James Bond Novel Retrospective #3
Released: 1955
James Bond rockets into his third adventure.
First off, I love these books covers. They were created for the 2012 Kindle releases of Fleming’s novels. They all have a stylish, monochrome, slightly abstract design. Either way, they look fantastic. They’re not the editions I own, sadly. I own the Penguin editions, which are nice and colourful albeit highly sexualized, but the Kindle covers are my personal favourite.
Anyway, revisiting this book again after so many years, I remembered it better than Live and Let Die, but there were still some significant details that I forgot. Which makes me all the more thankful that I’d decided to read the books again, as it’s been fun to rediscover some of the things that I forgot about.
With Casino Royale, the 2006 adaptation significantly modernized the setting from the novel and expanded on several things, but the broad story and main characters from the novel were still there. With Live and Let Die, the movie diverged significantly from the book, but they still had some things in common. This book, meanwhile, practically doesn’t exist in movie format at all, as the Moonraker film was a different adventure entirely, sharing only the title itself and little else. You can’t even really call it an adaptation; it’s a completely different story. Main villain Hugo Drax is one of the few things that the movie retained from the book, but even there, Hugh Drax is quite a different character in the movie than he is in the book.
In fact, the movie is so different, it had its own novelization released, separate from the Ian Fleming book, which I think is pretty funny. (James Bond and Moonraker by Christopher Wood, which I’ll get to much later on in this retrospective.)
The vast deviations from the novel are often used as a point of criticism against the film. And, while I do think it is a shame that this book was never properly adapted, I actually am quite fond of the Moonraker film and think it’s a great, fun adventure in its own right. But that’s a discussion for another time.
For now, the book. And I’m pleased to say that this is a dang awesome book. One of Ian Fleming’s very best, and one of the best Bond adventures period.
It starts on a somewhat untypical note for a Bond mission. M recruits Bond for an unusual task that has nothing to do with the Secret Service, at least not at first. It turns out that Blades, the gentlemen’s club that M visits, has a potential card game cheater in its midst, one Sir Hugo Drax. M wants Bond to investigate and expose Drax for the sneaky, dishonest player that he more than likely is. But the card game is only the beginning, and it soon leads into Bond investigating something much bigger and far more sinister.
Bond’s relationship with M, sometimes warm and sometimes cold, is a consistent highlight of the novel series as a whole, but it especially shines here. M accompanies Bond to Blades and is present for his entire card duel against Drax. It ends up being one of M’s warmer moments and there’s an endearing quality to his dynamic with Bond here.
Following the card game, Bond gets called in to investigate an eerie murder-suicide at Drax’s headquarters, whereupon he teams up with Gala Brand. There’s a nice creepy mystery to the whole thing. Drax is a more compelling and fleshed-out antagonist than the previous two novel baddies, and Gala Brand is one of the best Bond girls. It all culminates in a great, bittersweet ending where Bond, for once, does not get the girl.
I give the book a 9/10.