when he regains consciousness.
• Notable writing:
  — breakaway from formula with very little action, location-hopping, a prominent villain; it’s mostly detective-style observation, dialogue, and sleuthing
  — begins with promising fresh angle on Holocaust but then turns out that is all a fake set-up for plan to retaliate against Glasnost and perestroika
  — once again way too many characters and once again too many turn out to be different people than they appear
  — More trite expressions, ie “no way to run a railway”
  — Too many metaphors, none of which make sense together: Nina had the kind of voice that made Bond think of velvet and honey. (huh?) A voice smooth and deep as a cello. (cello, honey, velvet?)
• Notable turns of phrase:
  > > The smile was warm, almost 100 degrees in the shade, with teeth as white as fake Christmas snow.
  > > (Describing retirement communities in Florida) These people live out the September of their years in the mild climate, shielded from the sun by a well-ordered rearrangement of nature’s bounty, from poverty by their own good sense and careful management, and from the would-be criminal by electronic devices which alert the nearest police headquarters in seconds.
  > > …her style was so in keeping with the image of power-woman that men were intimidated by her, closing their minds before she even opened her mouth. She had the same effect upon women, who had been known to turn away before they even had time to envy her figure.
  > > …taking in the whole picture-his brain developing it in Kodachrome with a soft filter.
  — M and MI6 once again seem to be remarkably ineffective and late to getting caught up to be of any assistance

Death is Forever (1992) my ranking: one of four in middle group of Gardner Bond novels
— Year it takes place: Year takes place: five days mid-October through Oct 14, 1992, then funeral November, then finale in December (reference to October 1990 Germany reunification being two years ago: Eurotunnel opening “next year, 1993”)
— Takes place in: Berlin; Paris; Venice

— Plot summary: The unusual deaths of a British Intelligence agent and an American CIA agent working in Germany send James Bond on a mission with a female CIA agent called Easy who has no field experience to track down the surviving members of a Cold War-era intelligence network who are being assassinated one-at-a-time by a maniacal devotee of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union communism. While trying to sort out the true identities and allegiances of many double agents, Bond also learns that the maniacal Wolfgang Weisen is plotting to kill off the leaders of each country in the new European Union in a terrorist attack on the soon-to-open Eurotunnel.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M, Chief of Staff Bill Tanner; Q’ute; housekeeper May
  — M’s office in Regent’s Park
  — Bond’s Boldman alias; scalding hot shower followed by cold water; King’s Road ground-floor flat in Regency Building
  — Bond makes vodka martini
  — Tells Praxi she has “all the time in the world”- instantly recalls saying to “another woman” in “another time another place”
• Gardner carryovers:
  — M chrome & glass office w/ “ultra-modern chair”
  — weapons: ASP 9mm
  — “Captain” Bond (promoted from Commander in Win, Lose or Die)
• New:
  — Women: Elizabeth Zara “Easy” St. John, Praxi Simeon
  — Villains: Markus “Mischa” Wolf aka Wolfgang Weisen; Monika Haardt; Cold Claude Gaspard; Big Michelle; Dorian; Dominic, Giorgio
  — Weapons: updated Sykes-Fairburn commando dagger; Buck Master survival knife
  — Gadgets: silver pen with push-button Mace and CS gas; gold pen shoots two .22 bullets; new larger briefcase with hidden compartments holding dagger and knife with grappling hook-like anchor pins in handle fashioned as knuckle-duster; windbreaker pocket with Haley & Waller Dartcord rapid-opening systems with strips of explosive charges; belt with three cartridge-size stun grenades and steel Leatherman pliers/knife/screwdriver/file, and buckle with two tines that telescope and are picklock and wrench
  — Other characters: Ford Puxley aka Vanya; Elizabeth Cearns aka Libby Macintosh; Harry Spraker aka Herr Wachtel; Gus Wimper; Bruin
• Miscellaneous
  — Insider reference: Bond says “Someone once said I look like Hoagy Carmichael with a cruel mouth” (after Harry Spraker says some authors of thriller novels get away with simply describing their characters as looking similar to movie stars like Rex Harrison or Sean Connery)
• Notable writing:
  — Again uses Fleming style of presenting an action out of blue and then backtracking to describe what led to it.
  — rare clever turn of phrase: after being hit by Bond… “Harry Spraker and consciousness parted company.”
  — Again Bond is uncharacteristically careless, sloppy, and falls victim to simple traps, two in first 75 pages: allows Easy to open doors without checking first, thus they’re overtaken by men with guns; near end when his poor awareness results in most all his team members being killed and villain hostage Weisner being taken during a sucker ambush; doesn’t ensure pilot delivers critical warning to authorities while standing around, resulting in many more dying; caught completely unaware by a surprise attack from inside his flat at very end that could have killed the one remaining Bond woman Praxi if not for her own wits and dexterity
  — Once again way too many characters and too many who are not who they appear to be and too many with multiple identities and nicknames; it’s annoying for Bond and reader to spend whole book trying to figure out who everyone really is and who can be trusted
  — Once again Bond falls in love – this time quite suddenly – “knowing this was the woman for him”; ‘I did fall in love with you, Easy…” and just seconds before she is killed, then “his eyes were stinging with tears.”
  — More juvenile humor, sex references:
  > > “Call me Sprat.
  As in Jack who could eat no fat?
  Very droll, Captain Bond.”
  > > (Sitting next to woman who abducted him at gunpoint) Bond felt the
  hard button of a garter against his thigh…surrounded by a large
  amount of flesh. Under different circumstances it could have been
  quite sexy.
  > > attempt at Bond movie-style quip misses: after the villain driver of a
  van is beaten and dispatched, “Driven to it, I suppose,” Bond smiled.
  > > “…since the success of Mr. Stallone, I suppose St. Silvestro is the
  patron saint of boxers.” He thought that was no end of a joke…
  > > Sprake talking to Bond: “I think (he) did a little torture and bondage
  on the side – no pun intended, James.
  > > Bond refers to a character’s 44 magnum several times as his
  “make- my-day” gun (a goofy reference to 1983 Clint Eastwood
  Dirty Harry movie Sudden Impact)
  — Again, too many expressions and all noted “as so-and-so says,” re:
  “…you’ll both have to assume the position – as they say in the
  U.S. of A. – against the wall.”
  — Once again Bond seems at a loss what to do in critical moment near end – desperately and stupidly asking villain for advice on how to get villain past his people

Never Send Flowers (1993) my ranking: one of four in middle group of Gardner Bond novels
— Year it takes place: late 1992 before December (series of killings 1990-92); EuroDisney (later renamed Disneyland Paris) opened April 1992
— Takes place in: Interlaken Switzerland; London; Rhineland Germany, Milan & Lake Como Italy, Athens very briefly

— Plot summary: Following a series of seemingly-unrelated high-profile murders in Rome, London, Paris & Washington, where a white rose colored with blood-red on the petals is left at each scene, Bond is requested by MI5 to assist them with the murder of one of their own in Switzerland. Bond partners with a lovely Swiss agent called Flicka to investigate the case, which leads to a famous eccentric international stage actor who has recently withdrawn from public performances to his castle on the Rhine. After being tricked by the actor and his obsessively loyal sister and twin brother, Bond is assigned to track down the killer before he strikes again at the newly-opened EuroDisney the night before Princess Diana and her Prince sons William and Harry are due to spend the next day.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M and 9th floor office in Regent’s Park; Moneypenny, Chief of staff Bill Tanner; housekeeper May
  — Transworld Consortium (from TMWTGG and Amis’ Colonel Sun – Gardner called it Transworld Exports in first two and Nobody Lives Forever)
  — toast and boiled egg for breakfast; shower of scalding hot water followed by freezing cold water
  — Bond flat in Regency house off King’s Road
  — “Bond, James Bond”; vodka martini
  — Flicka advised to go to Shrublands
• Gardner carryovers:
  — Bond still Captain (promoted from Commander in Win, Lose or Die)
  — Ann Reilly (Q’ute)
  — 9mm ASP automatic
  — Saab 9000 CD Turbo (first mention of his car since second book For Special Services in 1982 other than twice rented Saab 9000 in 1986 No Deals Mr. Bond and 1987 Nobody Lives Forever)
• New:
  — Women: Fredericka (aka Freddie) “Flicka” von Grüsse (Swiss intelligence later hired by M for MI6); Charlotte Helpful; Ms Carmel Chantry (MI5)
  — Villains: David Dragonpol (actor), Maeve Horton “Hort” (Dragonpol sibling)
  — cars: rental BMW, rental white Porsche
  — Other characters: Mr. Gerald Grant (MI5); twin brother Daniel Dragonpol; Bodo Lempke (Swiss police detective); Gianne-Franco Orsini (Italy version of M)
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond utters a Connery Bond line from 1967 YOLT: “The things I do for England”
  — mention of Tosca opera, which was featured in 2008 Quantum of Solace
  — Reference to jumping water spouts at Disney Epcot Center in Florida
• Notable writing:
  — Bond is more detective than agent (asks for next assignment not to be so much detective work) and he’s not good at it; Flicka has all the good theories, observations and suggestions
  — Bond once again goes on mission on his own time
  — Once again borrows from a movie; this time Westworld for scene at Dragonpol castle that turns into fake time-travel with automatons as characters in scenes for benefit of costumed visitors
  — once again uses very topical references: Princess Diana and Prince sons William & Harry; EuroDisney – lengthy gushing fanboy promotional-type descriptions last 20 pages (possible concession for approval from Disney?)
  — Bond loses a tail by casually, inconsiderately and uncharacteristically setting fire to his own flat, causing much damage and cost/time to firefighters and inconvenience to building owners and tenants.
  — Once again Bond is careless:
  > > allows intruder to come in hotel room and access his briefcase while having sex with Flicka, and even has chance to catch intruder but believes her when she says she is maid and doesn’t check briefcase lying in open – results in loss of important document
  > > walks blithely into suspicious and dangerous rooftop meeting that winds up in shooting and killing
  — despite above reckless and costly behavior above, the Palace security and MI6 demand Bond be called to protect Princess Diana and two sons at EuroDisney by finding and taking out assassin
  — once again and as in Fleming, Bond woman (Flicka) saves him – distracts villain in castle, allowing Bond to jump him, then Flicka finds passage out and figures how to open secret door
  — once again Bond woman Flicka very outdated jealous – threatens to gouge out eyes and rip out hair of Q’ute
  — once again Bond thinks about marriage with woman of story Flicka – M even asks Bond if he hears wedding bells
  — Once again Bond and others interject phrases from songs and poems that seemed forced and/or silly – when being briefed by M and serious MI5 officer at beginning, Bond inappropriately sings lines from 1940s Cole Porter musical Kiss Me Kate (song Wunderbar).
  — More sophomoric Roger Moore-style comments:
  > > asked if he brought his dinner jacket: “Like certain credit cards, I never leave home without it.”
  > > When he finds opening to secret door, “Open Sesame”
  — once again many characters not who they appear to be, plus an outrageous red herring twin brother of Dragonpol.
  — ends with tease of big changes coming for MI6

SeaFire (1994) my ranking: one of three in second lowest group of Gardner Bond novels 
— Year it takes place: 1994, March/April – “Monday the 11th” (cruise company showing profit by Feb ’94; April 8 Microglobe One meeting date some days/weeks after Bond/Flicka on disastrous cruise at very beginning; “over a year” since they met in previous book – late 1992; next book references Bond mission with Flicka spring ‘94)
— Takes place in: Caribbean (cruise); London/Cambridge; Seville Spain; Israel (Tel Aviv/Jerusalem); Wasserburg Germany; San Juan Puerto Rico

— Plot summary: Flicka returns as the woman Bond now intends to marry and assists him again, this time tracking the activities of popular English billionaire Sir Maxwell Tarn in Spain, Israel, Germany and uncovering his desire to create the next Nazi empire by selling illegal weapons worldwide and preparing a diabolical scheme. When Tarn vanishes along with his beautiful Lady Tarn, and with M getting more frail and confined to bed and Bond in command of the renamed Two Zeroes section of the new British Intelligence and Security Services, Bond must figure out how to navigate (circumvent) the politics of the committee that oversee his section — MicroGlobe One – in time to undermine Tarn’s plan to be unleashed off the coast of Puerto Rico that could destroy the islands, the ocean, and much more.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M; Bill Tanner (now Secretary MicroGlobe One)
  — Bond flat off King’s Road in Chelsea
  — M residence Quarterdeck (edge of Windsor Forest)
  — brief reference to Bond past loves Tracy (and her Lancia car, and reference to Blofeld killing her), Vesper, Honeychile, Domino, Kissy
  — martini shaken not stirred; Bond alias James Boldman
  — Felix Leiter, with walking stick to compensate for prosthetic leg and arm (mentions losing them to shark in LALD), called in by CIA for special assignment with Bond in Puerto Rico
• Gardner carryovers:
  — Fredericka “Flicka” von Grüsse (from immediate prior book Never Send Flowers)
  — “Captain” Bond
  — Saab; 9mm Browning ASP
  — Pete Natkowitz (Mossad agent in Man from Barbarossa)
  — Q’ute Ann Reilly, now head of Q branch
  — Cedar Leiter – cameo (Felix daughter from second book, For Special Services)
• New:
  — Women: Lady Trish Nuzzi Tarn
  — Villains: Sir Max Tarn (Tarn Cruise Lines); henchmen: Tarn security man Maurice Goodwin; Mr. Archibald/Mr. Archie/Anna and Mr. Cuthbert/Cathy; Connie Spicer; huge “retard” Kurt Rollen; psycho sadist Beth
  — vehicles: Triumph Daytona motorcycle; VW Corrado (rental)
  — gadgets: powerchute (ultralite)
  — new Bond secretary Chastity Vain
  — Bond agency: Two Zeroes (randomly aka Double Ohs, Double Zeroes) – new 00 section of new British Intelligence and Security Services. Bond put in command as Director. Answers to committee dubbed MicroGlobe One (M on committee as head of “CSIS”). Two Zeroes HQ a Georgian house in Bedford Square near Oxford Street.
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond proposes to Flicka – says he’s never felt the way he feels about her in his life (different emotional connection than w/ Tracy) – becomes even more infatuated/in love and is still with her and planning to get married at end of this last Gardner book
  — Bond says he’s never opened can of beer
• Notable writing:
  — Not nearly enough justification for Bond’s hate and need for personal vengeance against Tarn with whom he has little interaction, not even final in-person confrontation
  — Again borrows blatantly from previous Bond movie (DAF) for effeminate characters of henchmen Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Archibald, who dress in pink and with similar hairs as Mr Kidd and Mr Wint same speech pattern:
  “Instantaneously, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Archibald.”
  “Couldn’t have put it better myself Mr. Cuthbert.”
  (They turn out later to actually be women.)
  — Again Bond is careless:
  > > doesn’t anticipate bad guys intervening on motorcycle at his rendevous, causing a death and near-loss of documents
  > > Bond leaves star witness and victim Trish alone overnight with two women they don’t trust, then all three are gone next morning.
  > > hiding outside Tarn house Bond not paying attention as guards and dogs find him
  > > Bond tries to sneak on flight to Atlanta, captured by two British Security Service officers
  — More sophomoric Roger Moore-style attempts at humorous comments:
  > > after explosion during romantic walk, Flicka: “Did the earth move for you too?”
  > > meeting a woman called Heidi, Bond says, “I think I once read a book about you, Heidi.”
  — Again Flicka unreasonably jealous of Bond’s secretary and M’s nurse, conflicting with her strong and modern woman personality
  — Again Bond constantly reminded of lines from poems, songs, and literature.
  — Again many characters have double-identities or are not who they appear to be – Mr Cuthbert and Archibald turn out to be women
  — Again reviving Nazis – Tarn trying to become the next Hitler — and once again uses topical news for story: neo-Nazis
  — More trite expressions:
  > > “Bond figured beggars can’t be choosers
  > > Bond was truly between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
  > > “The truth shall set you free, that’s what’s in the Good Book.
  — Silly vague first references to an “item” Q’ute was sending; and the voice he recognized on the answering machine (w/out saying who till later)

Cold / Cold Fall – USA (1996 – only second two-year gap between novels; note: he wrote novelization Goldeneye and unrelated series novel in 1995 but he wrote novelization of Licence to Kill in same year of 1989 as Win Lose or Die and wrote unrelated series novels throughout his 15 years of Bond books) my ranking: one of four in second tier of Gardner Bond novels
— Year it takes place: 1990 & 1994 (1990 spring – refers to snow in mountains from previous winter), brief summary of events in 1991, 92 & 93, then spring 1994 immediately following ending of Seafire, and through November 1994 – published 1996
— Takes place in: Washington D.C. – Dulles, Quantico Virginia; Pisa Italy; Idaho; London; Geneva

— Plot summary: In the first of two parts — Cold Front 1990 – Bond is sent to Washington DC to team up with the FBI and NTSB on investigation of a terrorist explosion of a British passenger airliner and runs into former lover Sukie Tempesta (Nobody Lives Forever), who was supposed to have died on the plane but who, soon after, reportedly dies in a car accident. The investigation leads Bond to partner with a beautiful undercover female agent at the villa of Sukie’s Italian crime family, who lead him to pursue an American para-military group in Idaho, which has taken M hostage. Bond leads a harrowing helicopter raid and rescue mission but the investigation of the terrorist groups goes cold.
“Book Two” — Cold Conspiracy 1994 – begins with Bond fiancé Flicka, whom Bond met and partnered with in Never Send Flowers, in the hospital following their next mission together in SeaFire, suffering horrendous physical injuries and in a coma with a dire prognosis. Bond regularly checks in on her for months until he learns that his female partner in Italy in 1990 has been assassinated and that Sukie Tempesta faked her death and is back with the Tempesta family who are plotting the take-over of the United States through an organization called Children Of the Last Days (COLD) that is linked with the para-military Idaho group Bond encountered four years earlier. This time, Bond teams up in Switzerland and Italy with another former beautiful female partner on yet another previous mission (Win, Lose or Die), Beatrice Maria da Ricci, whom Bond thought “would become the woman of his life.”

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M (Sir Miles Messervy); Moneypenny; Bill Tanner
  — Bond flat off King’s Road; MI6 HQ in Regent’s Park, Chelsea; vodka martini; Quarterdeck – M’s Regency manor house on the edge of Windsor Forest
  — James Boldman (Bond alias)
  — “girl covered… in gold paint; young Japanese woman…; his wife of hours, shattered and bleeding…”; Tracy
  — breakfast of boiled egg, 2 slices toast w/ butter & strawberry jam, 2 cups coffee
• Gardner carryovers:
  — Women: Principessa (Princess) Sukie Tempesta aka Susan Destry from 1986 Gardner book Nobody Lives Forever; Fredericka (Freddie, aka Flicka) von Grüsse (from previous two books – only in coma here); Beatrice Maria da Ricci (from Gardner’s 1989 Win, Lose or Die – Bond thought “she could become the woman of his life”);
  — Weapons: ASP 9mm pistol
  — MicroGlobe One (replaced MI6 in SeaFire)
• New:
  — Women: Toni Nicolletti; Felicia (Fliss) Heard Shifflet; Prime (FBI)
  — Villains: Luigi and Angelo Tempesta, General Brutus B (Brute) Clay; Kauffburger (huge dimwitted ugly man with all gold teeth)
  — Others: FBI special agent Eddie Rhabb
• Miscellaneous
  — M retires and is replaced by woman, exactly what happened the prior year (1995) in Goldeneye movie for which Gardner wrote novelization the same year.
• Notable writing:
  — Uniquely structured in two parts – Cold Front 1990/Cold Conspiracy 1994 – seemingly to accommodate reintroduction and fate of fiancé Flicka in “Book Two” moments after ending of previous book
  — Once again Bond on his own without authorization
  — good big helicopter chase with Bond flying a modified AG-1W Cobra with injured M and Fliss aboard chased by former Soviet-made Mil Mi-8s aka Hip-F, followed by engine failure and harrowing slow crash landing in freezing lake
  — Bond again doesn’t exhibit experienced wisdom, ideas, actions that justify his being treated with such deference and granted such unique leadership and clearances/allowances/admiration.
  > > again suckered: cavalierly gives travel plans to doctor, who later calls FBI
  > > after days of prep to secretly drop Bond via night HALO parachute in backyard of villa to set up massive FBI/police invasion of villain meeting, Bond is spotted and captured moments after he lands
  — more trite, tired expressions:
  > > when about to make a dangerous move while being chased on a jet ski: “If you can’t beat ’em, he thought, then you have to join them.”
  — again Bond carelessly gets himself in trouble and is rescued from certain death by woman: allowing Luigi’s wife to seduce him in their home, Luigi is about to shoot them when Toni Nicoletti shoots him in back
  — more sophomoric sexual references and unfunny eye-rolling attempts at humor:
  > > after describing Luigi’s wife Giuliana as having wide and inviting mouth, he writes Bond’s thought in italica: “Oh, what a large mouth you have. All the better to eat you with.”
  > > when being seduced by wife of villain: “He struggled for a moment, then thought: Well, I’d better lie back and think of England.”
  > > re Bond’s code name ideas of Red Fox and Gray Fox, “That should fox them,” he quipped.
• Notable turn of phrase:
  — “…the terrible scars and livid bruises which spoke of fractured bones provided the only color in her face.”

 

Raymond Benson
six original Bond novels (1997 – 2002)
three Bond short stories (1997-1999, reprinted in full and w/ intros 2008 & 2011)

It was 30 years since the last of the Fleming novels, but fortunately, in Raymond Benson’s novels, Bond has only aged a few years with a hint of gray hair at the temples indicating he’s “no youngster anymore” (other references indicate he’s in his 40s). This meshes well with the cinematic Bond of the late 1990s, which Benson emulates more-so than any other continuation author to date. Benson’s world of Bond is full of action, chases, gadgets, and humor. His stories also feature more graphic sexual encounters than the films – Benson has mentioned in interviews that the publishers encouraged him to make his Bond adventures spicier.
Benson also deftly retained much of the personality of Bond and the people who surrounded him as created by Fleming while moving him into the high-tech and more open sexuality world of the late 1990s and early 2000s – a self-driving car in 1998 and Bond is called to help when M’s boyfriend dies in her bed.
Bond is still surrounded by his entourage of familiar faces — Armourer Major Boothroyd – reverentially called Major, not Q; Moneypenny; Bill Tanner – and Benson’s books are littered with a treasure trove of references to characters in Fleming’s world for Bond – his Aunt Charmian, Hugo Drax, Vesper Lynd, Tracy di Vicenzo, Darko Kerim, Quarrel, Red Grant; Blofeld, Bond’s parents, Le Chiffre, and many others. Bond American ally Felix Leiter is now in a wheelchair and works with his FBI field agent girlfriend, René Mathis and Tiger Tanaka are still around to help, and Bond’s former father-in-law Marc-Ange Draco may no longer feel loyalty to his daughter’s widower.
Benson also includes some homage references to things written by the first Bond continuation author Kingsley Amis – a reference to the Colonel Sun affair, M’s Quarterdeck home and caretakers.
Benson’s immediate predecessor John Gardner first brought Bond 15 years forward (and eventually 30) in his series of 14 original novels that introduced some updated Bond traits, accoutrements, and many new characters. Benson initially respectfully acknowledges some previous Bond missions in the Gardner era, some characters, and other elements like the H. Simmons cigarettes (now out of business), Bond’s preference for jazz music (though we now learn he also likes Big Band music), and Bond’s customized Bentley Turbo R, but returns some of the quintessential Bond signatures like getting him back to being designated agent 007 – the MI6 00-section is restored; buying back his Aston Martin DB5 of the movies, again carrying a Walther PPK (Benson notes that Bond went back to using the pistol after a few years with the ASP 9mm that Gardner gave him, but he also uses a Walther P99 9mm Parabellum); and the return of Bond’s rank of Commander (Gardner promoted him to Captain). Gardner’s female Q’cute is gone without comment (Bond now has his own new personal assistant to sleep with), and other than a couple mentions of a few former Bond women, there is almost no reference to anything from the Gardner series thereafter. One exception is Bond’s boss M, whom Gardner transitioned to a woman in his final novel – Benson’s M is described nearly identically to Dame Judi Dench of the movies, though we learn her full name and that she is divorced.
Benson also uses morsels of Fleming’s writing as a springboard to introduce new stories and characters, such as the introduction of an adult child of Bond’s, the assistance of the son of Darko Kerim of From Russia with Love, the appearance of former M Miles Messervy’s daughter, and Bond pursuing sex with the 19 year-old daughter of his now-“elderly” housekeeper May. And some of his stories employ spins on comfortably familiar concepts from both Fleming and the post-Fleming Bond movies.
Benson’s missions for Bond also often involve contemporary happenings such as Great Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China, a G8 summit, and a couple of threats of a global virus, either as the primary focus or backdrop of the story, with detailed analysis and discussion of the political and social ramifications of each between Bond and the villain or as narrative context.
Benson’s Bond is the first to encounter sexual harassment in the work place, as well as technology such as speed dial, a Palm Pilot, cell phones, and GPS.
One of Bond’s new cars is a Jaguar XK8 coupe that can change colors and comes with heat-seeking rockets, cruise missiles, headlights-off night-driving with an on-windshield image, holograms inside the car and projected outside, and something like a drone that drops mines that Bond can control with a joystick in his car.
In addition to globe-trotting to the most prominent cities of the world, Benson also takes Bond to the peaks of the Himalayas, the bullfighting arenas of Spain, and on the red carpet and behind the scenes at the Cannes Film Festival where Royals are in attendance.
And, of course, Benson’s Bond enjoys access to the most beautiful and unique women, including sexy twin CIA agents.
Here are my notes on all six of Benson’s original Bond novels as well his three published short stories…

short story Blast from the Past (1997 – first published in Playboy January 1997 in shortened form, later reprinted in uncut 28-page version as part of 2008 omnibus called The Union Trilogy, featuring three Benson 007 novels and an introduction) my ranking: Best Benson Bond continuation story
— Year it takes place: present day 1996/97 (cell phones, town cars)
— Takes place in: London, New York City

• Fleming carryovers:
  — back to officially being 007 with Double-Ohs still in service; reference to Bond Scottish housekeeper May; Bond flat in Chelsea off King’s Road in a converted Regency house; breakfast of 2 cups coffee and egg boiled three and one-third minutes; Armourer Major Boothroyd;
  — Kissy Suzuki and his illegitimate child with her in YOLT; Irma Bunt
  — summary of Tracy’s death in her Lancia at hands of Blofeld and Irma Bunt and events of YOLT, including new Blofeld ID of Dr. Shatterhand
  — Walther PPK (7.65 mm)
• Gardner carryovers
  — reference to using ASP pistol for several years
• New:
  — Suzuki child now a New York banker named James Suzuki (Kissy has now died of cancer)
  — confirms Irma killed Tracy in OHMSS which is presumed but not specified by Fleming
  — Women: Kate, daughter of May’s friend; Cheryl Haven (British Secret Service NYC branch Special Agent)
• Miscellaneous
  — James Suzuki name taken from Pearson biography of Bond
  — during shootout in warehouse of mannequins of Presidents, Bond ducks a bullet that hits Lincoln in head
• Notable writing:
  — once again woman saves Bond’s life and rescues him (as in Fleming & Gardner)
  — once again Bond is careless which results in him getting wounded badly (as in Fleming & Gardner)
  — many additional and much more explicit sexual references and descriptions of sex than Gardner or even Fleming, including with May’s friend’s daughter of no more than 19 years old
  — a car chase that feels like those you’ve seen in movies and TV shows – through crowded NYC streets, on sidewalks, knocking down awnings, going wrong way down one-way streets
  — stalking/shootout in warehouse that evokes scenes from movies; this time filled with giant parade characters (turns out it was old Macy’s storage – presumably from parade)
  — ends with a line in keeping with many of the memorable double entendres of many Bond movies, “bon appetite” (as she lifts right breast to his mouth)

Zero Minus Ten (1997) my ranking: tied with one other for Best Benson Bond novel – begins even stronger than the other, High Time to Kill, and short story Blast from the Past
— Year it takes place: 1997, June
— Takes place in: Jamaica; Portsmouth England; Hong Kong; north of Lenora in Western Australia; London; Macau; Guangzhou China

— Plot summary: During the days leading up to Great Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China, Bond must investigate a series of terrorist attacks in Hong Kong and a mysterious nuclear test in Australia, which he learns all have connections to a British shipping magnate about to lose his business in Hong Kong, the head of a Chinese Triad crime organization and a Chinese General. Along the way Bond partners with a beautiful young woman working in a Hong Kong men’s club and becomes allies with one of the apparent villains he initially targeted in his investigation.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Bond back to officially being 007 and Commander (not Captain as promoted in later Gardner novels): comma of hair fell down over right eyebrow; three-inch scar on right cheek; cruel mouth; flat off King’s Road in Chelsea; Blades gentleman’s club; vodka martini shaken not stirred; back to Walther PPK (7.65mm) – “I was using an ASP for a few years…”; reference to formerly smoking Morlands of Grosvenor cigarettes; favorite breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast with freshly squeezed orange juice
  — Armourer Major Boothroyd – called Major, not Q (gone is Gardner’s Q’ute); M (briefly-mention recently-retired Sir Miles Messervy); Moneypenny; Bill Tanner; photo of Felix Leiter; brief references to Bond Aunt Charmian, Hugo Drax, Vesper Lynd, Tracy di Vicenzo, Mr Big, Darko Kerim, Quarrel
  — reference to M home Quarterdeck on edge of Windsor Great Park; Thunderball mission; Bond memory of Universal Export Ltd., SMERSH, and former MI6
• Gardner carryovers
  — Female M (very brief mention at very end of final Gardner book, and as in movies since 1995); British Secret Service SIS (formerly MI6); H. Simmons of Burlington Arcade cigarettes
  — brief references to Fredericka von Grüsse; Harriet Horner, Easy St. John
• New:
  — hint of gray hair at temples; “no youngster anymore”
  — M like Judi Dench in movies – late 50s, short grayish hair, severe face, not slender or tall; Bond personal assistant Ms. Helena Marksbury (Welsh)
  — Women: Stephanie Lane (Agent “05”); Sunni Pei
  — Villains: Guy Thackery; Chang brothers albino trio (Bond calls them Tom, Dick, Harry); Triad leader Li Xu Nan (becomes Bond’s ally); General Wong Su Kam
  — Others: training agent in Jamaica Michaels 03 (man), Secret Service agent in Hong Kong T.Y. Woo & his teen cab driver son Woo Chen (“Chen Chen”)
  — Weapons: inflammable shoelaces, removable heels hiding tools, medical supplies
  — Vehicles: 1995 Suzuki Vitara wagon (rental briefly in Australia)
• Miscellaneous
  — First chapter name Shamelady is a plant name Fleming’s wife suggested for their Jamaica home (instead named Goldeneye) – in this book it is Bond’s Jamaican holiday home once owned by British journalist and author (wink wink, Ian Fleming); later used with different spelling – Shame Lady – by later Bond author Anthony Horowtiz as chapter title in Bond prequel Forever and a Day (2015) as name of extravagant large house on hill overlooking French Riviera
  — villain nuclear bomb built using instructions on a web site – first significant note of Internet in a Bond novel
• Notable writing:
  — same underlying Tomorrow Never Dies movie plot (and Benson novelization) of same year – villain’s actions designed to pit China against UK, with villain potentially using nuclear explosive
  — Goldfinger-like fight on private jet where gun shoots hole wall of plane, sucking things out, and plane going out of control and villain falls from plane
  — structured more closely and characters more aligned to movies than any previous Bond novels – ie M carbon copy of Dame Judi Dench, also Bond banter and interaction with Boothroyd
  — many/much more explicit sexual references/descriptions of sex than Gardner or Fleming
  — Early in book it is the best and closest to Fleming’s smooth blend/integration of details about food/drink, locations, etc in entertaining way and without disrupting flow of story (despite very detailed description of rules of mahjong, which feels similar to Fleming’s baccarat in Casino Royale)
  — Multiple extended dialogues about political ideology and historical socio-economic issues and back-to-back 10-page descriptions of: 1.) every element and meaning of two-hour Triad initiation ceremony and 2.) 150-year history of family/business connection of Thackery and Li families, then three-page description of current Chinese society and economy, all before 11-page chapter of villain capturing and explaining his diabolical plan to Bond (a signature Bond story element).
  — once again Bond makes careless mistake that causes trouble (as in Fleming & Gardner):
  > > forgets to close and lock door in Pei’s flat, allowing thugs to attack them and injure Bond
  > > ignores woman in Wong’s office who then jumps Bond from behind as he has gun on Wong
  — once again woman saves Bond (like Fleming & Gardner) – Pei uses martial arts to take out one several attackers in Wong’s office, and later on boat allowing Bond to disarm nuclear bomb

The Facts of Death (1998) my ranking: one of three in the second tier of Benson Bond novels
— Year it takes place: present day (no year mentioned), starts in fall, then “the beginning of November”
— Takes place in: Cyprus; London; Greece (Athens and island of Chios); Austin Texas

— Plot summary: While in Greece following the mysterious murders of several British soldiers, Bond is rescued by a fiery Greek female agent, who later becomes his sexual and mission partner when M’s boyfriend is poisoned and dies in her bed. That murder leads to a connection with other killings where Greek deities statuettes and numbers are left on each victim. Meanwhile, a mysterious virus is breaking out in cities all over the world that appears to be tied to an international sperm donor service in Texas, where Bond re-teams with old pal Felix Leiter, now with an FBI agent girlfriend, and driving a souped-up wheelie-popping wheelchair. Bond learns that it is all being coordinated by a cult called the Decada, headed by a Greek mathematician and Pythagorus-idolizer who seeks to cause a war between Greece and Turkey, which Bond must circumvent with the help of a new tricked-out and self-driving Jaguar.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Major Boothroyd & Q branch; Miss Moneypenny; Bill Tanner; Scottish housekeeper May (now “elderly”); Sir Miles Messervy (former M) and his Regency manor home Quarterdeck; Sir James Moloney – SIS staff neurologist; Felix Leiter (still prosthetic leg and hand; notes his CIA, Pinkerton’s, and cinematic DEA jobs); Stefan Tempo (FRWL son of Darko Kerim)
  — Bond “Regency” flat off King’s Road in Chelsea; Blades club; vodka martini; scar on his face
  — references to Drax; “Bond, James Bond”; 004; Darko Kerim; Red Grant; Orient Express; Bond father Scottish & mother Swiss died when Bond was 11 in mountain climbing accident; Bond attended Eton; Le Chiffre carpet beater to Bond testicles
• Kingsley Amis carryover
  — reference to Colonel Sun affair, M Quarterdeck caretakers/servants The Hammonds (both murdered)
• Gardner carryovers
  — Bond’s Bentley Turbo R
  — female M from final Gardner book; reference to Bond case in Texas panhandle involving Blofeld heir (For Special Services); Bond says Leiter’s ASP 9mm was a gun he used for awhile; H. Simmons cigarettes of Burlington Arcade
• Benson carryovers
  — Shamelady (reference to Bond Jamaican vacation home)
  — Helena Marksbury (Bond personal assistant) – Bond kisses her outside Messervy home Quarterdeck
• New:
  — M full name Barbara Mawdsley and divorced; Leiter now in wheelchair and girlfriend Manuela Montemayor is FBI field agent
  — Women: Niki Cassandra Mirakos – Greek National Intelligence Service;
  — Villains: Dr. Ashley Anderson; Jack Herman (cowboy); Bill Johnson; Konstantine Romanos; Melina Papas; Hera Volopoulos
  — Others: former M Miles Messervy’s daughter Haley McElwain; M boyfriend Alfred Hutchinson, his lawyer Manville Duncan and son Charles Hutchinson
  — Weapons: Walther P99 9mm Parabellum (also still carries thinner PPK in shoulder holster)
  — Vehicles: 1996, 97 or 98 blue (later red, then dark green) Jaguar XK8 coupe w/ four liter V8 – can change color; satellite GPS navigation for auto-driving, heat-seeking rockets, cruise missiles, and headlights-off night-driving with on-windshield image; holograms inside car and projected from front or rear headlamps; “flying scout” winged device equipped with droppable mines operated by joystick (villains chase Bond in three black Ferrari F355 GTS – same car driven by villain Onatopp in 1995 Goldeneye); Kawasaki KDX200 motorcycle (stolen)
  — other gadgets: shoe heel control box includes alarm-sensor nullifier
• Miscellaneous
  — Final chapter named The World is Not Enough – motto on Bond crest and name of 1999 movie released the year after this book
  — Perhaps first reference to Bond and sexual harassment in work place
  — reference to cell “cellular/mobile” phone (Ericsson) – Leiter explains speed dial to Bond – first mention in Bond book?
  — Bond must be in 40s since most people at college town themed diner Chuy’s were “twenty years younger or more.”
• Notable writing:
  — Many scenes similar to Bond movies (not as much or at all in Fleming books):
  > > when Bond first meets up with Boothroyd (not called Q) he is demonstrating new gadgets and then they banter before Boothroyd says his customary cinematic pre-explanation of new gadget, “Now pay attention, 007…”
  > > villain sexually aroused by running weapon around victim face ala Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun
  > > Goldeneye-type villainess likes to have rough sex before attacking lover
  > > villain yacht ala and underwater fight ala Thunderball/Never Say Never Again
  > > gyro-copter as in You Only Live Twice
  > > Double-entendre final line as especially in Moore/Brosnan movies: “It’s just a question of knowing how to get it up.”
  — Once again, as in several movies and in first Benson book, plot involves villain action intended to make two countries blame and attack each other.
  — Scene with Leiter racing in middle of barnyard crossfire in wheelchair, rescuing Manuela, popping a wheelie and riding away with her on his lap, sending cows in stampede to corner the bad guys.
  — Line from Felix to Bond: “Women are like stamps – the more you spit on them, the more they get attached to you.”
  — Examples of humor and expressions: “We really must stop meeting like this.”; “Bond thought he was two sandwiches short of a picnic.”
  — Bond’s way of speaking seems much more 1990s American casual than British
  — sex: far more descriptive and Bond has more introspection about it after

short story Midsummer Night’s Doom (1999 – first published in Playboy January 1999, parts of eight pages; later reprinted as part of 2010 omnibus called Choice of Weapons, featuring three Benson 007 novels and an introduction) my ranking: Second best Benson Bond short story
— Year it takes place: present day
— Takes place in: London; Los Angeles – Playboy mansion

— Plot Summary: A woman who works at the Ministry of Defence is selling microfilm of secret technology design documents to the Russian mafia through her rock star ex-husband, who sells it to a Russian filmmaker during parties at the Playboy mansion. Bond must catch him in the act and retrieve the microfilm, which he does with much commotion and with the help of Hugh Hefner, but not before chatting up several real-life Playmates.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M (but female); Miss Moneypenny
  — Walther PPK; wire garrotte extending from wristwatch used by villain to strangle Tuttle a la Red Grant in FRWL
  — “Bond, James Bond”
• New:
  — Hugh Hefner;
  — villains: Martin Tuttle; Anton Redenius; Estragon
  — Others: at the mansion – Lisa Dergen (Miss July 1998); Victoria Zdrok (Miss October 1994 and later the Penthouse June 2002 Pet of the Month and 2004 Penthouse Pet of the Year), Mel Tormé; Tony Curtis, Robert Culp, Vincent Bugliosi, Larry Gelbart, Jim Brown
  — Vehicles: Bond driving Jaguar XK8 (which he also drove in previous year’s Facts of Death)
  — Gadgets: provided to Bond by Hef – a fountain pen transmitter listening device; wire garrotte extending from wristwatch used by villain to strangle Tuttle a la Red Grant in FRWL
• Miscellaneous:
  — last name of Anton Redenius same as author Benson friend and one of founders of Ian Fleming Foundation Doug Redenius

High Time to Kill (1999) my ranking: tied with one other for Best Benson Bond novel
— Year it takes place: Present day March-June (opening murder “March 1999” “a year” after previous book Facts of Death; next book takes place in August, two months after this one)
— Takes place in: Nassau; London and other UK locations in region Farnborough/Fleet and Buckinghamshire – Stoke Poges Golf Club; Brussells; Morocco, Delhi, Kathmandu Nepal (Kangchenjunga peak in Himalayas)

— Plot summary: Following a series of gruesome assassinations by a terrorist group called “The Union,” and the theft of a secret new technology formula that will bring global military power to whomever develops it, Bond must race several enemy groups up the third tallest mountain in the world to recover the formula on microfilm from the wreckage of a hijacked plane while dealing with a plethora of double-dealing members of his own climbing group and back home within the British SIS.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — pus-feller name for octopus; reference to quantum of solace; vodka martini shaken not stirred with twist of lemon; Eton childhood school; reference to Morlands cigarette maker out of business; Bond flat in Chelsea; “Bond, James Bond”; Universal Exports; Bond comma of black hair, blue eyes, cruel mouth
  — Bahamas Governor (now much older and retired even tho Bond hasn’t aged as much); reference to Mary Goodnight (but as scatterbrained character as played in movie TMWTGG, not as in Fleming novels); reference to Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE; reference to Sir Miles Messervy (former M); reference to former Universal Export and Transworld Consortium; Bill Tanner; Miss Moneypenny; Major Boothroyd;
  — Walther PPK; Aston Martin DB5
• Gardner carryovers
  — reference to H. Simmons cigarette maker out of business; Bentley Turbo R
  — Bond likes jazz music
• Benson carryovers
  — reference to Shamelady (Bond Jamaican vacation home); blue Jaguar XK8 (now with new voice-activated system, silicon fluid bombs and rear laser)
  — Bond personal SIS assistant Helena Marksbury (expanding sex affair started with only passionate kiss in Facts of Death); Barbara Mawdsley (“M”)
• New
  — Bond Jamaican Shamelady housekeeper Ramsey; reference to girl Bond liked at Eton Felicity Mountjoy; Tor Importers custom cigarettes
  — Women: Gina Hollander SIS Station B (Brussels); Dr. Hope Kendall
  — Villains: Group Captain Roland Marquis; Dr. Steven Harding; Lee Ming/Ming Chow; Le Gerant (The General); Paul Baack
  — Others: Sergeant Chandra
  — Other gadgets: High altitude oxygen mouth breather; snow climbing boots with heel of tools and med supplies; heated bivouac sack expandable for two; fur-lined pistol holster; portable Gamow Bag (hyperbaric chamber)
  — Bond likes big band music
• Miscellaneous:
  — Paul Baack (villain name) cited in acknowledgements of next book
• Notable writing and turn of phrase:
  — Basic plot of Britain trying to find person who stole secret new technology very similar to the concept of stolen solex agitator in movie version of TMWTGG
  — Once again Bond regrets his casual sexual dalliances that get him in trouble or lead to complications are arguments, tension and hurt feelings – this time with his assistant Helena Marksbury
  — Again, very detailed descriptions of everything from phones, room decor, food, tech brands and precise ways of functioning, to history of buildings and cities, in addition to physical appearances of everyone and models, engines and attributes of every vehicle and weapon, etc.
  — More Moore/Brosnan-era Bond cinema-type humor:
  > > knocking man into mirror that breaks in middle of fight: “Now look what you went and did. Your seven years of bad luck is just beginning.”
  > > repeating villain teasing about sound heard by person falling off ledge “like you hear in the movies, you know, Aaaaaiiiieeee!’ Bond watches villain fall yelling Aaaaaiiiieee! Then says, “Just like in the movies…”
  — suddenly refers to a large attacker named Basil as “the black man” seven times over 1 1/2 pages
  — first third has Bond acting more as detective than spy
  — Bond acts very immature (distastefully out of character) with his childhood rival competitively and with women
  — once again a woman saves Bond (as in Fleming): Hope does twice within hours
  — credibility-challenging feats during mountain climb
  — surprising number of double-agents and SIS security breaches
  — movie-like ending with man thought to be dead showing up at end
  — no mention of Chandra’s wife after he dies
• Notable turn of phrase: It was a familiar friend, a bittersweet companion for his wretched solitary life.

short story Live at Five (1999 – first published in TV Guide Nov. 13, 1999, parts of three pages; later reprinted as part of 2010 omnibus called Choice of Weapons, featuring three Benson 007 novels and an introduction) my ranking: third best of three Benson Bond short stories
— Year it takes place: Present day or perhaps late 1980s/early 1990s? (“several years since he had seen her”; “even now, years later”) then flashback to mid-to-late 1980s? (“some years back, before the collapse of the Soviet Union,” which happened from 1988-91)
— Takes place in: London; Chicago

— Plot Summary: On his way to meet a Russian woman for the first time in years, Bond recalls meeting and helping the Olympic figure skater defect by staging a distraction as her surprise skating partner at a public outdoor ice rink.

• Fleming carryovers:
— Sir Miles Messervy – “the man known as M”;
— Bond has a cruel smile
• Benson carryovers:
— Aston Martin DB5 – Bond “purchased from Q branch several years ago” (referenced in 2001 Never Dream of Dying that Bond outbid Bill Tanner when it was sold by SIS after being stripped of gadgets)
• New:
— former Russian Olympic skater Natalia Lustokov; real-life WLS Channel 7 Eyewitness News reporter Janet Davies; FBI man Max
• Miscellaneous:
— The reporter was real-life daily TV reporter Janet Davies on Chicago’s local ABC affiliate station WLS Channel 7.
• Notable writing:
— Despite being a self-described “only adequate skater,” Bond pulls off a competition-style “perfect Salchow” throw/jump of his female partner.

Double Shot (2000) my ranking: one of two slightly weakest Benson Bond novels 
— Year it takes place: one week in August present day (1999 or 2000), less than two months after previous book
— Takes place in: Gibraltar; Casablanca and Tangier Morocco; London; Marbella Spain

— Plot summary: Having thwarted the SPECTRE-like international terrorist organization in the previous novel, James Bond finds himself set up by The Union and its blind leader Le Gerant to make Bond suffer debilitating headaches, hallucinations and blackouts, and make it appear as if Bond, operating once again without approval from M and SIS, is the one behind a series of killings and a planned assassination at a meeting of the leaders of Great Britain, Spain and Gibraltar. Bond’s sexual encounters in this second of the trilogy of Union stories, include an attractive doctor, an assassin who likes to kill her carnal conquests, and twin CIA agents, while his personal investigation/vendetta takes him to Casablanca, Tangier, and the world of bullfighting in Spain.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — references to Bond cheek scar, black comma hair, cruel mouth, Bond flat in Chelsea in converted Regency house off King’s Road, Tracy, YOLT mission
  — Walther PPK: M; Tanner; Felix Leiter: Moneypenny; housekeeper May
• Gardner carryovers
  — reference to Sir James Molony
• Benson carryovers
  — Villains: The Union and leader Le Gérant (first time full name here: Olivier Cesari)
  — reference to Skin 17 mission, Helena Marksburt, Shamelady winter home and Jamaica housekeeper Ramsey
  — Leiter partner Manuela Montemayor
  — Walther P99 (updated); Walther PPK
• New:
  — Women: SIS assistant neurologist Dr. Kimberley Feare; sexy twins Heidi and Hedy Taunt
  — Villains: Domingo Espada; Marageta Piel aka Mantis Religiosa (Praying Mantis); Nadir Yassasin; Jimmy Wayne Powers; Julius Wilcox; Agustin; Michael Clayton; Walter van Breeschooten; Taylor Michael Harris; Peredur Glyn
  — Others: Tangier NA station SIS agent Latif Raggab; Javier Rojo
  — Other gadgets: suction cup eavesdropping/listening device in shoe heel
• Miscellaneous
  — name of Bond Blu-ray/DVD special editions docus producer John Cork used as Bond alias
• Notable writing:
  — more Roger Moore/Brosnan-esque lines, ie when sexy twin Hedy asks Bond to explain his import/export business: “I make sure things go in and out. Smoothly.”
  — Gardner-type multiple characters with doubles and twins, including Bond doppleganger, and there are no less than 10 named villain characters
  — story progression comes to brief halt to explain very specific types of food ordered at fancy hotel restaurant amidst Bond being under terrible physical and mental duress and being wanted and pursued by local officials
  — continues a new trend of Bond seeming less and less like Bond of the movies or Fleming; just a normal guy in the way he talks and thinks and with anxieties and no particular unique skills or abilities displayed; even gives up his weapons and initiative to allow women twins to take over control of him and mission.
  — final identity plot twist fairly apparent from beginning, as are most of the identity twists along the way
  — after entire novel of plot set-up of extensively-developed government regime coup, the entire thing suddenly happens and is resolved in 1 1/2 pages.

Never Dream of Dying (2001) my ranking: one of three in the second tier of Benson Bond novels
— Year it takes place: present-day; starts January about a year after previous book (a year ago since The Union moved HQ from Morocco to France), then jumps to about four months later with Mathis, and two months after opening studio explosion near Nice; through Cannes Film Festival (mid-May)
— Takes place in: south of France (French riviera, Nice, Monaco/Monte Carlo casino; Cannes); London; Corsica; Paris

— Plot summary: In this final chapter of the trilogy of novels involving the The Union international terrorist organization headed by the blind Le Gérant, Bond is initially involved with his old friend René Mathis in a police raid at a French movie studio that goes horribly wrong, killing innocent men, women, and children. Believing he was set up by The Union and getting an unlikely offer of assistance from his former father-in-law Marc-Ange Draco, Bond goes undercover as a journalist, falls in love with an actress married to a film producer who may be involved with The Union, and winds up disrupting TV shows and movies during production on the way to the potentially biggest explosion of all at the Cannes Film Festival where Royalty is in attendance.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Walther PPK; vodka martini; hot shower followed by ice cold; “Bond, James Bond”;
  — M; Bill Tanner; Major Boothroyd; French ally René Mathis (Casino Royale); Marc-Ange Draco
• Benson carryovers
  — Villains: The Union, leader Olivier Cesari aka Le Gérant now also aka Pierre Rodiac, #2 Nadir Yassasin, and Union commandant Julius Wilcox
  — car: Aston Martin DB5 (outbid Bill Tanner when sold by SIS after being stripped of gadgets)
  — gadgets: lockpicks in heel of right shoe
• New:
  — Bond male assistant Nigel Smith; Bertrand Collette (new head of SIS Station P – Paris);
  — Women: Tylyn Mignonne
  — Villains: Goro Yoshida; Emile Cirendini; Léon Essinger; Rick Fripp
  — other vehicles: rented Renault Mégane 1.6 16V
  — Other gadgets: ophthalmoscope eye examine device also camera and laser; K-10 hydrospeeder called Ariel (small motorcycle-like self-propelled underwater diver propulsion unit with rebreather)
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond performs boat “stuff” – making speedboat dive completely underwater, just as in PTS of DAD a year later, except here Bond jumps out of boat while it’s underwater
  — one of the French actresses at Cannes Film Festival is Carole Bouquet (Bond woman, FYEO)
• Notable writing:
  — Continues the trend of very out-of-character Bond:
  > > bungling a simple undercover visit to TV studio that of course draws unnecessary security guard attention and leads to absurd chaotic chase across set during shooting, with dogs chasing Bond who shinnies up 30-foot cable to catwalk to escape.
  > > getting “rattled a bit” while playing cards at casino and losing to Le Gerant and in just two hands.
  > > being unprepared and not knowing how to react at times
  > > being careless/reckless – walking/dining in public with high-profile celeb Tylyn leading to paparazzi photos in tabloids
  > > often feeling guilty and second-guessing his decisions that wind up in people dying, ie at beginning shooting/exploding gas barrels at movie studio where he was to be an observer, which resulted in 19 men, women and a child actress were incinerated inside a soundstage and 20 others injured
  — Once again, very detailed description of places, food, fashion, people, etc., often seemingly not in service of story, ambience, character, for example this abrupt transition about a hotel: “The place had an interesting history…” followed by paragraph about its history. Then, “Essinger pondered the last ten years of his life…” followed by more than two pages of backstory about the filmmaker
  — Once again a great many characters and some with multiple names
  — Interesting extensive use of exclamation points, sometimes multiple in one paragraph, even in un-Fleming-like mid-sentence interruption to denote surprise: “And then–horror!–Mathis noticed that a guard…” “…the man would surely notice him in a few seconds!”; later: “That explained the notations Bond had seen in Essinger’s office in Paris!” Much later: “Excellent action choreography! It looked so real!”
  — Again, more occasional Moore/Brosnan sexual innuendo humor: after sexy model Tylyn says she likes to ride her horse called Commander: “Bond mused that he knew a certain Commander who would like a ride.”
  — Even more detailed sex act than usual for Benson, entire page describing which fingers Bond put inside Tylyn while his thumb was at top of her vulva and used her natural lubrication to move it up, down and around her clitoris.
  — once again Bond falls in love and thinks of marriage
  — another surprise ally who turns out evil, and familiar wrinkle of villain being secretly related to key people

The Man with the Red Tattoo (2002) my ranking: one of three in the second tier of Benson Bond novels
— Year it takes place: present day – “…that business in Gibraltar a couple years ago” (two books ago); “…since the events of September 2001”; later than spring – the cherry blossoms “had disappeared” but “would return the following spring” (actual 2002 G8 summit was June 27, but in Canada)
— Takes place in: London; Tokyo; Sapporo, Noboribetsu and other areas of Hokkaido; Kamakura; Naoshima Island

— Plot summary: When Bond is sent to Japan to baby-sit the British prime minister at a G8 summit, he also takes the opportunity to investigate a mysterious suspected terrorist connected with his previous mission, who may be behind an even more mysterious and ominous series of deaths by a fast-acting fatal virus that happened just before he left. With the assistance of his old friend from the You Only Live Twice mission, the aging Tiger Tanaka and his beautiful young agent, as well as a high-priced young prostitute from a very rich family, they soon learn that all these things are tied together in a diabolical scheme by the terrorist using Japanese gangs including the yakuza as well as a deformed dwarf who is good with a knife and has stealth capabilities.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — M; Q branch & Major Boothroyd; Miss Moneypenny
  — Tiger Tanaka; references to Blofeld (end of YOLT mission), Kissy Suzuki (plus hearing her voice), Henderson, Bond son, Tracy; Vesper; Bond alias in YOLT Taro Todoroki; reference to Gov of Bahamas (also in Benson’s High Time to Kill)
  — Bond’s Bentley; Walther PPK
  — “Bond, James Bond” (multiple times); hot shower followed by cold
• Benson carryovers
  — agent 004 (from The Facts of Death) – also used later by Faulks in Devil May Care
  — reference to “bad head injury during an assignment a few years ago”
  — Villains: Goro Yoshida
  — car: Aston Martin DB5 (from movies and previous Benson book, not in Fleming books)
• New:
  — Women: Reiko Tamura; Mayumi McMahon
  — Villains: Shinji Fujimoto; Yasutake Tsukamoto; dwarf “kappa” Junji Kon
  — Gadgets: cigar filled with plastic explosives; antacid tablets that are smoke bombs and explosives; a Palm Pilot electronic organizer with dynamite-strength explosive and ability to knock power out of small electronic devices at close range; lock pick in shoe heel; a knife-sharp collar stay in a plastic sheath
  — other people: agent 0010; Japanese Ainu ally Ikuo Yamamaru
• Writing:
  — several times employs Fleming style of starting chapter or section a little ahead in time, then drops back to explain preceding events
  — continues progression and peaks with Bond acting more American, including subtle little expressions that are nothing notable by themselves but have cumulative effect, like “What the hell, Bond thought,” and (sarcastically responding to Reiko asking if jarred bugs might have the virus) “What do you think?”; and “Okay, so I used a little too much,” and “So much for containing the mosquitoes.” “I think you know what you can do with your respect, Yoshida.”
  — more extensive use of exclamation points, ie three in a single half-page: No!; Finally the blade was through! Now! Later in one line: Do something! (also in italics) Wait! The Knife!; even chapter titles Yes, Tokyo! and Caught!
  — A seemingly somewhat out-of-character sexist thing for Bond to think to himself in 2002: ” Women could not be relied upon to keep their mouths shut.”
  — Another Fleming-like woman saving Bond’s life.

Carte Blanche (Jeffery Deaver, 2011) my rating as a Bond book, 7.5 out of 10
— Year it takes place: present day, the week leading to Friday, May 20 (a day/date in 2011), starting the Sunday before. Construction prep for 2012 Olympics in London
— Takes place in: Novi Sad Serbia; London; Dubai; Cape Town South Africa

— Plot summary: This first Bond continuation novel in nearly a decade to be set in present day finds Bond back in his 30s and working for his male boss M (Miles) as part of a new covert unit of British security when he is assigned to a mission involving the derailment of a train in Serbia where he picks up scraps of information about people connected with a British-based waste disposal consortium plotting an imminent event in Dubai that may lead to the death of more than a hundred people, followed by another event in Cape Town, South Africa that may kill thousands of people in a few days. The waste company is headed by a Dutch man obsessed with decay and dead human remains, who has the help of a fastidious Irish engineer partner. Along the way, Bond gets help from a pretty, young MI6 liaison called Philly, the attractive head of a food aid charity called Felicity Willing, an appealing young member of the South African police, and the striking older girlfriend of the head of the waste company.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — “Commander” Bond is 007 in his 30s, six-feet tall, 170 pounds, black hair parted on one side and a comma of loose strands over one eye, three-inch scar down right cheek
  — M (man called The Admiral); chief of staff Bill Tanner (50s – formerly w/ MI6); Moneypenny (mid-30s); Bond assistant Mary Goodnight (mid-20s); René Mathis (French Secret Service agent – 35); Felix Leiter (CIA, few years older than Bond, body fully intact); reference to Bond’s aunt Charmian and school at Eton; reference to Bond’s parents Andrew and Monique Dela roix Bond of Pett Bottom, Kent, who left Bond at age 11 w/ Aunt Charmian (new: December 1990) and died in mysterious mtn climbing accident in Mont Blanc Switzerland (new: mother an MI6 superstar counterintelligence agent?)
  — headquarters near Regent’s Park; Q branch (though now headed by Sanu Hirani)
  — Bond flat in Chelsea; Scottish housekeeper May; shower extremely hot followed by ice cold: breakfast 3 eggs scrambled; Bentley (but new model); “Bond, James Bond”; vodka martini shaken not stirred
  — Bond’s parents Andrew and Monique Bond of Pett Bottom
• New:
  — cars: Bond drives his own new granite gray Bentley Continental GT w/ turbo W12 engine (black hide inside); Bond also owns 1960s racing green Jaguar E-type that was his father’s (Philly re the E-type: “That’s the sexiest car in the history of motoring”); Mini Cooper black and red (borrowed from Philly); in Cape Town he is provided metallic blue Subaru Impreza WRX STI w/ spoiler
  — Bond wears only slip-on shoes except when ties are needed; formerly worked at Defense Intelligence
  — Instead of MI6, three years ago Bond, who had left Royal Navy Reserve as Commander, joined new Overseas Development Group, secret foreign security agency in mold of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, formed by M, now Director-General in top floor corner office
  — Women: MI6 intelligence analyst liaison to ODG Ophelia “Philly” Maidenstone in her 30s; Felicity Willing
  — Villains: Niall Dunne; Severan Hydt (56) born Maarten Holt; Jessica Barnes (midsixties); Cpt Bheka Jordaan (32);
  — Weapons: Walther PPS
  — Gadgets: iQphone multiple phones in one w/ special optics, audio systems, hundreds of apps – one that combined images and sounds through transparent surfaces with lip-reading/eye movement and body language to pick up conversations; inhaler that is no-metal microfilm camera
  — Other people: Percy Osborne-Smith of Division Three; Cape Town MI6 agent Gregory Lamb
• Miscellaneous
  — the only Bond novel with no chapter titles, just numbers; also the most chapters of any Bond book (72), and most pages (404)
  — first mention/use of a phone/mobile app, and a drone for video/photos
  — reference to Harry Potter (two); F1 champ Michael Schumacher; music groups Police, Jeff Beck, and Depeche Mode; TV show Top Gear
  — names a drink he invents Carte Blanche
  — ends w/ Bond called back to work “…something heating up in Malaysia. There’s a Tokyo connection.”
• Notable writing:
  — Fleming-like style many times of jumping slightly ahead in narrative, then describing the things that led to this current point in time
  — several times bad things happen, especially near end, then it turns out they didn’t really happen; plus multiple false endings
  — drops off in quality and interest in last third of story – nothing terribly big or interesting happens; kinda anti-climatic.
• Notable turns of phrase:
  — “…the carpet insulted by too many heels.”
  — “This man was no more of a person than the black dot of a bull’s-eye. A target.”
  — “Shattering the stillness, several guns sang, voices similar but differently pitched, in harmonies low and high.”

novella, 161 pages On His Majesty’s Secret Service (Young Bond author Charlie Higson, May 4, 2023) my rating as a Bond story, 7 out of 10
(This hastily planned and quickly written short-story-turned-novella by Young Bond author Higson does a good job of re-setting 007 in 2023, while retaining his basic characteristics in a torn-from-the-headlines story that offers some exciting scenes at the beginning and end but gets heavily bogged down in between with uncharacteristically slanted attacks on conservative views of political and social issues.)
— Year it takes place: May 4-6, 2023
— Takes place in: London; Zemplén mountains in northern Hungary; Croatia – Adriatic Highway between Makarska and Ravca; Budapest; Vienna

— Plot summary – many spoilers alert: Watching warily over people approved to stand along hallway being walked by King Charles two days before the coronation ceremony on May 4, looking for a specific person that Bond believes may trigger something catastrophic in 26-minutes, he reflects back two months ago when he was called to see M after agent 009 was killed in Hungary. Moneypenny had been dating 009, both of whom offered their resignations. 009 had been investigating a man called Æthelstan of Wessex based in Hungary who claimed to be a descendant of King Alfred the great and who felt Charles was the wrong person to become the newly-crowned King.
March 7: a wealthy fashionable woman who is being driven to Dubrovnik in Croatia (it’s Æthelstan’s wife) is stopped in an attempted robbery when a dashing English security man drives up out of nowhere, chases off her assailants, introduces himself as Peter Sanbourne, then leaves (it’s Bond).
March 24: Bond’s rescue of the woman prompts Æthelstan to invite him/Sanbourne to meet in Budapest with his head of security Canner Lyle to discuss Sanbourne providing manpower and weapons for their plans.
April 11: Bond/Sanbourne is taken to a castle in the mountains where he meets Æthelstan’s group of high-profile extreme nationalists and Æthelstan himself, who rouses his troops by saying “We need a proper King of England” and that he is the most deserving due to his lineage back to true English Kings, that Charles does not have the right to inherit the throne and crowned with the watered down title of King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. His Operation 848 – Operation Old Lady – is to march into London and shut down the media and all power, starting on May 4 with the launch of his new global news channel on his birthday. Æthelstan’s lone woman mercenary Ragnheiður reveals herself to Bond to have been working with 009 to expose and stop Æthelstan.
April 12: Bond meets with the undercover leader of his squad as everyone prepares for the mission and his Sanbourne is assigned to attack the Bank of England. That night Æthelstan confronts Bond to let him know he has learned his true identity, apparently from Ragnheiður (we later learn it was Bond’s idea to get him to center of Æthelstan’s operations). While Bond is being beaten, Ragnheiður pretends to bite his ear but secretly cuts his hands free just as the power goes out as Bond had pre-arranged with his squad leader, and Ragnheiður helps Bond fight off Æthelstan’s men and capture him, but he escapes when Ragnheiður says she blacked out. Bond and Ragnheiður chase Æthelstan in off-road vehicles and catch him, after which Ragnheiður shoots him and Bond snaps his neck to finish him off. Bond and Ragnheiður spend the night together in Vienna and discuss Æthelstan’s mention of a back-up plan to prevent the King’s coronation even if he can’t do it himself – Operation Æthelflæd (King Alfred’s daughter). Ragnheiður realizes the 848 in Operation 848 refers to the time of day on May 4 that the operation will go into effect, at 8.48.
May 4: MI6 and Palace Security to walk King Charles at 8.40 out of a reception, down a hall and into a room under a pretext of signing documents. It’s now 13-minutes before 8.48, and Bond is standing in the hallway awaiting the passage of King Charles, unsure what he is looking for. The entourage, including bodyguards, MI5 agents, and a young woman who was briefing the King, begin their walk when Bond’s cell phone rings. It’s Ragnheiður alerting Bond that Æthelstan has a secret daughter. Bond and one of the MI5 agents quickly pull the young woman aside. She attacks them with a pen that scratches the MI5 agent on the cheek with poison black ink before she is taken into custody. Bond ponders his life for a moment, then decides to cease his introspection, and calls Ragnheiður back to say he’s madly in love with her but he’s not the marrying kind. She says she isn’t either.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Bond description: mid-thirties; tall (but compactly built); stray lock of hair falling over his forehead like a black comma; hint of a scar on right cheek
  — M (greenlight over door to his office) and Moneypenny (sitting outside M’s office)
  — 009 – referenced in Thunderball novel (as well as multiple Eon Bond movies)
  — Bond breakfast: two eggs scrambled (now on wholemeal toast and with yogurt), finished with black coffee.
  — MI6 office in Regent’s Park
• New:
  — Bond
  >> wears Rolex watch as in movies
  >> alias Peter Sanbourne
  >> weapons used by Bond: Glock 19 (Bond undercover gun consistent w/ private security); small spike in a sheath in hidden suitcase compartment; Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle taken off a guard
  >> breakfast: plain yogurt with his traditional scrambled eggs now on wholemeal toast
  >> clothing: Bond “wearing a lightweight, knee-length, charcoal grey, woolen overcoat, and a quarter-zip, merino top in a paler shade of grey over a plain white t-shirt. Black trousers and a pair of black desert boots… Monochrome, anonymous practical. Smart without being showy.” “…slipped on his Persol aviators.” Later in castle, in order to blend in he wears dark jeans, blue Oxford shirt, unstructured blazer, R.M. Williams Chelsea boots
  — Women: Bond casual girlfriend: Yasmin, immigration lawyer; henchman team member Ragnheiður Ragnarsdóttir – Icelandic seemingly natural blonde 28 year-old woman contact in Budapest w/ grey eyes flecked w/ green slightly slanted upward like a witch, something both ugly and beautiful about her (same name as real life Icelandic actress and former swimmer born 1984)
  — Villains: Æthelstan of Wessex – 50s w/ walrus moustache, slightly bulging eyes, and extravagant mane of grey hair, based in Hungary; Æthelstan’s secret daughter Christina Hayes / Flora Woodbridge
  >> Henchmen/militia members: South African Canner Lyle of Hauser Consultancy head of Æthelstan security – muscle-bound shaved head and closely-shaved beard; Lyle right-hand man Scotsman Kenny Charlton; extreme nationalist John Tyler; Libertarian group leader Lord Anthony Saxewell-Brooks; ex-Tory MP and New Freedom Party leader Roger Birkett; German neo-Nazi Kaspar Faust; Knights of St George co-founder Lawrence Lancaster; politician Captain Perry Hughes; private mercenary backer Renaud Caiboche
  — Villain lair: Szalkai Castle, known by locals as Az ördög széke – the devil’s seat
  — Other characters: Marina Buehler; Marina’s Italian driver Giorgio; Marina’s bodyguard Carl; Bond soldier ally Captain Nick Cornwell; Cornwell’s explosives expert Harry “H” Lascelles; MI5 agents Kingsley and Isaacson; Ann Hayes, mother of Æthelstan’s secret daughter; MI6 communications team Colin Finney; MI6 Special Operations Dan, Yuri, Ben
  — Vehicles: Bentley Continental (Marina riding in back); Lady Ealhswith boat; black Land Rover Defender 130 driven by Canner Lyle; Polaris 4×4 LMV with rollbar
  — Agent 009 alias Tom Ferguson
  — New media/tech: first references to Instagram, AI, apps, facial/retinal recognition, Bitcoin, YouTube, Truth Social, Google Street View, Waze road directions app
• Miscellaneous
  — Only combined 11 pages across two chapters (first and last) actually take place between May 4-6
  — References to things that are either obscure or never mentioned in previous Bond incarnations:
  >> “Bond had been stabbed in the belly once and had a section of his colon removed.”
  >> “grand old Hungarian Opera House…” where “he’d broken an enemy agent’s neck during a performance of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’.”
  — re Bond noticing King Charles on a coin: “It was just his luck to finally make it onto British coins and stamps just as people were no longer using cash or sending letters.”
  — Higson writes that Bond “was not the marrying kind,” that “nobody within the service would ever hand in their resignation to marry him.”
  — Bond stays at “Premiere Inn, or a Travelodge” in Budapest – “felt somehow sophisticated and chic in its efficient simplicity”
  — Bond takes note of first 50-pence piece (coin) he’d seen with profile of King Charles (which had been in circulation since end of 2022 following death of his mother Queen Elizabeth Sept 8, 2022).
  — Bond has started eating healthier after reading of “gut health” – importance of nurturing bacteria in intestines, which send signals to the brain that are then sent back. “An unhealthy gut could lead to depression and stress.” And Bond relied on gut feelings, “gut sense” (instincts).
  — Bond “favoured classic men’s tailoring. Clothing that was built to hold its shape and last without shouting ‘look at me’. He had to be able to move easily and not be concerned about whether the seams were going to hold up if he got into a scrape. And he rejected anything with an obvious logo. He was damned if he was going to be a walking advertisement for some multinational clothing brand who had their stuff made in a sweatshop by children paid in pennies.”
  — “So much of what MI6 did now was in the digital world. It was all about screens and data and hacking.” “…the use of satellites and drones was increasingly replacing boots on the ground.”
  — “A Double O agent like (Bond) was something of an anachronism…”
  — “…was (Bond) as much a mercenary as this other man?” “He’d been doing it for so long he didn’t know any more.”
  — “Bond had had so many close shaves, he wasn’t sure he had any skin left on his teeth.”
  — “Double O agents usually left the service before they were retired… Bond wasn’t there yet. He still had a few more years in him… ‘Come on, old man,’ he said to his reflection. ‘You need a drink.’ ”
  — OHMSS reference by Cornwell: “I’d love to say we have all the time in the world, but I’d be lying.”

— References to things in Bond’s past not mentioned in Bond novels, short stories or movies:
>> Bond had been stabbed in the belly once and had a section of his colon removed.”
>> “grand old Hungarian Opera House…” where “he’d broken an enemy agent’s neck during a performance of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’.”

— Mentions of things as new even though they were mentioned before:
>> references having only visited Disneyland once before. Paris. When a contact wanted to meet him there. Ignoring mission to Disneyland Paris in Gardner Bond continuation novel called Never Send Flowers.
>> Æthelstan castle and his Medieval decorations and costumes very similar to Gardner’s Bond continuation novel Never Send Flowers (Higson also has significant scenes in castle in his first Young Bond Silverfin)

— No conclusion re Moneypenny – did she withdraw her resignation – apparently not since she is at her desk solemnly and briefly at beginning on May 4 – and no mention of impact on her of death of her boyfriend 009 just a few weeks earlier. Nor whether other agent at end survived Flora poison pen attack.
— Why use Ragnheiður Ragnarsdóttir name of real life real life Icelandic actress and former swimmer born 1984?

— political and cultural references (through about a third of the book, Higson uses Bond to take aim repeatedly at every conservative from nationalist extremists to even those who are just anti-woke or who laugh at the evolving recognition of gender identity):
>> “(Bond) disliked anybody, and any movement that was too ‘far’ in any direction.” “He’d spent his life cleaning up the mess these people left and he was sick of it.” Then
>> “Bond felt a deep sense of gloom that this beautiful, civilized, orderly country had been dragged back towards the far right by Viktor Orban, using the crude but effective nationalist playbook.”
>> re Orban: “…’Make Hungary Great again’ anti-immigration rhetoric. He’d aligned himself with the likes of Trump…”
>> re John Tyler: “Like many of the people in the room, he’d been banned from social media and had his YouTube channel taken down.” “…(others like Tyler with a simplistic, dog whistle agenda of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-EU, anti-North London Elite rhetoric. The plan was obvious, but effective – identify an enemy to bolster your own power base.” “…he was all over alternative sites like… Truth Social.” “John Tyler…saying…’England for the English – I’m sorry, but how is that controversial.”
>> re Saxewell-Brooks: “He was famous for trying to promote a return to Victorian values, despite cheating on his wife…” “About five years ago he’d shot at a group of activist trespassers with a 12-gauge shotgun.” “He’d been a major donor for the Conservative party…”
>> re Birkett: “…famous for promoting covid/vaccines/mask-wearing/5G conspiracy theories, which had spilled over into the usual anti-immigrant, anti-EU, anti-BBC…, Climate Change Denial pronouncements. It was an anti-trans diatribe that had eventually got him kicked out…”
>> re the people at the gathering: “There was not even a pretence at diversity here.” “…it was why his followers loved (Æthelstan).”
>> re Cpt Perry Hughes: politician “focused entirely on single issue politics – namely ‘No Wind Farms In Our Beautiful Unspoilt Part of England’.” “He’d featured in a couple of reality programmes… was filmed… giving a drunken rant about Jews running the media…”
>> “The men (Bond) talked to… laughing about how much they hated cyclists and bus lanes and congestion charging, and traffic calming, and how global warming was a con, and sooner or later came round to the Big Woke Conspiracy, Black Lives Matter, the Great Replacement, and what are we going to do about the Muslims.”
>> Æthelstan: “…men and women. Oh, sorry, not allowed to call them that anymore, are we?” “You haven’t been bamboozled and brain-washed by all this trendy, leftist tommyrot.” The greatest threat comes from those…who think we should all ride vegan bicycles… or a man in a dress who insists we call him they.” “Perhaps we should better call him King Charles the Woke.” “Only a true born Englishman with a heart of British oak can make England English again.”
>> Caiboche: “The true French… descended from Germans, too. Just like you English. I have no love for Macron’s France.”
>> Æthelstan: multiple references to “Capitol riots” – ‘All those good old boys storming in with their beer bellies sagging over their belts.” They were like a bunch of baboons who’d escaped from their cage… throwing their shit about. Making lots of noise… but there was no way they were going to end up running the zoo.”

• Notable writing:
  — For a short novel of 161 pages, it packs in perhaps a record number of 29 named characters.
  — Many things happen and people introduced that are explained later, sometimes much later, leaving the reader a little puzzled for awhile.
• Notable turn of phrase:
  “(Bond) was a fist, clenched and ready to strike.”

 

Young Bond (2005-2017)
nine original Bond novels, one short story, two authors

The Young Bond stories follow James Bond in his early teens (age 13 to 15) from 1933-35 (four of them and a short story take place in the single year of 1934) — nearly 20 years before we first met him in Fleming’s stories — after the boy described by Fleming was orphaned following a Swiss mountain climbing accident that claimed the lives of his parents and left 11 year-old James under the guardianship of his father’s sister, Aunt Charmian.

• Charlie Higson – five novels 2005-2008, short story 2009

The first five novels and short story by Charlie Higson track James during his eventful breaks from school while staying with his aunt and, initially, his uncle, from whom he picked up many of culinary preferences, his choice of cigarettes, and perhaps even his identifying facial scar, as well as his experiences during his first year at English prep school Eton College, from which he was eventually expelled and transferred to Fettes College in Scotland. We also learn when and how Bond came to own his beloved 1931 4.5 litre Bentley convertible.
Young James would also first encounter girls with enticing memorable names, such as Wilder Lawless, Amy Goodenough, Vendetta, Kelly Kelly, Precious Stone, and Roan Power. He would also experience his first feelings of love for a girl, meet (and save) the King of England and other members of the royal family, and run up against top-ranking Russian communists and supporters of the fast-rising Adolph Hitler and Nazi government.
Higson’s five novels were released over just four years, including two in a single calendar year – a first for any back-to-back Bond novels by any author.

Silverfin (2005) my rating as a Bond book, 8.5 out of 10
— Year it takes place: Easter period 1933 (2 yrs after James’ parents died)
— Takes place in: Scotland; Eton College in Eton near Windsor in Berkshire England

— Plot summary: After a school boy is attacked by unusually aggressive eels while fishing in Loch Silverfin near a private and closely-guarded castle (the prologue), young James Bond is introduced attending school at Eton, where he soon encounters the father of the school bully. While staying in Scotland during a school break with his father’s sister and brother, Aunt Charmian and his ailing Uncle Max, Bond and a new friend investigate the mysterious castle and the missing boy and learn the bully’s father is a megalomaniac armament dealer who owns the castle and is responsible for the eels – while using the castle as a laboratory to secretly manipulate hormones to create superhuman soldiers, the waste from his failed experiments got into the water around the castle, and now he is using them to create a serum for humans. As he tries to learn more and do something to stop the man, Bond is captured and about to be used as the next human guinea pig.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Bond has gray-blue eyes and black hair with lock dropped down over right eye like a comma
  — father was Andrew Bond; mother was Swiss; they died on climbing holiday without James (in Aiguilles Rouges above Charmonix ski resort in France) when James was 11 and staying w/ Aunt Charmian (Andrew’s sister), whom he then lived with.
  — “Bond, James Bond”
• New
  — Bond father Andrew: originally from Glencoe in west of Scotland, boarding school at 12, straight to study chemistry at University of St. Andrews, left early to join Royal Navy in Great War of 1914, survived numerous sea battles, a sinking and last-minute rescue from icy North Atlantic, and ended was as captain of his own battleship but had been wounded by shell blast – shrapnel buried in flesh that slowly ruined his health; by the end he could barely walk. After war he became salesman for Vickers armaments manufacturer and traveled a lot; two years later met and married Monique Delacroix, daughter of wealthy Swiss industrialist. Andrew liked to ski, climb, sail, ride horses but didn’t take James along much.
  — Andrew younger brother is Max (Bond’s uncle), a former spy in military who was caught by Germans and escaped and now lives in Keithly Scotland, owns an Aston Martin 4-cyl 1.5 liter Bamford and Martin Sidevalve, Short Chasis Tourer (which he promised to James as he taught him to drive), smoked gold-banded cigarettes (as James would later), and very sick w/ cancer – being cared for by a couple Alec and May Donaldson who does cooking and cleaning.
  — Sister of Andrew and Max called Charmian (Bond’s aunt) is anthropologist who lives in tiny village of Pett Bottom near Canterbury southeast of London, has a 4.5 liter 4 cylinder supercharged Bentley four-seater sports car (that James wanted to own when old enuf) and liked breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and marmalade (which James would adopt)
  — Bond tall for his age (13 now); strong runner; fluent in French and German; Bond born in Zurich and by age 6 had lived in Switzerland (Basle) – half his life – and Italy, France, London (flat in Chelsea). Learned to swim on holiday with father in Jamaica and learned to ride horse and fire a gun on summer holiday in northern Italy.
  — Bond friends: Pritpal Nandra (slightly overweight Indian boy wearing white turban, genius at math & science); small tough Tommy Chong from Hong Kong; German-Jewish Freddie Meyer; red-haired Irish boy Kelly
  —  Girl: Wilder Lawless w/ green eyes & long blonde hair, slightly older than Bond w/ horse called Martini
  — Villains: large pompous American Lord Randolph Hellebore and his bully son George Hellebore, upper classmate at Eton – calls Bond “Jimmy”; Lord Hellebore henchman young scientist Dr. Perseus Friend; Cleek MacSawney; monkey man
  — Others: Bond’s classical tutor Mr. Merriot; boys maid Janet; detective Meatpacker Moran
• Miscellaneous
  — Loch Silverfin has a small “f” in the story but it is capitalized as SilverFin in the book’s title
  — Young lady Wilder Lawless knocked James down, wrestled him, pinned him on his back, sat in his back and stuffed dead leaves in his mouth to prove she was as tough as any boy
  — Bond’s former spy uncle Max discouraged Bond from becoming a spy
  — Bond gets “dramatic wound on his cheek” that requires bandage but even though Aunt Charmian thinks it shouldn’t leave a scar, it is implied that it is the origin of scar on Fleming’s Bond.
• Notable writing:
  — like Fleming, Bond uses no gadgets; the main girl has a catchy name; girl comes to Bond’s rescue; a villain who has grandiose ideas and explains his entire plan to Bond just before Bond escapes.
  —  — The story is divided into three parts, a structure Higson would employ for four of his five Young Bond novels, with Blood Fever being the only exception

Blood Fever (2006) my rating as a Bond book: 7 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1933, starts June 1 and runs throughout summer holidays
— Takes place in: Mediterranean Sea off Greek isles; Eton; Sardinia Italy

— Plot summary: Bond, still a first-year student, joins Danger Society of risk-taking students, helps out a classmate whose father was murdered recently on yacht in Mediterranean by a smuggler, leaving the student’s sister missing. On a class summer field trip to Italy where Bond stays with his mother’s cousin, Bond finds signs of an effort to revive a defunct secret Italian society that tried to restore the Roman Empire. The illegal activities of a seemingly rich and self-centered couple turns into a complex web that entangles an eccentric artist friend of his cousin, one of Bond’s teachers, and even connects to the smuggler and his classmate’s missing sister, leading Bond to try to expose the criminals who try to eliminate him several times.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Aunt Charmian; Bond’s parents killed in climbing accident when he was 11
  — “Bond, James Bond”
• Higson carryover:
  — 4.5 liter Bamford and Martin roadster
  — Bond friends Pritpal Nandra, Tommy Chong
• New
  — Bond just over 5’4″ tall
  — Aunt Charmian goes on Amazon river adventure
  — Girls: Amy Goodenough and her tutor Grace Wainwright; Vendetta (rescues Bond) – sister of artist assistant Mauro
  — Villains: Count Unqo Carnifex and his sister Countess Jana Carnifex; Zoltan the Magyar and his henchman Tree-Trunk (hairless tattooed giant from the South Seas) – they turn kinda good in the end; Smiler; school master (“a beak”-teacher) Mister Peter Haight
  — Bond friends: Andrew Carlton (2 yrs older); Perry Mandeville (founder/captain of Danger Society)
  — Others: Bond classmates Mark Goodenough (became distraught, stole Bond’s car to drive wildly before Bond stopped him and calmed him down) and Tony Fitzpaine; Eton staff member John Cooper-ffrench; Bond cousin Victor Delacroix (relative of Bond’s mother Monique Delacroix), Victor’s artist friend Poliponi and his boy assistant Mauro plus Mauro’s sister Vendetta (rescues Bond)
• Notable writing:
  —  This is Higson’s only Young Bond novel that is not structured in three parts
• Notable turn of phrase:
  — All the color had been drained from the day…

Double or Die (2007) my rating as a Bond book: 8 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1934, primarily three days starting December 7 – starts briefly at end of summer holidays (following adventure in previous book at beginning of holidays after first year at Eton) and mentions starting second year at Eton, through fall season and nearing Christmas 1934
— Takes place in: Duck Inn in Pett Bottom; England – London and region

— Plot summary: Following the kidnapping of a professor at his school, Bond and his friend pick up on a clue in a cryptic letter tied to a crossword puzzle. Their investigation leads to a young Alan Turing and a professor at Cambridge, the latter of whom Bond finds murdered at his desk, and the murderer is still in the room. James flees and enlists the assistance of his fellow Danger Society members as well as a female gang of new street urchin friends led by the sister of his friend Red from the SilverFin mission to unravel the clues about a plot to steal a secret ominous project. While fending off a skull-faced gangster and others, they learn the plot involves a man trying to avoid losing his fortune by making a deal with the Russians involving an early computing machine.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Bond’s 4 1/2 litre Bentley “Blower” convertible
  — Aunt Charmian
• Higson carryover:
  — reference to SilverFin friends Pritpal Nandra, Red Kelly, and Chinese messmate Tommy Chong; Bond family members Andrew, Max, Monique Bond
  — Bamford and Martin tourer
• New
  — Friends: student head of Danger Society Perry Mandeville (16 and “older than James”); Kelly Kelly, urchin gang leader and sister of Red from SilverFin;
  — Villains: Wolfgang and Ludwig Smith; Sir John Charnage; Russian Colonel Irina “Babushka” Sedova;
  — Others: Professor Alexis Fairburn; new Eton headmaster Claude Elliot; Ivar Peterson
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond crashes the Bamford and Martin tourer car his uncle had given him and then Perry shows him a badly damaged 4 ½ litre Bentley convertible that had been a racer until months earlier, but now on cinder blocks in a scruffy yard. Bond, who notes that his Aunt Charmian had one just like it but in better condition, later returns to buy the car with his cut of money he won for an American at an illegal underground casino. This is the car Fleming introduced with Bond.
  — Epilogue: 12 years later (presumably age 25) Bond is quietly sent to Station X at Bletchley Park to take World War II then-unknown codebreaker Alan Turing back to London for debriefing. While at Station X, Bond is also surprised to see the professor who had been kidnapped.
  During that 12 years Bond added an Amherst Villiers supercharger and other modifications to the 4 1/2 litre Bentley convertible and painted it battleship gray (to become the car Fleming described for Bond).
  —  The longest of all nine Young Bond novels at 371 pages.
• Notable writing
  — This is a return to the three-part structure of Higson’s first Young Bond novel SilverFin.

Hurricane Gold (2007-September) my rating as a Bond book: 7.5 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1933-34 from three days before Christmas through February, primarily a few days starting in early February, “five weeks later” after Dec. 27 visit by Mr. Merriot, James traveling with aunt “since January”
— Takes place in: Caribbean island Lagrimas Negras; England – Canterbury; Mexico – Vera Cruz, Mexico City, south along coast from Tampico, Tres Hermanas; Puente Nuevo; Palenque, Campeche, Progresso

— Plot summary: After being hospitalized with broken collarbone from Double or Die adventure, Bond is released three days before Christmas, after which Eton classical tutor Mr. Merriot suggests on Dec. 27 that Bond not return to school for awhile to avoid questions about Mr. Fairburn. Jump ahead “five weeks” to Bond having been traveling in Mexico with his aunt when she leaves him in the home of a pilot friend who flies her to the next stop on her expedition just ahead of a hurricane. Minutes after Bond is left with the pilot’s spoiled daughter called Precious and his younger son, the kids are abducted during the storm by a gang of thieves during the robbery of a safe where they expected to find secret U.S. Navy plans stolen by their ex-flying ace/smuggler father. Bond rescues the children but the three cannot outrun a flood, after which the two kids are found and recaptured by the gang. Bond then masquerades as a young Mexican thief to join the gang, which is now pursuing the pilot. When a Japanese gang member sneaks off to take the injured boy to a hospital, Bond escapes with Precious and leads her to a dangerous drive with a man who is literally losing his mind. Bond and the daughter find the documents stolen by the pilot, and make their way through a rainforest jungle, down a river on a raft, and on a boat to a Caribbean island of criminals where they are captured again by a self-proclaimed king who says no one may ever leave. To make their final escape, Bond and Precious must successfully navigate a deadly obstacle course called La Avenida de la Muerte, the Avenue of Death.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Aunt Charmian; “Bond, James Bond”
• Higson carryover:
  — Pritpal S. Nandra (the “S.” is new); Perry Mandeville and his Danger Society (shut down); schoolmaster/tutor Mr. Michael Merriot (the “Michael” is new here)
• New
  — Girls: Eton 17 year-old Irish maid Roan; spoiled young Precious Stone; Stone’s Mexican maid Dolores;
  — Villains: El Huracán; Dum-Dum White; Chunks Duhaine; purse snatcher Angel Corona; blonde Mrs. Theda Glass (changed from real name Horowitz); Strabo; Charlie “Whatzat” Moore; Manny “the Girl”; Eton upperclass bully Theo Bentinck
  — Others: Charmian guide Mendoza; Jack Stone and son Jack Junior “JJ” Stone; skipper Diego Garcia; Japanese jiu jitsu teacher Sakata; co-pilot Beto;
  — Vehicles: silver Model J. Dusenberg SJ with supercharger; black Dodge sedan; Tin Goose (Stone’s airplane);
• Miscellaneous
  — Perry Mandeville expelled from Eton a few months before the same would happen to Bond, and Perry enrolls at Fettes College in Scotland, where Bond would be transferred that fall.
  — Perhaps the first and only Bond novel whose title was determined by the publisher’s desire to create an gold cover/binding with a related title
  — Schoolmaster Mr. Merriot encourages Bond, before returning to Eton, to consider joining the “school party” over Easter break at Kitzbühel in the Austrian Alps for skiing, rock-climbing, and tobogganing – this would be the setting for the next novel published in 2008 but only after Bond has yet another adventure between this one and Easter break as described in the 2009 short story Hard Man to Kill
  — the fictional island of Lágrimas Negras is named after a 1929 Cuban song of the name, meaning black tears
• Notable writing
  — The traditional opening set-up before Bond enters the story is longer than usual at 26 pages.
  — Letters to Bond from three people back home are interspersed throughout the book – Eton classmates Pritpal and Perry, and schoolmaster/tutor Mr. Merriot, the latter two at beginning of Parts Two and Three, the first just before Bond’s first appearance in Part One

short story A Hard Man to Kill (2009 – initially featured in the paperback reprint of 2008 novel By Royal Command, then included in series companion book Danger Society: The Young Bond Dossier) my rating as a Bond story, 6.5 out of 10
— Year it takes place: early 1934, shortly after Hurricane Gold and before By Royal Command; SilverFin 1933 adventure was “last Easter”
— Takes place in: cruise ship across Atlantic from Guadeloupe; begins briefly in Venezuela

— Plot summary: While on a cruise home across the Atlantic with his Aunt Charmian to rest up after his recent experience in Mexico/Caribbean, Bond meets a young René Mathis guarding a captured French war criminal and runs into the young girl Wilder Lawless he met in Scotland a year earlier (in SilverFin), whose father is transporting horses. After witnessing men taking weapons from crates and finding a corpse of a customs officer, Bond and his friends attempt to throw the ammunition overboard but are captured by the men who are ex-Legion soldiers posing as a French gymnastics team in order to free the prisoner. Their efforts to escape lead to a shootout during which the prisoner leaps off the balcony into the ocean and is rescued by a submarine.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Bond at Eton; responsible for Bond is Aunt Charmian (anthropologist); René Mathis (young French police adjutant assisting French officers on cruise ship guarding villain); “Bond, James Bond”
• Higson carryovers
  — Scottish girl Lawless Wilder and father Robert from SilverFin
• New
  — Villains: Emil Lefebvre; Charles Caiboche
• Miscellaneous
  — Villain Caiboche believed dead but revealed to still be alive in last few lines of story
  — only Young Bond short story and, at 60-pages, the longest of any Bond short story written by any author.

By Royal Command (2008) my rating as a Bond book: 8 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1934 – Easter break (two days travel to Alps, a few days of skiing instruction, a few more days practicing, then a week in hospital and at Oberhauser farm chalet), then back to Eton until at least June (King George visits Eton June 4), then days more traveling back to Austria
— Takes place in: Lisbon Portugal; Austria – Vienna, Kitzbühel and Jochberg in the Austrian Alps; England – London, Eton in Windsor; France – Calais, travel through Amiens, Picardi, Rheims, Nancy

— Plot summary: Bond falls in love with the new 18 year-old maid at his school, who turns out to be working undercover with her anarchist husband to kill and frame Bond for the planned assassination of the King of England, which they believe is helping Bond’s former communist nemesis from Double or Die seek vengeance against Bond and overthrow England. But it’s actually a Nazi scheme plotted by an evil scientist whom Bond thought had been killed during his Silverfin adventure.
Long version: After traveling two days – by train to Dover (where he encounters boorish members of Hitler Youth), by ferry to Boulogne, then across northern France and Switzerland to Austrian Alps, Bond meets up two days late with an Eton school ski party, all the while being secretly watched by an MI6 agent. No sooner does Bond learn to ski than he must rescue a boring and obnoxious drunk upper classman who first breaks his leg and then causes an avalanche, which lands Bond in hospital, where he hears a man crying out about his cousin who is going to be killed. Returning to Eton a few days later, Bond (he would be 14 years-old – was 13 at Easter 1933) falls for an older Irish maid at school called Roan (18-19 “on her 19th birthday”; earliest reference “two or three years older” than Bond, later Bond thinks “barely older,” later she recalls when “she was just 16”), who turns out to be working with a male Irish partner as part of a communist plot to assassinate King George V and frame Bond for it as part of a plan to start a revolution. Helping execute a plan of revenge by Bond’s Russian woman nemesis from Double or Die, Roan sets up Bond to be killed and framed for the blame of the planned explosion to kill the king. Bond’s Eton schoolmaster tutor reveals himself to be secretly working with MI6 and enlists Bond to help them ferret out those involved with communist plot by getting inside info from Roan, whom he forgives and helps escape authorities by taking her to hide out at the home of his Austrian ski instructor. But Roan betrays Bond again, leading him to a trap set by Dr. Perseus Friend, the young scientist henchman of Lord Randolph Hellebore whom Bond thought he had killed in Silverfin but is now also seeking vengeance on Bond and England. Friend, who surgically altered his identity, tricked Roan and was, actually, working for the Nazis to have a new king, Edward VIII, who was more sympathetic towards Hitler (as would be shown to be true in real life decades later with the discovery of the Marburg Files). The erroneous perception of a communist-backed assassination would have also sparked the United Kingdom to form an alliance with Germany against Communist Russia. It all leads to a brutal showdown and shootout between all sides at Friend’s new laboratory where he intends to literally skin Bond alive until Bond pulls off another escape just as the Soviet’s arrive, followed by the British. Twice, as he is about to be killed during the battle, Roan saves Bond’s life – stabs Wrangel in neck with scalpel and steps in front of a bullet from Col Sedova — but she gets fatally wounded in the process, and reveals to Bond in her dying words that she was married to her now-dead conspiracy partner.
As a result of his latest activity, Bond is expelled from Eton by headmaster Marriot, his records of being at Eton the past year erased — all in order to cover up what happened — and he is transferred to Fettes school in Scotland.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — ski instructor in his 30s with a limp Hannes Oberhauser (new here: his wife Helga)
  — 4 1/2 litre Bentley “Blower” convertible bought as a wreck by Bond in Double or Die and brought into working order with by Andrew Carlton and other Danger Society school mates from the idea and money from Perry while Bond was away in Mexico (Hurricane Gold), on cruise (in Hard Man to Kill), and in Austria at beginning of this book
  — “Bond, James Bond”
• Higson carryover:
  — Dr. Perseus Friend (new here: aka Obsidian aka Graf von Schlick), schoolmaster/tutor Mr. Merriot, Lord Randolph Hellebore, Bond messmates Pritpal Nandra and Tommy Chong (all from Silverfin and others); Andrew Carlton, reference to Mark Goodenough (both from Blood Fever); schoolmate Perry Mandeville; Colonel Irina “Babushka” Sedova (both from Double or Die); upper classmate school bully Theo “Bloody” Bentinck (“Bloody” is new) from Hurricane Gold
  — Girls: school maid Roan Power aka Agent Diamond (mentioned only in letter in Hurricane Gold – new here: Agent Diamond and forged Dublin passport in name of Violet Mackintosh, forged English passort in name of Isabel Downing); Amy Goodenough (new: “about 16”) from Blood Fever
• New
  — Villains: Sean Cullinan known as Dandy O’Keefe (25 when he met Roan two or three years earlier); The Graf “Otto” von Schlick; Russian Friend Nazi henchman Vladimir Wrangel aka Amethyst
  — Others: obnoxious school mate Liesl Haas actress/mistress of the real Otto von Schlick; Miles Langton-Herring; Princesses Elizabeth (8 years ol) and Margaret (playing badminton in park near Bond); Prince of Wales, future King Edward (11 months in 1936) and American Mrs. Wallis Simpson; King George V; MI6/Special Intelligence Service (SIS) man Captain Dan Nevin; Englishman undercover Soviet agent at Oberhauser chalet Mike Nicholson
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond uses the German he learned as a young child
  — Hannes Oberhauser – this is the back-story of the man who became a father-figure to Bond as a teenager, starting by teaching him to ski, as described in Fleming’s Octopussy Bond is sent to Jamaica to bust a former WWII British military officer who killed Oberhauser after the war to steal gold bars that he later lived off for many years with his wife. Seven years after this book was published, a similar character called Franz Oberhauser was introduced in the Bond movie Spectre.
  — Bond’s Eton schoolmaster Mr. Merriot reveals to Bond that he works undercover for MI6, uses the school and students to provide cover for some missions, and that Bond’s late uncle Max Bond was a spy for MI6 and that Merriot and MI6 have been keep an eye on Bond for years as a possible recruit. Merriot then enlists Bond to help out in resolving this mission.
  — origin/full name of MI6: before WWI the British secret service was army catching foreign spies on British soil and navy spied overseas. Two divisions known as The Directorate of Military Intelligence Sections 5 & 6.
• Notable writing
  — By far the most complex and encompassing Young Bond story with the most variety of events, experiences, locations, extended existential and philosophical discussions and observations and ponderings about the significance of anything in life and about political ideology – communism/socialism vs democracy/monarchy vs dictatorial/totalitarianism, and most number of characters — like a hit parade of about a dozen characters popping up from first four Higson novels and even a Fleming short story on top of the introduction of more than a dozen new characters, and all handled remarkably deftly and smoothly
  — Bond not only has uncertain feelings of first love who then betrays him twice, causing him to doubt his own judgment, but his school mates get upset with him being a lightning rod for trouble which causes them problems, he learns nothing is black-and-white, no one can be fully trusted and starts to examine his life and question his place in the world and his future without parents to guide him
  — Bond decides to harden his heart and recognizes he will always be alone, and yet Fleming’s Bond fell in love with, and wanted to marry, most of the primary women in each of his stories
  — Impressive knowledge and detailed description of little things such as how a burning fuse will occasionally have a slight flare, how your body and limbs feel and function in extreme cold, the challenges faced when learning to ski and the results during each stage of progression, etc.
  — The premise of Bond’s expulsion from Eton is based on an obituary prepared by M in Fleming’s You Only Live Twice noting that “after only two halves, as a result, it pains me to record, of some alleged trouble with one of the boys’ maids, his aunt was requested to remove him.”

Shoot to Kill (2014) my rating as a Bond book, 7 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1934 (mentions USS airship Akron crash “last year”) – starts in May, then jumps to third week of June (immediately after end of By Royal Command); then after airship Atlantic crossing and NYC to L.A., 9 days in L.A.
— Takes place in: England – Totnes, Cardington; Los Angeles

— Plot summary: On last day of 12-days at summer co-ed school and the night before embarking on a transatlantic airship voyage to L.A. via personal zeppelin of a Hollywood movie mogul, Bond comes across a film of the murder of a movie producer. While trying to return the movie to the cinema it came from, he hears and finds the projectionist murdered and is nearly killed himself. During the voyage Bond learns the cabins are bugged, and shortly after arriving in Hollywood he and his classmates are deliberately driven by limousine into a mob of supposed union protestors where a camera crew happens to be on hand to film a cop being killed and they must fight to escape a targeted attack on them, which leads to a climactic battle on the airship.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — curl of dark hair hung down over his forehead; scar in his cheek
  — Aunt Charmian reference
  — Hoagy Carmichael reference – Bond gets past a bouncer by telling him he’s Hoagy Carmichael’s son
  — James’ father Andrew referenced
• Higson carryovers:
  — reference to Bond friend Perry; Bond’s Bentley Mark IV; James’ uncle being a spy
• New:
  — Bond must be 14 years old or near 15 (16 yr-old girl a little older than him); boarding for summer at Dartington Hall co-ed school; heading to Fetes College in Edinburgh Scotland in September
  — Friends: dwarf boy Hugo; blonde classmates Boudicca “Boody” Pryce and Daniel Sloman
  — Villains: bully and resentful fellow Dartington student Beatrice Judge; Rudolph “fedora man” Dürr; Hollywood producer Anton Kostler; Martyn A. Kostler; American philanthropist Dr. Tobias Leaver; studio man George Barron; Lenny Vasquez
  — Others: Dartington Hall director of education Gillian de Vries; screenwriter Stuart Sloman; Victoria “Tori” Wo; British Secret Intelligence Adam Elmhirst
• Miscellaneous:
  — Drinking a lime rickey at a swank Hollywood hotel cafe, James thinks “I could get a taste for cocktails”
  — Very brief mention during car chase of a Corvette intervening – seems odd since they were not introduced till 1950s but apparently there was a Chevy Coupe called a Corvette in 1934.
  — British Secret Intelligence man watches Bond and calls in his observations to his bosses
• Notable writing:
  — Pretty preposterous when Bond steals a car to escape men chasing him, then later steals and ambulance and drives it with sirens and gets past airfield security to reach airship in time for launch
  — Bond continually involved in major action ie fights involving crowds of people, mobsters & police, and car chases all over Hollywood stretch credibility
• Notable turns of phrase:
  — James felt the old familiar shutters inside slide down, separating thought from feeling.

Heads you Die (2016) my rating as a Bond book: 7.5 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1934 July (shortly after previous Shoot to Kill book – British agent flew Bond and Hugo from L.A. to Miami to meet fam friend Gerald Hardiman to take them to his home in Cuba to rest)
— Takes place in: Cuba – Havana, Isla de Pinos, Playa Caimito, Batabano

— Plot summary: In Cuba for a few days to rest up from his unexpected adventure in L.A. while he and his friend Hugo are awaiting his Aunt Charmian to meet them and take them home, Bond immediately chases down a pickpocket of a family friend and research chemist through the streets of Havana. It’s the first of further chases over the next few days via motorcycle and stolen car, fights, underwater diving to find stolen lethal treasure, and near-death experiences. Bond prevents two thugs from abducting a girl whose friend had been attempting to smuggle out of the country with the help of Bond’s chemist friend because her ruthless industrialist father was abusing her. The chemist friend is kidnapped, sparking the four teens to find and rescue the chemist, while trying to thwart a plot to hold Great Britain hostage by spreading paper currency coated with poison for which they will have to pay the instigators for the only cure.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — reference to Bond’s father Andrew Bond; family home Switzerland; parents died in climbing accident when Bond was 11
  — reference to Bond’s guardian Aunt Charmian
  — “Bond, James Bond”; a comma of hair over his forehead
  — Beretta (here a henchman carrying it)
• Higson carryover:
  — reference to Uncle Max
• Cole carryover:
  — Friends: classmate Hugo Grande
  — reference to Adam Elmhirst (British agent); “Boody” Boudica (female classmate)
  — Queensmarsh – Bond’s air pistol
• New
  — Friends: Maritsa; Jagua
  — Villains: Audacto “Scolopendra” Solares; Ramón Mosqueda (vertical scar across lips); El Puño (The Fist); La Velada; Chester MacLean
  — Others: Gerald Hardiman – regular Bond family houseguest in London and Switzerland during Bond’s childhood who now lives in Trinidad as a research chemist
  — vehicles: motorcycle black Indian Four w/ sidecar; black and scarlet Hispano-Suiza six cylinder car
• Miscellaneous
  — Bond notices a manuscript with the title A Field Guide to the Birds of the West Indies with no author name – this was a Fleming-owned book from where he got the name of James Bond, who was the author
  — 12 bonus pages:
  > > more than four pages deleted from chapter about Bond’s first underwater dive added as bonus
  > > 1 1/2 pages excerpted from Fleming’s short story The Hildebrand Rarity where Bond goes underwater diving
  > > Suicide Club a real-life group of young divers in California as noted in three pages showing article and photos from Modern Mechanics magazine 1932-35
• Notable writing
  — Once again too many encounters to be credible – first mention of Bond has him chasing down pickpocket the moment he arrives in Havana, then instantly gets entangled in fight with men abducting a girl and then the friend he is staying with gets kidnapped on first night, then motorcycle chases, shooting chandelier in casino, underwater diving for buried treasure, stealing a car…
• Notable turns of phrase
  — “Ahead, the corridor ended in a heavy steel door that reflected her trim, dark silhouette back at her.”
  — “Through his scarred lips he bared white teeth that were as broken as his English.”

Strike Lightning (2016) my rating as a Bond book: 7 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1934 – near end of first term at Fettes and after end, 19 Dec. 1934, just before Christmas Break when term ended 20 December; “…wishing further success to all in 1935.”
— Takes place in: Scotland – Edinburgh, Thornhill, Ruskie; England – Pett Bottom, Canterbury, London; the Netherlands – The Hague, Rotterdam; Germany – Düsseldorf region

— Plot summary: Back at Fettes College in Scotland, Bond witnesses the death of his school mate who was engaged in suspicious mechanical experiments with a disabled professor, and Bond is blamed. He and former Eton friend Perry Mandeville investigate and uncover an international weapons development conspiracy that could provide Nazi Germany with nearly indestructible soldiers.
Long version: The mechanical armored suit – called a Steel Shadow — worn by a human that features a machine-gun arm has been developed by the owner of an electronic research and weapons manufacturer Blade-Rise, who started out creating a device to quickly rehabilitate his muscles, tendons and ligaments that are slowly turning to bone, trapping him within his own skeleton – Stone Man Syndrome, which he now wants to sell as a weapon for soldiers to wear on the battlefield. The professor at Fettes, along with an apparent young female student, have secretly been developing an even more powerful version of Steel Shadow called Blutbanner that also features a flame-thrower.
Bond and Perry meet a girl their age, Kitty, who has a love of trains and has been trying to learn why a train with no livery has been making mysterious trips recently. The three of them learn the “Ghost Train” is making regular deliveries of illegal arms to a secret military research bunker under a forest south of Düsseldorf.
In a final showdown, Bond is forced in a Steel Shadow suit to combat new friend Kitty in a Blutbanner, with pal Perry and even the owner of the weapons manufacturer coming to the rescue.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Aunt Charmian
  — “Bond, James Bond”
  — Bond mentions his late father worked for Vickers Armaments
• Higson carryover:
  — former Eton Danger Society founder and current Fettes school mate Perry Mandeville;
• Cole carryover:
  — reference to British Secret Intelligence Service agent Adam Elmhirst (from Shoot to Kill in L.A.)
• New
  — Villains: Hitler Nazi spy undercover as ambassador to Netherlands Konstantin Grünner; international weapons company owner Hepworth Maximilian Blade; Bond’s new science tutor Dr. Randolph “Captain Hook” Whittaker – started in September (his hand blown off in The Great War)
  — Girls: Herta Axmann – Grünner’s 18 year-old personal assistant; Kitty Drift – red-haired 15 year-old train enthusiast daughter of owner of railway company
  — Friends: school mate Marcus Stephenson (17), who is killed at beginning
  — Others: school boy Hazel; security guards Van Diemen and Carrel
  — Vehicles: Whittaker’s Rolls Royce (stolen by Bond and Perry); two custom Tatra 77 cars, one silver, the other burgundy (rear engine meant no driveshaft, meaning flat floors)
• Miscellaneous
  — When Bond is about to use tree branches to swing over a fence from a roof, Perry chides that he is trying to be like Tarzan from the Johnny Weissmuller movie they watched recently, adding, “I hope you don’t yodel as you swing through the trees.” (a sure insider reference to a scene where Roger Moore as Bond does that in the 1983 movie version of “Octopussy”)
  — an apparent allusive homage to the most famous heart-tugging line in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, from Bond as things look particularly bleak: “It’s all right, now, Kitty. Quite all right. We have all…” (Bond is interrupted)
  — By far the shortest Young Bond novel at 267 pages but there are eight bonus pages:
  > > three-pages about an actual 1930s weaponized exo-skeleton
  > > two-page excerpt about the giant squid in Fleming’s Dr. No
  > > two-pages about Cole’s visits to Fettes, The Hague, other story locations
  > > one page about similarity between exo-skeleton and real-life US military technology
• Notable writing
  — The whole exo-skeleton / Steel Shadows thing feels very much like a cross between Robocop and Iron Man
  — creative concept of stairs made of foam rubber that melt when heating panels underneath kick in to ensnare intruders; Blade’s lab room has spray gun that shoots red-hot molten metal, and is extinguished with white chemical foam shooting from ceiling and walls

Red Nemesis (2017) my rating as a Bond book: 7 out of 10
— Year it takes place: 1935 April-July and/r August “…last day of 1935’s summer term…” “Just last week, James had sent his friend… for.. April’s edition of Spicy Detective Stories…”; starts in 1932 – “Things will be different next year. In 1933 things will change for us.”
— Takes place in: England – London-Millbank, Pett Bottom; Scotland – Edinburgh, Fettes College; Sweden – Stockholm; Moscow

— Plot summary: A mysterious message Bond finds in a newly-unburied backpack belonging to his late father indicating he was in the process of uncovering a dangerous plot when he died in a climbing accident several years ago sparks James (likely age 15, perhaps recently turned 16) to try to decode the clues and finish the mission that could prevent the total destruction of London and clear the Bond family name. Working again with the Secret Intelligence Service, Bond also gets help from a hobbled 15 year-old female ballet dancer as the mission leads to his KGB nemesis La Velada, as well as a person Bond had previously trusted, and a young man who maliciously impersonates everyone from Bond’s parents to SIS officials, and eventually to London where secret tunnels under the city are filled with explosives designed to flood the city and force England to become part of the Soviet Union.
Long version: The khaki canvass and leather backpack of Bond’s late father Andrew are retrieved from a crevasse in the Aiguilles Rouges where Bond’s parents died. The pack, having been buried in the ice for three years, contains an envelope marked “James” with a small statuette of St. Basil’s in Moscow’s Red Square, along with the note, “Your uncle Max needs to see this!” and an envelope in a side pocket addressed to Bond’s uncle Max, which holds a letter with a cryptic message offering clues mentioning Moscow and about London being brought down with one blow. There is also a note for “K to play with James to get more out of the French memory for a start.” Separately, Max had received a postcard from Andrew mysteriously warning that foundations are dangerous, a bank to be rebuilt, and to “polish an instrument in James’s case” – but Bond never played an instrument.
Bond goes to the ballet academy where he finds a trap door leading to a cavernous concrete bunker under the basement.
When Bond learns that the British Secret Intelligence Service suspicion that his father and uncle may have been conspiring with Soviets against Great Britain, he feels he must prove his father was not a traitor and redeem the family name.
Bond reteams with SIS agent Adam Elmhirst and they travel to Moscow where they quickly get separated while trying to elude Soviet villains. Bond cannot go to the British Embassy since one of the officials is a suspected mole for the Russians, so he’s on his own until he teams up with a 15/16 year-old former aspiring ballerina called Anya. She cares for her ailing father, who seems to be somehow connected to everything, and who intentionally injured her leg to protect himself and his family. When her father is killed, she recalls how much she hated him.
Just as Bond finds his old school satchel buried in a Moscow cemetery by his father and filled with papers describing the plot to flood London by exploding service tunnels underneath the Thames, Bond learns that his Soviet nemesis La Velada is involved in this plot and that SIS agent Elmhirst is not only a double-agent with Soviet Union but also killed Bond’s parents and is now taking James Bond by Soviet submarine from Denmark to London and a secret underwater channel via submarine, where Elmhirst plans to disguise himself as a bodyguard and quietly kidnap King George during a ballet at the Royal Opera House. A young man called Mimic, who impersonates anyone, including Bond’s deceased parents, will then impersonate King George and announce that he has agreed to let the USSR annex the United Kingdom. As a distraction, Anya feigns her own assassination attempt on the King from the stage during the performance, circumventing the plans of Elmhirst and allowing the King to escape while providing Bond time to find and stop La Velada, eventually using her corpse to dowse the fuse to the explosives in the tunnels. Bond then chases down both Mimic and Elmhirst and prevents their last desperate attempt to broadcast a bogus radio message from the king.

• Fleming carryovers:
  — Aunt Charmian; reference to Bond mother Monique
  — Vickers armaments, where Bond’s father was a salesman
• Higson carryover:
  — Bond friend Perry Mandeville (from Blood Fever)
  — reference to Bond uncle Max dying two years ago (from Silverfin)
  — King George (another assassination attempt; first attempt was in By Royal Command)
  — reference Colonel Irena “Babushka” Sedova (from Double or Die)
• Cole carryovers
  — reference Bond’s dwarf friend Hugo Grande (first in Shoot to Kill)
  — logo Blade-Rise (crates of explosives) and reference owner Maximillian Blade (from Strike Lightning)
  — SIS agent Adam Elmhirst (from Shoot to Kill)
  — Russian agent La Velada (from Heads you Die) posing as dance academy owner Gaiana Radek
• New:
  — Bond almost six feet tall at this age of 15/16; Basel Switzerland – where Bond lived with his parents
  — Girls: Soviet youth troupe aspiring ballerina Russian Anya Kalashnikova (13 in intro late 1932, then must be 15 or recently turned 16 in mid-1935) and her Russian architect father Ivan (helped Bond father Andrew Bond)
  — Villains: Russian Andrei Karachan and security Russian Le Velada bodyguard Demir Brachacki; black boy with shaved head called Mimic; the Vorovsky brotherhood of assassins
  — Others: dance academy assistant principal French woman Madame Gaiana Radek (really arch nemesis La Velada)
  — Vehicles: reference Bond’s father’s “treasured’ 1926 AC 12 Royal drophead coupe
  — Weapons: Beretta 418 w/ .25 caliber bullets belonging to Bond father Andrew, hidden in James’ school satchel and buried in cemetery in Moscow
• Miscellaneous:
  — 10 bonus pages:
  > > a deleted paragraph and a four-page section from an early draft about a 1930s parachute tower attraction in Gorky Park in Moscow with references made to them by Fleming’s brother Peter in his travel book To Peking
  > > several pages of summary of Ian Fleming’s 1930s experiences in Russia and his inspiration and mentions of the Soviet Union in his early Bond novels
  > > Cole’s rationale for using the Soviet Union in this story.
• Notable writing:
  — Prologue takes place three years earlier in 1932
  — Bond and Anya spend a lot of time discussing their deceased parents, how she hated her father and yet cared for him, while Bond is torn about what to think of his father whom he loved but left Bond alone too young and may turn out to have been a traitor.
  — As in Fleming, a woman (Anya) saves Bond’s life and come to his aid multiple times
  — Once again credibility-stretching series of challenges, fights and situations involving potentially world-altering plots that often exceed even what adult 007 dealt with, which Young Bond conquered every several months as a teenage schoolboy
  — Mimic character a bit absurd for a Bond novel, but not that far from some cinematic Bond characters
• Notable turn of phrase
  — “Darkness swallowed the Streamline as it ploughed inside the warehouse, a single glowing headlight the only dim resistance.”

— By Scott Hettrick